The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Monday activated its new web-based registration system for small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) that will be flown outdoors by people for hobby or recreation.
Owners of small UAS—which are defined as weighing more than 0.55-pounds and less than 55 pounds—must register their aircraft before the first flight. The $5 registration fee is waived for the first 30 days to encourage speedy compliance, the FAA said.
Registrants will receive a personal registration number that must be applied to each UAS that they own. Registrants will also be provided with a certificate containing their name, registration number, and dates of issuance and expiration for proof of registration.
Registrations must be renewed every three years.
The registration process, a first, comes amid heightened demand for the drones, which can be equipped with cameras to provide users a birds-eye view of the areas where the aircraft are flying. The proliferation of the UAS has also raised concerns over privacy and security.
In November, Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.), the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, wrote Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson about his department’s efforts to address potential security threats posed by the drones (Defense Daily, Nov. 18).
The two senators stated that the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence office has noted more than 500 drone encounters as sensitive sites in the United States the past here years while the FAA is aware of about 700 instances of the aircraft interfering with planes or airport operations.
The opening week of the online registration did have one hiccup. Late Wednesday night the FAA suspended online registration for the small UAS to complete a second round of planned site maintenance in advance of an expected rush of customers on Christmas Day, the agency said late Wednesday. The site returned to service early Thursday morning.
As of the close of business on Tuesday, the FAA said more than 45,000 registrations had been completed.
The FAA contractor for its registration site maintenance is CSRA [CSRA], which was recently spun out of CSC [CSC] and nearly simultaneously acquired the formal SRA International.