Senate Commerce Committee Chair Roger Wicker, (R-MS), and Sen. Gary Peters, (D-MI), would like a rural representative to be included on the Federal Aviation Administration’s Drone Advisory Committee (DAC).
The DAC is a federal advisory committee that provides the FAA with advice on key drone integration issues by helping to identify challenges and prioritize improvements. There are no rural representatives from the agricultural community on the advisory committee now.
Wicker and Peters urged FAA Acting Administrator Daniel Elwell to incorporate rural representatives including agriculture, forestry, and rangeland stakeholders. The Senators emphasized the importance of ensuring broad rural representation and improved efficiency and safety of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in a letter.
“We appreciate the FAA’s efforts to assemble a diverse DAC,” they wrote. “However, due to the ever-increasing use of UAS in the agriculture, forestry, and rangeland sectors, as well as the inherently different uses for UAS in the less populated parts of our nation, we believe it is important that the DAC include direct representatives from rural parts of America, particularly in the agriculture, forestry, and rangeland sectors of our economy.”
June 25, 2019
The post Wicker, Peters Urge FAA to Include Rural Rep. on UAS Advisory Committee appeared first on Inside Towers.