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UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS 

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JANUARY 21, 2015 

Serial No. 114–1 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

RANDY K. WEBER, Texas 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan 

STEVE KNIGHT, California 

BRIAN BABIN, Texas 

BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington 

GARY PALMER, Alabama 

BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC A. VEASEY, TEXAS 

KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts 

DON S. BEYER, JR., Virginia 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

PAUL TONKO, New York 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

January 21, 2015 

Page 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2 

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3 

Opening Statements 

Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee on 

Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ..................... 10 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 11 

Statement by Representative Suzanne Bonamici, Acting Ranking Member, 

Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ....................................................................................................................... 12

Witnesses: 

Dr. Ed Waggoner, Director, Integrated Systems Research Program, Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, NASA 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 14 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 16 

Mr. James Williams, Manager, UAS Integration Office, Aviation Safety Organization, FAA 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 28 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 30 

Dr. John Lauber, Co-Chair, Committee on Autonomy Research for Civil Aviation, National Research Council 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 43 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 45 

Mr. Brian Wynne, CEO and President, Association for Unmanned Vehicle 

Systems International (AUVSI) 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 64 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 66 

Mr. Colin Guinn, CRO, 3D Robotics, Small UAV Coalition Member 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 72 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 74 

Dr. John R. Hansman, T. Wilson Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 77 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 79 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 86 

Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions 

Dr. Ed Waggoner, Director, Integrated Systems Research Program, Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, NASA ................................................... 110 

Mr. James Williams, Manager, UAS Integration Office, Aviation Safety Organization, FAA ........................................................................................................ 132 

Dr. John Lauber, Co-Chair, Committee on Autonomy Research for Civil Aviation, National Research Council ......................................................................... 159 
Page

IV 

Mr. Brian Wynne, CEO and President, Association for Unmanned Vehicle 

Systems International (AUVSI) .......................................................................... 171 

Mr. Colin Guinn, CRO, 3D Robotics, Small UAV Coalition Member .................. 182 

Dr. John R. Hansman, T. Wilson Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ................................................... 190 

Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record 

Prepared statement submitted by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, 

Ranking Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. 

House of Representatives .................................................................................... 200 

Prepared statement submitted by Representative Donna F. Edwards, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives .... 201 

Letters submitted by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee 

on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ................ 202 

Letter submitted by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking Member, 

Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ....................................................................................................................... 206 
(1) 

UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS 

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT 

TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2015 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, 

Washington, D.C. 

The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 2:35 p.m., in Room 2318 

of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Lamar Smith [Chairman of the Committee] presiding. 
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Chairman SMITH. The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology will come to order. Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recesses of the Committee at any time. 

Before we go forward, I want to mention that at the Ranking Minority Member’s request, we postponed the Science Committee’s organizational meeting until next Tuesday at 11:00 a.m., and I ask 

unanimous consent to proceed with today’s full Committee hearing 

under the Rules of the House, and without objection, so ordered. 

In other words, it is a little bit unusual for us to have a hearing 

before we have organized, but at the ranking member’s request, we 

are going to postpone that organizational hearing. 

Welcome to today’s hearing titled ‘‘Unmanned Aircraft Systems 

Research and Development.’’ In front of you are packets containing 

the written testimony, biography, and Truth in Testimony disclosures for today’s witnesses. I will recognize myself for an opening 

statement and then recognize the ranking member as well. 

Today’s hearing will examine research and development of unmanned aircraft systems, also known as UAS. The hearing will also 

provide an overview of how UAS research, development and flight 

tests enable the integration of UAS into the National Airspace System. I am going to use the term ‘‘drone,’’ since that is how most 

people refer to them. However, the term ‘‘unmanned aircraft systems’’ is a more complete and accurate term. 

As the name suggests, UAS are complex systems made up of not 

only of the aircraft but also the supporting ground, air, and communications infrastructure. Drones come in a variety of shapes and 

sizes and can carry out a wide range of missions. In the past ten 

years, the public has become familiar with military drones. Less 

discussed are civilian and nonmilitary drones that have the ability 

to transform our everyday lives. Commercial drones have the potential to carry out a wide range of tasks across a broad range of 

sectors, including agriculture, weather, energy, and disaster relief. 

The Teal Group, an aerospace and defense industry market intelligence firm, predicts America will spend over $11 billion on UAS 

research, development, testing, evaluation and procurement over 

the next decade. Total worldwide spending for the same period is 

projected to be $91 billion. 

In 2013, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International estimated that in the next ten years, over 100,000 U.S. 

jobs could be created as a result of UAS integration into the National Airspace System. The report also notes that continued delays 

in integrating drones in the National Airspace System could cost 

the United States more than $10 billion per year, or $27 million 

per day, in potential earnings from investment in drones research 

and development. 

In June 2014, the Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General released an audit report that criticized the FAA for 

being slow to integrate drones into the National Airspace System. 

The audit concluded it is unlikely that integration would be completed by the September 2015 deadline. 

The FAA and NASA are working together to ensure safe and successful integration of drones in the National Airspace System. 

Some of the research being done seeks to ensure that drones have 
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the technologies necessary to avoid mid-air collisions and the ability to be controlled from a central location. 

Drones can greatly benefit our society. Farmers can use small 

drones to monitor their crops. Emergency responders could move 

quickly to access disaster areas to search for survivors. Energy 

companies could examine power lines and pipelines to assess damage or prevent leaks. 

UAS experimentation and testing at high schools and universities might lead to technology breakthroughs as well as inspire 

students to enter STEM fields. However, due to the delays in integrating UAS into the National Airspace System, the public is not 

yet allowed to use drones to do many of these things. 

Many other countries have developed a regulatory framework 

supportive of drone use for such activities. Consequently, some 

U.S.-based companies have moved research, development, testing 

and high-paying jobs offshore. 

Our goal today is to better understand the research underway to 

overcome these barriers. We are particularly interested in hearing 

how government-funded and private sector UAS research and development informs, or should inform, the integration of UAS into 

the National Airspace System. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LAMAR S. SMITH

Good afternoon and welcome to the Committee’s first hearing of the 114th Congress. Today’s hearing will examine research and development of unmanned aircraft 

systems, also known as UAS. The hearing will also provide an overview of how UAS 

research, development and flight tests enable the integration of UAS into the National Airspace System. 

I’m going to use the term ‘‘drone,’’ since that is how most people refer to them. 

However, the term unmanned aircraft systems is a more complete and accurate 

term. As the name suggests, UAS are complex systems made up of not only the aircraft, but also the supporting ground, air, and communications infrastructure. 

Drones come in a variety of shapes and sizes and can carry out a wide range of 

missions. In the past 10 years, the public has become familiar with military drones. 

Less discussed are civilian and nonmilitary drones that have the ability to transform our everyday lives. Commercial drones have the potential to carry out a wide 

range of tasks across a broad range of sectors, including agriculture, weather, energy and disaster relief. 

The Teal Group, an aerospace and defense industry market intelligence firm, pre- dicts America will spend over $11 billion dollars on UAS research, development, 

testing, evaluation and procurement over the next decade. Total worldwide spending 

for the same period is projected to be $91 billion. 

In 2013, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International estimated 

that in the next ten years over 100,000 U.S. jobs could be created as a result of 

UAS integration into the National Airspace System. The report also notes that continued delays in integrating drones in the National Airspace System could cost the 

U.S. more than $10 billion per year, or $27.6 million per day, in potential earnings 

from investment in drones’ R&D. 

In June 2014, the Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General released an audit report that criticized the FAA for being slow to integrate drones into 

the National Airspace System. The audit concluded it’s unlikely that integration 

would be completed by the September 2015 deadline. 

The FAA and NASA are working together to ensure safe and successful integration of drones in the National Airspace System. Some of the research being done 

seeks to ensure that drones have the technologies necessary to avoid midair collisions and the ability to be controlled from a central location. 

Drones can greatly benefit our society. Farmers can use small drones to monitor 

their crops. Emergency responders could more quickly access disaster areas to 

search for survivors. Energy companies could examine power lines and pipelines to 

assess damage or prevent leaks. 
12 

UAS experimentation and testing at high schools and universities might lead to 

technology breakthroughs as well as inspire students to enter STEM fields. However, due to the delays in integrating UAS into the National Airspace System, the 

public is not yet allowed to use drones to do any of these things. 

Many other countries have developed a regulatory framework supportive of drone 

use for such activities. Consequently, some U.S.-based companies have moved research, development, testing and high paying jobs offshore. 

Our goal today is to better understand the research underway to overcome these 

barriers. We are particularly interested in hearing how government-funded and private sector UAS research and development informs, or should inform, the integration of UAS into the National Airspace System. 

Chairman SMITH. That concludes my opening statement, but I 

want to mention before recognizing the Ranking Member that we 

are going to have a demonstration in a minute that to my knowledge will be the first such demonstration in this Committee room, 

and by the way, we had to get permission to fly a drone in the 

Committee room as well, so the rules are still pretty strict, but I 

appreciate the widespread interest in the particular subject. 

By the way, hardly a week goes by where the subject of drones 

is not covered in some national publication or on the front of the 

local newspaper or leads the news, so this is a timely subject for 

lots and lots of reasons. 

Also, without objection, I have a letter I would like to put into 

the record from the National Association of Realtors supporting 

what we are doing here today and supporting the integration as 

well. 

[The information appears in Appendix II] 

Chairman SMITH. With that, I will recognize the Ranking Member, Ms. Bonamici, the gentlewoman from Washington, for her comments. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I join you 

in welcoming our distinguished panel of witnesses, and I look forward to your testimony. 

I want to state that Ranking Member Johnson is currently detained at another committee and will join us shortly, as well as 

some of our other Members are currently in other Committees. The 

lack of other Members other than Representative Lofgren on this 

side does not indicate a lack of interest in the issue certainly. 

And in the meantime, I want to start by thanking Chairman 

Smith for calling this hearing on unmanned aircraft systems research and development. 

Because of the work in my home State of Oregon—it is close to 

Washington, Mr. Chairman—— 

Chairman SMITH. I am sorry. I was only one state off. 

Ms. BONAMICI. I do want to make that clear because my home 

State of Oregon, I am particularly interested in hearing how we 

can provide universities with the flexibility they need for performing UAS testing in a safe and cost-effective manner, and private sector developers with the regulatory certainty necessary to 

support this growing industry. 

So we, Oregon—that is why I needed to make this clear because 

we are a participant in the Pan-Pacific UAS Test Range Complex 

led by the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, and we have three test 

sites in Oregon. 

The potential benefits of UAS technology to agriculture, environmental research, natural resource management and, I want to add 
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that the Chairman acknowledged some of those—emergency disaster relief efforts—is really multiplied by expanding the workforce 

focused on the development of new products, which is creating, of 

course, new job opportunities throughout not only Oregon but in 

other test areas as well. 

So I do look forward to hearing how we in Congress and across 

the Federal Government can help safely and responsibly support 

the development of this exciting industry with so much potential. 

And I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back the balance of 

my time. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Bonamici. 

And I will now introduce our witnesses today. Our first witness 

is Dr. Ed Waggoner. Dr. Waggoner is the Research Director of 

NASA’s Integrated Systems Research Program’s Office, which 

seeks to integrate NextGen technologies into vehicle and operational systems. In this capacity, Dr. Waggoner also oversees UAS 

integration into the National Airspace System. Dr. Waggoner has 

worked for NASA since 1982, where he began as a researcher in 

theoretical aerodynamics. We welcome you. 

Our second witness today is Mr. Jim Williams. Mr. Williams is 

Manager of FAA’s UAS Integration Office. As such, he is responsible for coordinating FAA’s efforts to integrate UAS into the National Airspace System through rulemaking, standardization, and 

research and development. Before working on UAS, Mr. Williams 

served as the Director of FAA’s Engineering Services and as the 

Director of the Air Traffic Control Communications Services Directorate. Mr. Williams received his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering. 

Our third witness today is Dr. John Lauber. Dr. Lauber was a 

Co-chair on the National Research Council’s Committee on Autonomy Research for Civil Aviation. Dr. Lauber is now a private consultant, and he has previously served as Airbus’s Senior Vice President of Product Safety. He has also served as a member of the National Transportation Safety Board. Dr. Lauber received his Ph.D. 

in neuropsychology from The Ohio State University. 

Today’s fourth witness is Mr. Brian Wynne, CEO and President 

of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. 

Mr. Wynne formerly served as the President of the Electric Drive 

Transportation Association, CEO of the Association for Automatic 

Identification and Mobility, and held a leadership role at the Intelligent Transportation Society of America. Mr. Wynne received a 

bachelor’s degree from the University of Scranton, a master’s degree from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns 

Hopkins University, and was a Fulbright Scholar at the University 

of Cologne in Germany. 

Testifying fifth today will be Mr. Colin Guinn, Chief Revenue Officer of 3D Robotics, North America’s largest personal drone company. Mr. Guinn is the Co-founder and former CEO of DJI North 

America and has been featured on 60 Minutes, Fox, and in Tech 

Crunch. Before working at 3D Robotics and DJI, Mr. Guinn founded a company that specialized in producing aerial photography, 

marketing materials for luxury home builders. Mr. Guinn received 

his bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas in Austin and 

attended the University of Miami School of Business. 
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Our final witness is Dr. John Hansman, the T. Wilson Professor 

of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, where he leads the Humans and Automation Division and serves as Director of the MIT 

International Center for Air Transportation. Dr. Hansman is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and 

has received several awards including the 1997 FAA Excellence in 

Aviation Award, the 1994 Losey Atmospheric Award, the 1990 

OSTIV, which is International Scientific and Technical Soaring 

Organisation Diploma for Technical Contributions, and the 1986 

AIAA Award for best paper in thermophysics. Dr. Hansman received his Ph.D. from MIT. 

Now, we thank the witnesses again for being here today, and Dr. 

Waggoner, we will begin with you. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. ED WAGGONER, DIRECTOR, 

INTEGRATED SYSTEMS RESEARCH PROGRAM, 

AERONAUTICS RESEARCH MISSION DIRECTORATE, NASA 

Dr. WAGGONER. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bonamici 

and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to 

testify on NASA’s Aeronautics Research program and the R&D 

challenges associated with unmanned aircraft systems, or UASs, 

and autonomy. 

NASA’s aeronautics strategic thrust in Assured Autonomy defines our vision and approach for supporting the near-term integration of UAS into the National Airspace System, the NAS. This 

near-term research builds a foundation for the more extensive, 

transformative changes that autonomous systems will bring in the 

mid to the far term. 

UAS and autonomous systems hold great promise for the transformation of our aviation system. We are witnessing the dawn of 

a new era in aviation innovation, ushering in flying vehicles and 

operations that are unimaginable today, opening up entirely new 

commercial markets, much the way that jet engines did 60 years 

ago. 

NASA is performing research in transitioning our concepts, technologies, algorithms and knowledge to the FAA and other stakeholders to help them define the requirements, the regulations and 

standards for safe, routine NAS access. 

Still, there are significant barriers and research challenges associated with the introduction of autonomous systems into our aviation system. This requires these complex systems to be comprehensively evaluated to verify and validate that they are operating as 

designed, thus allowing the FAA to establish operations and equipment standards. 

The majority of NASA’s near-term research work towards safe 

UAS integration is focused in three areas. In our sense-and-avoid 

research, we are helping to determine performance requirements 

for a certifiable sense-and-avoid system to ensure safe separation 

of UAS with all vehicles operating in the NAS. We are developing 

secure, robust, reliable communications systems and protocols as 

well as addressing the design of ground control stations and displays to maximize pilot effectiveness and safety. 

To transfer our research findings, NASA has built effective partnerships with key customers: the FAA, the Department of Defense, 
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Department of Homeland Security, RTCA Special Committee 228, 

as well as industry and academia. In these partnerships, NASA is 

playing a key role supporting critical activities from the executive 

level to our subject-matter experts. 

For midterm applications, NASA is researching novel concepts 

and technologies to facilitate safe operation of UAS at altitudes 

that are not actively controlled today, for example, low-altitude operation of small, unmanned aircraft. Initial investigations into this 

trade space have drawn interest among a broad range of traditional 

and non-traditional aerospace companies and shows promise of 

opening up entirely new markets and operational models. 

In order to safely enable widespread civilian UAS operations at 

lower altitudes, NASA is developing an air traffic management-like 

system called UAS Traffic Management. You can think of this as 

much like today’s surface traffic management where vehicles operate under a rule-based system of roads, lanes, signs and traffic 

lights. 

The growing UAS industry and the varied user base is a harbinger of potential changes that autonomous systems will bring to 

aviation but enabling these changes will require substantial research and experimentation to ensure the safety and efficacy of 

these systems. NASA’s long-term research in autonomy will deliver 

technologies that demonstrate high payoff, integrated applications 

that advance the safety, efficiency and flexibility of the NAS and 

increase competitiveness of the U.S. civil aviation industry. 

NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate is a national 

resource that through game-changing research advances enables a 

growing, sustainable and transformative aviation system. NASA is 

partnering with other government agencies, standards development 

organizations and industry to achieve routine UAS access into our 

National Airspace System. Our partnerships are built on clear roles 

and responsibilities, long and productive working relationships, 

and close and continuous collaboration and coordination for the 

specific needs of the UAS integration challenge. 

As the challenges of UAS operations evolve and the broader implications of integration develop, NASA aeronautics will continue to 

advance the research and develop enabling technologies that will 

assure the safe realization of the transformative benefits of these 

systems. 

Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bonamici and members of 

the Committee, this concludes my prepared statement. I will be 

pleased to answer any questions at this time. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Waggoner follows:] 
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Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Dr. Waggoner. 

Mr. Williams. 

TESTIMONY OF MR. JAMES WILLIAMS, MANAGER, 

UAS INTEGRATION OFFICE, 

AVIATION SAFETY ORGANIZATION, FAA 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bonamici, 

Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss unmanned aircraft systems, commonly referred to as UAS. 

The Federal Aviation Administration has successfully integrated 

new technology into the National Airspace System for more than 

50 years, while maintaining the safest aviation system in the 

world. Research and development is absolutely critical to the safe, 

efficient and timely integration of new technology like UAS. 

Interagency partnerships with the Department of Defense, the 

Department of Commerce, the Department of Homeland Security, 

and NASA have allowed us to leverage our collective assets to advance research and development in the area of unmanned aircraft. 

Together with RTCA, a Federal advisory committee, the FAA is developing standards for command-and-control radios to detect and 

avoid systems. The FAA, DOD and NASA are working closely together to develop a technical standard for UAS detect and avoid 

systems that will allow UAS to remain well clear of other aircraft. 

The research, engineering and development contributions of the 

DOD and NASA have been essential to developing that standard. 

Together with NASA and our industry partners, the FAA is developing standards for command-and-control radios. These radios 

provide the link between the pilot and the aircraft, and it is essential that they be secure and reliable. NASA and our industry partners are designing and building prototype radios to validate the 

standard. The FAA plans to use the NASA software to test the 

ability of those radios to function on a small UAS with size, weight, 

and power limitation. 

The FAA is also actively supporting the research and development efforts undertaken by other government entities in the area 

of unmanned aircraft. Since 2012, the FAA has participated in the 

DOD joint test and evaluation effort for UAS airspace integration 

sponsored by NORAD NORTHCOM and the Army. The purpose of 

the test is to evaluate standardized procedures to effectively conduct manned and UAS operations in the airport environment. The 

FAA provided engineers, en route controllers, and laboratory assets 

at the William J. Hughes Technical Center to support DOD’s 

Human-in-the-loop simulations. We are also supporting this effort 

by evaluating the joint test results for potential applicability at 

civil airports. We look forward to continuing these valuable partnerships and working together with industry and other government 

agencies to advance UAS research and development. 

The FAA Technical Center is the Nation’s premier air transportation system laboratory. It has a specialized UAS simulation laboratory for conducting integrated simulations through research and 

development UAS integration procedures and standards. The UAS 

lab has a variety of test assets including the ability to link FAA 

air traffic control systems with high-fidelity unmanned aircraft 
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simulators provided by our industry partners through cooperative 

research and development agreements. 

The Technical Center is also playing an important role in data 

collection from the six UAS test sites that were announced in 2013. 

A significant portion of the test site data analysis is being performed at the Technical Center. A data lead from the Technical 

Center regional representatives and research engineers are also 

visiting each UAS test site to evaluate how data is captured and 

maintained. This team will ensure the integrity of the data transferred to the FAA and determine whether additional data collection 

will facilitate meeting the FAA’s research objectives. We continue 

to work with the test sites to obtain the most valuable information 

possible to help the FAA integrate UAS into the NAS. 

We are tremendously grateful for the support and funding Congress has provided to establish a UAS Center of Excellence. Our 

goal is to create a cost-sharing relationship between academia, industry and government that will focus on research areas of primary 

interest to the FAA and the UAS community. 

The Center of Excellence will perform short- and long-term basic 

and applied research through analysis, development, and prototyping activities. To that end, the FAA solicited proposals from accredited institutions of higher education with their partners and affiliates. We are currently in the process of reviewing proposals and 

will announce the award recipient within this fiscal year. 

Together with Congress, we remain committed to the safe, efficient and timely integration of UAS technology into the national 

airspace. We look forward to continuing to work with our partners 

in government and industry to continue making steady progress toward that goal. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony for today, and I look 

forward to answering your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Williams follows:] 
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Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Williams. 

Dr. Lauber. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. JOHN LAUBER, CO-CHAIR, 

COMMITTEE ON AUTONOMY RESEARCH FOR CIVIL AVIATION, 

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL 

Dr. LAUBER. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member 

Bonamici and Members of the Committee. Thanks for the opportunity to discuss with you today the work of the National Research 

Council’s Committee on Autonomy Research for Civil Aviation, 

which I had the pleasure of co-chairing along with John Paul Clark 

from Georgia Institute of Technology. 

Our final report was issued last summer after about 18 months 

of effort and was done at the request of NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. We were specifically charged with developing a national agenda for research and development that 

would support the introduction of what we call increasingly autonomous elements into our civil aviation system. Copies of the summary of our report have been provided to you. 

We recognized that several key characteristics of the civil aviation system set the context for our study, and first and foremost 

is safety. Our air transportation system operates at unprecedented 

levels of safety, and it is clear that the introduction of increasingly 

autonomous capabilities into that system will be acceptable only if 

they preserve or further enhance this high level of safety and reliability. 

Secondly, we had to recognize the diversity of aircraft, ground 

systems and personnel that comprise our civil aviation system. Because so-called legacy aircraft and systems will continue to operate 

for the foreseeable future., it is clear that civil airspace must safety 

and efficiently accommodate everything from Piper Cubs designed 

in the 1930s to increasingly autonomous unmanned rotary and 

fixed-wing vehicles whose design and applications are continually 

evolving. 

Today’s aviation system sets the baseline for the system of tomorrow, and in this context, autonomy is a characteristic or feature 

of future aviation automation systems that enable operations over 

extended periods of time without direct human supervision or 

intervention. This has some profound implications for urgent research and development in machine vision, perception and cognition to provide the functional equivalent of a see-and-avoid capability, which is a cornerstone for collision avoidance in our national 

aviation system, and this is but one example of what we mean 

when we talk of increasingly autonomous systems, systems that 

will evolve to perform more and more of the functions presently 

provided by human pilots, controllers and other skilled aviation 

personnel. 

Our report identifies eight technical barriers including such 

issues as cyber physical security, and we have also identified four 

barriers associated with regulation and certification, which include 

issues such as airspace access, and finally, we note in our report 

barriers related to public policy, law and regulation, and very importantly, social concerns about privacy and safety of autonomous 

systems. 
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Our recommended research agenda consists of eight broad tasks, 

which we consider the first four to be the most urgent and most 

difficult. These include fundamental issues about how to characterize the behavior of systems that change dynamically over time. 

Modeling and simulation will be of fundamental importance to the 

development and deployment of these systems, and finally, we discuss a wide range of research issues involving validation, 

verification and certification. 

The remaining four research areas include issues having to do 

with the safe use of open-source hardware and software and reexamination and redefinition of the role of humans in the operation 

of these systems. We note in our report that this research program 

is best carried out by multiple government, academic and industrial entities and will require effective coordination at all levels. 

Civil aviation is on the threshold of profound changes because of 

rapid evolution of increasingly autonomous systems. As often happens with rapidly evolving technology, early adapters sometimes 

get caught up in the excitement of the moment, greatly exaggerating the promise of things to come and greatly underestimating 

costs in terms of money, time, and in some cases, unintended consequences or complications. While there is little doubt that over the 

long run the potential benefits of increasingly autonomous systems 

in civil aviation will indeed be great, there should be equally little 

doubt that getting there while maintaining the safety and efficiency of U.S. civil aviation will be no easy matter. 

We believe that the barriers in the research program we have 

identified is a vital next step, and that concludes my testimony. I 

will be happy to respond to questions. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Lauber follows:] 
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Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Dr. Lauber, and Mr. Wynne. 

TESTIMONY OF MR. BRIAN WYNNE, 

CEO AND PRESIDENT, 

ASSOCIATION FOR UNMANNED VEHICLE 

SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL (AUVSI) 

Mr. WYNNE. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bonamici, and 

Members of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to address the importance of UAS research and development. I am 

speaking on behalf of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, the world’s largest nonprofit organization devoted exclusively to advancing the unmanned systems and robotics 

community. 

AUVSI has been the voice of unmanned systems for more than 

40 years and currently we have more than 7,500 members, including over 600 corporate members. As you know, UAS increase 

human potential allowing us to execute dangerous or difficult tasks 

safely and efficiently. Whether it is assisting first responders with 

search-and-rescue missions, advancing scientific research, or helping farmers more efficiently spray their crops, UAS are capable of 

saving time, money, and most importantly, lives. 

However, the benefits of this technology do not stop there. It has 

incredible potential to create jobs and stimulate the U.S. economy 

as well. In 2013, AUVSI released an economic impact study which 

found that within the first ten years following UAS integration, the 

UAS industry will create more than 100,000 new jobs and have an 

economic impact of more than $82 billion. 

The benefits I just outlined can be recognized immediately once 

we put the necessary rules in place to enable commercial operations. We understand that a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for 

small UAS from the Federal Aviation Administration is now expected any day. It cannot come soon enough. 

Establishing rules will also eliminate the current approach of 

regulating by exemption whereby the FAA issues exemptions on a 

case-by-case basis for some commercial UAS operations under Section 333 of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012. 

While we are here today to discuss the critical role of UAS research and development, the fact is, we don’t need a lot of additional research to permit low altitude, line-of-sight operations. A 

variety of commercial applications can be safely authorized right 

away, and we look forward to working with the FAA to get this 

done as expeditiously as possible. 

As we look forward—as we look beyond the initial phase of UAS 

integration, we will need robust research to further expand access 

to the airspace and address some of the challenges that exist to flying beyond line of sight. Areas requiring more research include 

sense and avoid, command and control, and autonomous operations. 

The advancement of UAS technology needs to be a collaborative 

effort between industry and government. While the industry is investing millions in research and the Federal Government has various research projects underway, we can all do this better and in 

a more coordinated fashion. The challenges we jointly face call for 

a national leadership initiative that places UAS integration into 
65 

the National Airspace System and all relevant R&D at the top of 

our country’s priority list. Importantly, the benefits of this research 

extend well beyond UAS. It will make the entire National Airspace 

System safer for all aircraft, manned and unmanned. 

A deeper national commitment to UAS R&D has three main components. First, the industry and its government partners need a 

holistic research plan that coordinates all UAS research. While the 

FAA designated test sites went operational in 2014, too many questions about the collection, sharing, and analysis of test data remain 

unanswered. 

Second, the federal government needs more resources to coordi- nate UAS research. The FAA was given $14.9 million to support its 

UAS research this year, which is up from previous years. However, 

given the scope of the research needed to advance UAS integration, 

we feel this figure is insufficient. 

Third, the government must have a transparent intellectual 

property protections—provide transparent intellectual property protections. Companies on the cutting edge of UAS innovations won’t 

participate in FAA or other governmental research activities if 

their intellectual property isn’t safeguarded. The FAA has taken 

significant steps to advance the UAS integration but much work remains to be done. 

AUVSI members stand ready to collaborate with the appropriate 

government agencies to accelerate the needed R&D efforts that will 

allow for the safe integration of UAS into the national air space 

system. 

Thank you again for this opportunity and I look forward to questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wynne follows:] 
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Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Wynne. 

Let me say to Members, we have had a series of votes just called. 

We are going to try to finish our witness testimony before we go 

vote and then we will resume the hearing immediately after the 

last vote. 

So we will go now to Mr. Guinn, who I think has the most fun 

job of the day, and you are recognized for your testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF MR. COLIN GUINN, 

CRO, 3D ROBOTICS, SMALL UAV COALITION MEMBER 

Mr. GUINN. Thank you very much, Chairman Smith and Ranking 

Member Bonamici. Thank you, Committee, here for having me. It 

is an honor to come speak to you guys about something that I am 

very passionate about. 

And I think what I would like to do is just talk to you guys about 

kind of the stalemate that we are in today between, you know, no 

one is going to disagree to the benefits that UAS can provide to the 

economic, the efficiencies in business, the job creation, the revenue 

that can come into our country, and then at the same time, nobody 

is going to argue with the fact that we must be extremely thoughtful, considerate, and careful in integrating these systems into the 

national airspace because obviously the FAA has a second-to-none 

safety record and there is no question that we must maintain that. 

So I guess for me today I would like to just talk a little bit about 

where can we start, what can we do now that allows us to bridge 

that gap between the chicken and the egg. So, you know, we have 

the FAA test sites, which are great, but at the same time it is a 

little bit of testing in a bubble. And to ask research and development companies to rapidly iterate their technology and have to 

every couple months figure out a time where they can get into a 

test site, travel with their entire engineering team, you know, did 

they accidentally leave the spectrum analyzer at the lab, now 

someone has to fly home to get that. You know, so it is—it doesn’t 

allow for very rapid innovation, which is obviously not going to let 

us keep up with the other countries in this world that are absolutely reaping the rewards and the benefits of this technology. 

Additionally, we must have—we must—testing in test sites is not 

necessarily going to give us the necessary data and the logged 

flight hours to figure out what the hurdles are, what the roadblocks 

are to safely integrating these systems into the NAS, and so I 

think what can be done in the meantime, and as you will see 

here—this is something I am going to talk about today—when it 

comes to very small systems, this is the Parrot Bebop, which 

weighs just over a pound and is actually an incredibly advanced 

UAV or drone. 

And so what I wanted to talk about is I think we can start somewhere and instead of having to regulate and integrate 20-, 30-, and 

40-pound systems or 50-pound systems into our national airspace 

all at one time, what I would at least bring to discussion is a possibility of taking very small lightweight systems, as many other 

countries in the world have done. You know, there is somewhat of 

a precedence around sub-2 kilogram systems because they carry 

the least amount of kinetic energy, they have the least risk-based 
73 

approach that—the least chance of causing any harm, and so—all 

right. We all saw a drone fly. Fantastic. Incredible. 

Chairman SMITH. I was hoping you would fly it over the whole 

room, not just in one location. 

Mr. GUINN. Well, you said no haircuts. We could have—— 

Chairman SMITH. I said no haircuts earlier but I—he could have 

done it—— 

Mr. GUINN. We could have arranged that. No—I—so the point 

that I want to make today is that if we start somewhere, as many 

other countries have, with the smallest, lightest weight systems, 

we are basically using a proportional and risk-based system for 

regulation so that by integrating today or as soon as possible for 

commercial use small, sub-2 kilogram systems, we can now start 

gathering thousands of hours of flight time figuring out what are 

the issues when you are actually using these things in the national 

airspace, not just these FAA test sites. And I think that is something that could potentially bridge our gap while we are figuring 

out, okay, now how do we integrate the next heavier class? Great, 

we learned a lot from these little tiny ones—— 

Chairman SMITH. Um-hum. 

Mr. GUINN. —and while we are learning a lot from the little tiny 

ones, we are capturing the vast majority of the economic benefit of 

commercial UAVs that can do power line inspection, that can have 

geo-fences set up, they can return to their home location and land 

themselves. They log every parameter of the flight in real time. 

These small systems can be saving wildfire firefighters’ lives, they 

can be saving the lives of people that are flying full-scale helicopters over power lines simply to take pictures of the power lines. 

They can be used for a myriad of situations where they can save 

human lives. 

So that is all I wanted to say today is that, you know, maybe we 

can start somewhere, integrate the lightweight systems, use that 

for data collection so that we can see what happens in the real 

world, and also satisfy some of that economic benefit that all those 

other countries are experiencing right now. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Guinn follows:] 
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Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Guinn. Good suggestions. 

Dr. Hansman. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. JOHN R. HANSMAN, 

T. WILSON PROFESSOR OF 

AERONAUTICS AND ASTRONAUTICS, 

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT) 

Dr. HANSMAN. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bonamici, 

Members of the Committee, thanks for the opportunity to be here 

today. 

As you can see—it is sort of hard to follow the demo, but as you 

can see, UAVs are actually one of the most exciting areas in aerospace and particularly aeronautics today. You know, the same technologies that we use to enable these cell phones, the miniaturization of processing sensors, coupled with flight control algorithms, et 

cetera, enable incredible power in very—you can see in the stability 

of the vehicle high performance in very small packages. 

Today in my office back at MIT in the basement I have two 

teams of students building new UAV concepts, so it is a real exciting area. 

The thing to remember about UAV integration in the NAS is 

that there is a huge spectrum of UAV sizes ranging from a few 

grams up to, you know, hundreds of thousands of pounds. And it 

is important to note that one size isn’t going to fit all. We have to 

have different concepts of operation for integrating different types 

of UAVs into the NAS. 

I will break it into just four categories. We have the small UAS 

operating at low altitudes within line of sight of the operator. We 

actually know how to do that today. We have been doing it for 

years and we really just need to get going and get that enabled. 

That is what you have heard from some of this. But there are multiple other categories. You have high altitude UAVs, sort of the typical UAVs the military will want to operate. We also sort of know 

how to do that. We sort of developed operating rules. They are normally operating above where most of the manned airplanes are. It 

is not too tough a problem. 

The two more challenging areas are small UAVs that are being 

operated beyond the line of sight of the operator so you don’t have 

the visual feedback. You are going to rely more on algorithms. You 

are going to rely more on the technology. And the toughest area is 

actually UAVs whose missions require that they operate in the 

same airspace that manned airplanes need to operate. And frankly, 

we don’t have good what we call concepts of operations for either 

the small UAS beyond line of sight or the larger UAS operating in 

that airspace. 

There has been so much focus on the small UAS that we really 

haven’t done the research to enable the concepts of operation. And 

you need concepts of operation in order to guide the research, to 

develop the standards, to work out the rules, to figure out the 

human factors. You know, for example, if we have UAVs operating 

as IFR aircraft in the system today, how does the air traffic controller think about that UAV? How do they communicate with 

them? Do they call them—do they call the operator up on a 

landline? Is there some relay? What happens when there is a loss 
78 

of communication? How do they think about it? And it is actually 

a tough thing for the FAA because there are a lot of policy issues. 

For example, who do you give priority to? Do you give priority to 

the manned airplane or do you give the priority to the UAV airplane? While we would normally say give it to the manned airplane 

but what if the UAV airplane is doing a life-critical mission and 

the manned airplane is on a sightseeing tour? Who should have 

priority? So there are a lot of questions here. 

So most of my comments are in my prepared remarks but I 

would just say I think the takeaway is that we really need to develop the con ops and we are really behind the eight ball. We really 

haven’t been working the harder problems of the fully integrated 

UAS and some of these issues of the beyond line of sight. I would 

note that I am encouraged by, for example, the work that NASA 

has started on UTM concept, beyond line of sight, so they are starting to attack some of those problems. 

So thank you for the opportunity. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Hansman follows:] 
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Chairman SMITH. Okay. Dr. Hansman, thank you for those comments. 

The Committee is going to stand in recess until after the series 

of three votes, and when we return, we will go immediately to our 

questions. And sorry for the inconvenience. I hope we are back 

within about 30 minutes if you all want to take a break until then. 

[Recess.] 

Chairman SMITH. The Science Committee will reconvene and we 

will now begin our questions, and I will recognize myself for that 

purpose. 

Dr. Waggoner, Mr. Williams, let me direct my first question to 

you all, which is this: What is a realistic deadline for integrating 

the drones into the National Airspace System? I mentioned in my 

opening statement that it appears that the deadline has slipped 

but what can drone users and even the American people, the wider 

audience, what is a realistic deadline for that integration? Dr. 

Waggoner and then Mr. Williams. 

Dr. WAGGONER. So, Chairman, I would answer that right now we 

do have a level of integration, so as—for public aircraft they are 

flying every day. We are—you know, NASA does research but we 

are also users and we have unmanned aircraft. So for civil applications, we are working very closely with the FAA and RTCA 228 to 

verify and validate these key technology barriers, the sense-andavoid, the radio communications—— 

Chairman SMITH. Right. 

Dr. WAGGONER. —the displays for the ground control stations to 

allow the FAA to determine these minimum operational performance standards. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. And, Mr. Williams, when might we expect the FAA to propose some rules? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, the FAA is working closely with our administration partners in the rulemaking process, and we are doing everything we can to get that small unmanned aircraft rule out. But 

our main focus is to get it right. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. You know, we—the rulemaking process is deliberative—— 

Chairman SMITH. I understand. When do you think you might 

get that out? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. I at this point can’t give you a firm deadline. We 

are still working on the internal discussion—— 

Chairman SMITH. Do you have a goal in mind? I mean you have 

got a lot of people across the United States waiting and do you 

have any kind of working deadline or working goal? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Our goals are to get it out as quickly as we can 

as long as we get it out right—— 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. Is it likely to be this year or next year? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. I can’t speculate. My own personal hope is that 

we get it out as soon as possible, but, you know, it has got to go 

through the regulatory process that has been put in place by Congress and we are working our way through that. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. And I am going to pressure you one 

more time. You are slipping off my question here. How long does 

the regulatory process normally take in a situation like this? 
87 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, you have got to understand this is a very 

complex rulemaking. You are having—— 

Chairman SMITH. Never mind. Never mind. I can tell I am not 

going to get the answer that I was hoping for but we will take your 

word for expediting the process as much as we can. 

Dr. Lauber, you mentioned this in your testimony a while ago, 

but what technology is needed to be prioritized before the NAS integration? What are the—— 

Dr. LAUBER. Well, I refer to what we believe is probably the 

highest, and I think a couple of the other witnesses also mentioned 

the need for technology that provides the equivalent of see and 

avoid, the sense and avoid technology that needs to be in place for 

full integration of a wide range of these vehicles into the aviation 

system. That would be the highest that I would—— 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Wynne and Mr. Guinn, 

what is the private sector contributing to this integration process? 

We have the government on one side—maybe not on one side but 

as a part of the process, we have the private sector as part of the 

process as well, but—so what are the contributions of the private 

sector to the integration? 

Mr. WYNNE. My belief, Mr. Chairman, is that the industry is 

going to bring the lion’s share of the technology solutions, as it 

should. You know, companies like 3D Robotics will—at the end of 

the day they are constructing the devices, they are developing the 

software, and not just directly in the industry, the microprocessor 

speeds are getting faster, et cetera, et cetera. So this was really— 

the spirit of my testimony was industry should really be doing the 

lion’s share of this. We should be proving the concepts to the satisfaction of the regulators in this R&D process. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Wynne. Mr. Guinn, anything to add? 

Mr. GUINN. Yeah. So it—not—to give a specific example, of 

course these companies are, you know, integrating and innovating 

these advanced technologies such as sense-and-avoid and, you 

know, geo-fencing and return-to-home technology, but to give a specific example of what 3D Robotics is doing is if I fly my drone today 

outside, you can log into droneshare.com and watch my entire 

flight automatically. So if I am—if I choose—any of our members 

around the world choose to make their profile public, every single 

time you fly, that log file is uploaded auto-magically from your 

smart device into the cloud to droneshare.com and we are able to 

now collect tens if not hundreds of thousands of hours of data on 

what are the fringe cases, right? That is what we have to figure 

out. What are the fringe cases when you actually start integrating, 

you know, hundreds of thousands of these systems into airspace? 

Chairman SMITH. You mentioned the drone we saw a while ago 

in the room was a fairly sophisticated device. What did it cost? 

What is its range? What is its use? 

Mr. GUINN. So that is more of a hobby-grade drone. It is called 

the Bebop. It is incredibly advanced in that it has got a full high 

definition camera that displays on your smart device. You can either fly with a smart device or with a long-range controller. It has 

got barometric altimeters, it has got optical flow sensors to look at 

the ground and maintain positioning, it has got accelerometers, gy-
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roscopes, and a full computer that is a flight control system on 

board and it is $499. 

Chairman SMITH. And what is the range? 

Mr. GUINN. The range, depending on if you are using a 

smartphone, you are restricted to kind of, you know, Wi-Fi 

range—— 

Chairman SMITH. Yeah. 

Mr. GUINN. —but if you use their controller, you can get up to, 

you know, a kilometer of range with something like that. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. Okay. Thank you. 

Dr. Hansman, you mentioned during your testimony what your 

students are working on in the classroom and I just wondered if 

we can expect any kind of breakthroughs and some of you might 

give some examples of what they are working on as well, but you 

have obviously seen it from a hands-on approach. 

Dr. HANSMAN. So I will just give you a couple quick examples. 

One vehicle that our students prototyped two years ago is a small 

UAV that can do a one-hour surveillance mission, which is 

launched out of an antimissile flare canister on a military airplane, 

so it is a two inch by two and a half inch by seven inch package. 

It gets shot out at 300 Gs. This was a concept that nobody in the 

Air Force thought would work. The students actually demonstrated 

it. It is now a developmental program where the vehicles they developed are being launched out of F–16s right now at Edwards. 

Chairman SMITH. I hope that is not classified information. 

Dr. HANSMAN. No. 

Chairman SMITH. That is intriguing. 

Dr. HANSMAN. Yeah. 

Chairman SMITH. Well, thank you all for your answers and now 

I will recognize the gentlewoman from Oregon, Ms. Bonamici, for 

her questions. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank 

you to our very accomplished panel of witnesses. 

As you heard in the opening remarks I gave, Oregon does have 

three test sites through the Pan-Pacific UAS test range led by the 

University of Alaska Fairbanks. We talked a lot about the benefits 

of the technology. One of the concerns that I have heard from constituents in Oregon who are working in the developing industry is 

that there are still some problems with advancing the testing of 

their products, especially true for small companies that don’t have 

a solid revenue stream and the test range is—and I think Mr. 

Guinn suggested this—this test range is despite being set up to 

provide a space where the development can take place may be prohibitively expensive for small companies and prevent—there may 

be other logistical barriers. 

So, Mr. Guinn, could you expand just a little bit on how the FAA 

could work with the test ranges to best address these concerns? 

And then I want to allow time for a couple other questions. 

Mr. GUINN. Sure. So really quickly, right now there is not really 

a set understanding of how you even schedule a time to go to the 

range. You know, there is no way to log into the system and say 

when is the next available day? You know, it is not a matter of 

them being too busy because, quite frankly, there is not a whole 

lot of places—or companies using the test range. It is more a mat-
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ter of what is the process? And there is a lot of bureaucracy surrounding getting even the approval to go to a test range and test 

fly for a few days so you don’t know if that is going to be 30 days 

or 2 months. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Well—and I am going to ask Mr. Williams about 

that, too, but first I want to ask Mr. Wynne a question. 

Thanks for your association work and what you have been doing. 

I want to echo the comments already made by the Chairman and 

some of my colleagues about the concerns about the rulemaking, 

and I—somebody made a comment about the proposed—Notice of 

Proposed Rulemaking is expected so we are encouraged to hear 

that news. I actually sent a letter to Secretary Foxx joined by several colleagues who are concerned about the timeline. Of course we 

want this to be done right and we don’t want to jeopardize safety, 

but we are concerned about not only workforce development and 

those challenges of recruiting people into this industry if we don’t 

have the certainty, but also for these new companies attracting private investment. 

So, Mr. Wynne, have you noticed some particular challenges because of the lack of certainty in attracting venture capital to the 

industry? 

Mr. WYNNE. Oh, absolutely, ma’am, and I thank you for the 

question. There is—if I am investing money in a project like this, 

I want to know what the go-to-market strategy is, I want to know 

what the return on the investment is. If I don’t know when I can 

fly and when I can pursue some of the commercial opportunities 

that are out there, it is a big barrier. So there is I think already— 

the fact that there is money flowing in, there is tremendous product being developed, says that this is a great investment opportunity and a great business opportunity and a job creator, which 

is something we need to be paying attention to. And so while we 

want to get this right and we want to do it once, you know, for the 

various levels and we are on a certain trajectory here, we think 

that there are opportunities immediately that require very little 

regulation and some of our—some of the countries abroad have 

demonstrated this success. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you. And I know Mr. Guinn talked about 

that. 

So, Mr. Williams, you heard Mr. Guinn talk about some of the 

possible ways of moving forward. Of course it is not a one-size-fitsall because of the various sizes and capabilities and ranges, but I 

wanted to ask you first about the testing sites. Some companies 

have suggested maybe performing initial tests at a range where 

their safety can be demonstrated but then maybe performing additional tests closer to home. Could that outline potential changes— 

or could you talk about some potential changes that could allow 

some more flexibility, especially for the small developers? And then 

I also wanted you to respond to the concern about the small companies having access and being able to test. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. So, first, the small companies have access to our 

experimental airworthiness approval process, which goes back to 

the manned aircraft process. It is the same regulations that are applied. We are in the process of updating that to make it a little 
90 

more user-friendly for unmanned aircraft operators to get through 

that process. 

On the test site front, we have set up a program to enable all 

of the test sites, should they choose to do so, to have the authority 

to issue experimental airworthiness certificates on behalf of the 

FAA, thereby streamlining the process of getting a new aircraft 

into the testing phase at one of the test sites. So we think that is 

a significant benefit that the test sites can offer to the industry and 

we are—you know, we are constantly looking at ways to streamline 

our processes and work to enable these new companies to test their 

aircraft in a safe and by-the-rules way. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you. And I see my time is expired so I will 

submit my Section 333 exemption question for the record. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. Thanks, Ms. Bonamici. 

The gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Lucas, is recognized for 

questions. 

Mr. LUCAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I would direct my question I guess to Dr. Waggoner and Mr. 

Wynne and Mr. Guinn and Mr. Hansman. 

In recent years, agriculture has been one of the bright spots in 

our nation’s economy. Can you speak for a moment about the potential applications in agricultural settings and what benefits these 

might provide for both producers and consumers? Whoever? 

Dr. WAGGONER. Well, I could start. I have just a little bit of experience. And what we saw some high school students do this year 

who had the challenge of developing an unmanned aircraft to survey all—I think it was about a 100-square-mile farm, a large farm 

of corn for European corn borers. These kids, incredible kids from 

all over the country came up with a number of different solutions 

that they showed that there were viable solutions that were affordable, usable for the farmer, for precision agriculture where they 

could precisely locate where there were issues either with fertilizer 

or pesticides where they needed to be applied and could precisely 

do that. 

So we saw that as an opportunity that shows that it is—there 

is a market out there for that work. And that was—that is part of 

what is behind our more midterm work on this UAS traffic management. So allowing the farmer or a commercial operation to go 

into a farm and do that kind of surveillance operation at low altitudes very safely and in a way that would be very cost effective. 

Dr. HANSMAN. So ag applications are already ongoing in other 

parts of the world. In Japan, for example, where you have very 

small rice paddies, we are seeing applications there. It is considered one of the number one applications. There is significant interest on the part of agricultural departments to use these vehicles, 

and in fact they are frustrated by the rule like everybody else in 

that it is difficult for them to get exemptions to go off and do experiments. So it is one of the big opportunities spaces. 

Mr. GUINN. So if I can maybe provide a specific example of a way 

that even one of these very small lightweight systems can provide 

real benefit to the farmer. So we had one of the top private vineyards in Napa Valley contact us and say, hey, we have been hearing about these drones; what can we do with them? And, you know, 
91 

everyone talks about the super high-tech ability to do hyperspectral 

imagery and look for water damage and, you know, pesticide, but 

even if you just take it to the really simple level, most of these 

farmers have not ever seen a very high resolution look-down image 

of their vineyards. 

So we went out, we took one of our sub-2KG systems, flew 

around, took a lot of pictures looking down in the back of the truck 

at the farm, stitched those together into a photo mosaic which allowed him to see a very high resolution image of the crop. And for 

the generations that they have had that vineyard, he looked down 

and said, wow, look over here in the corner of the vineyard here 

where—see how this is actually a little darker green that this 

whole area? Because you can’t see that when you are walking the 

rows of the vineyard because when you are up close you don’t see 

that minute differences in the green. This must be the fact that 

there is a slight elevation change there, which is sucking more 

water down to that area. That means we need to harvest these 

grapes 2 to 3 weeks earlier than the rest of the vineyard. He then 

walked us out, took some grapes from that area, took some grapes 

from the rest of the vineyard, squished them in a bag, and you 

could clearly taste the difference between the two sets. And he 

said, before today, we never knew that existed. And that happened 

in two hours. 

Mr. WYNNE. Congressman, thank you for the question. The num- bers that AUVSI put together in 2013, the $82 billion in the first 

ten years after we get access to the National Airspace System, we 

think as high as 80 percent of that could be agriculture. 

Mr. LUCAS. Absolutely. Dr. Williams, I come from a State where 

the Chamber of Commerce likes for us to use the phrase ‘‘significant weather events’’ occur on a commonplace—in a common way, 

and my home State is making a lot of investments in weather-related research. And one of the things that I understand is a challenge is this requirement to obtain a Certificate of Authorization, 

COA, or a Section 333 exemption, which can be kind of challenging 

and cumbersome. What is the FFA—FAA doing to expedite the approval process for this kind of thing? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. We are actually working in both areas to approve 

the processing of the approvals. Most of the—understand that Section 333 approvals are for the aircraft. The COA process is for the 

airspace. In order to operate unmanned aircraft you can’t really 

comply with the see-and-avoid rule so we have to give you a waiver 

or authorization to do that. That is the COA process. That process 

is undergoing a revamp inside of the FAA. We are in the process 

of building new software to interact with the folks using it. We 

think that is going to be a major step forward. 

We have achieved tremendous amount of progress with our public partners in accelerating their approvals. We have reduced the 

amount of overhead for many of the frequent users like NASA. 

They have a much easier way forward. 

On the 333 side we are also working hard to streamline that 

process. We have put together a tiger team that is in the process 

of developing a streamlined and more efficient process to move 

those forward quicker. You have got to understand the exemption 

process was never intended as an approval mechanism. It was in-
92 

tended to deal with exceptions, special cases. So we are trying to 

have the—make that up as we go so to speak to figure out a way 

to accelerate it while still—it is a regulatory process so there are 

rules that have to be met as we go through it. So we are trying 

to find the right balance. 

Mr. LUCAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Lucas. 

The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Lipinski, is recognized for his 

questions. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding 

this hearing, something we are all very interested in and it is critical that we get a handle on this. We don’t want to—on the one 

hand, we want innovation to move forward and all the opportunities that are brought out for business purposes and others, other 

purposes from UAS, but we know that there is a lot of issues also 

that need to be dealt with. 

And so I wanted to ask Mr. Williams, and anyone else can jump 

in after Mr. Williams if they have anything to add, I want to talk 

about the concern about the number of UAS near-misses being reported. My district includes Midway Airport so it is especially important to me, also Lewis University Airport is in my district. So 

given the rapid increase in number of small UAS in use for both 

for hobby and commercial purposes, what is being done to better 

understand the risk of UAS collision and what is being done to 

track near misses? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. So we are in the process of building a tracking 

system modeled on the way we track the laser incidents that have 

been going on. We are also working hard on an education campaign 

to try to—we believe that most of the people that are flying these 

aircraft near airports just don’t understand the area they are flying 

in and of the rules about where they can and can’t fly. So we 

have—in partnership with the Small UAV Coalition; the Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles International, AUVSI; and the Academy 

of Model Aeronautics, we have a campaign ongoing called Know 

Before You Fly that we are working to find any means we can to 

educate the public about where they fly because, you know, primarily the FAA is interested in compliance with our rules, and we 

believe the best way to achieve that compliance is through education. So we are working hard to make that happen. 

On the research side—I am sorry, you had another question 

about the research? 

Mr. LIPINSKI. What is being better done to understand the risk 

of—— 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Right. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. —UAS collision? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Right. So we actually have started this year a research initiative to look into what the potential is for—or really to 

assess the risk of an unmanned aircraft to a manned aircraft, and 

that project is just getting off the ground this year and we are accelerating it thanks to the additional funding that Congress provided us in our research budget this year. We should be able to accelerate that and move it forward more rapidly than we had been 

able to. 
93 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Anything else that any witnesses think should be 

done—— 

Mr. WYNNE. I just wanted—— 

Mr. LIPINSKI. —that are not being done? 

Mr. WYNNE. I just wanted to emphasize that we thank the FAA 

for their help with this campaign to educate. I think in many instances it really is an education challenge today. Obviously commercial operations are not allowed at this stage until we get a rule, 

but the education campaign is really about keeping the UAS under 

400 feet, 5 miles from the airport, within line of sight, stay away 

from crowds. It is basic common sense and we think that in many 

instances it is just a question of education. We have had tremendous response from the aviation community on this. We have got 

new partners in NBAA, EAA, et cetera. Many of the organizations 

are stepping in and helping us get that word out. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you. One other thing I wanted to move on 

to before my time runs out is about test sites. The FAA established 

six test sites to enable UAS research, and these sites are operating 

under an agreement that may restrict the FAA’s role in directing 

research. So I want to ask, Mr. Williams, what steps is the FAA 

taking to ensure that the test sites are being used to address the 

Nation’s top research priorities, and are there any barriers that 

need to be addressed? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Back in the fall we released to the test sites a list 

of over 100 research areas that we believe we could benefit from 

having them look into. I think the—there has been a lot of misunderstanding about what they can and can’t do at our behest. Our 

only rule is that, you know, through the procurement rules we have 

to—if we are going to direct one of our contractors—and the Other 

Transaction Agreements we have with them amount to a contract 

between them and us—if we are going to direct work, we have to 

pay for it. So—but we can also agree to work together with in-kind 

resources through these agreements. 

So the—but the bottom line is to all of it, all we have to do is 

document it in those agreements and we can work together on any 

research project that is of interest to those test sites, and I believe 

that, you know, we have communicated that to them and I believe 

that we have—they understand the situation pretty well at this 

point. 

Mr. LIPINSKI. All right, thank you. I have other questions that 

I will submit for the record. 

I yield back. Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Lipinski. 

On behalf of the new Member of the Committee, Barbara Comstock of Virginia, without objection I would like to put a letter from 

a Michael Kronmiller in the record. And without objection, so entered. 

[The information appears in Appendix II] 

Chairman SMITH. The gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher, is recognized for questions. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. 

Now, let me see if I am getting all of this straight now. The FAA 

actually will approve Mr. Guinn’s drones, their design, and their 

capabilities and approve them to actually go in the air before you 
94 

are permitted to fly them, is that correct? Mr. Guinn? Mr. Williams? Who can answer that? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Sir, they are approved—the two processes run in 

parallel so that when the approval to fly the aircraft without an 

airworthiness certificate that is done through the Section 333 exemption process—— 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. You say that approval is based on the design 

of the aircraft and its capabilities, is that right? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, and the operations. And then they—— 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. All right. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. They come in and say, okay, we want to operate 

it in this particular area—— 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. —and our traffic organization assesses whether or 

not it is safe for them to operate, and so they are looking for, you 

know, conflicts with their manned aircraft. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. So this is both FAA in both cases? One 

is the safety of the equipment itself and then the safety of the actual instance that you—they want to use this specific situation. 

And where—are we having any trouble, Mr. Guinn, with the actual 

approval of the system itself meaning your crafts that you can 

bring before them for approval? Is that—am I understanding this, 

do you think that should be streamlined or—— 

Mr. GUINN. Yes, sir. So when one of our customers wants to use, 

say, a system for, you know, looking at photo mosaics of a farm so 

that they can see where the water is going and when to pick the 

grapes, they needed to take the system and get a Section 333 exemption, which is where the FAA determines is this aircraft—— 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. But once you have gotten that from this—to 

do that—— 

Mr. GUINN. Well, first you have to get that. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. That is what I mean—— 

Mr. GUINN. And so far, of all the companies—— 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. But after that you don’t have to get it again, 

right? Is that correct? 

Mr. GUINN. For the Section 333. So so far 14 have been granted. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Out of how many? 

Mr. GUINN. Is that correct, 14? 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Out of how many requests? 

Mr. GUINN. Out of everyone in the country that wants to fly their 

drones. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Oh, is that right, 14? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Right, but the process is being improved and they 

are going to be coming out a little more frequently—— 

Mr. GUINN. So it is difficult first to get it, 14 out of however 

many thousand—— 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. All right. 

Mr. GUINN. —and then once you have a Section 333, you have 

to get the Certificate of Authorization to fly in a specific area, 

which is—— 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. So what we have here is technology and the 

technological capabilities are far surpassed the ability of making 

decisions about standards and rulemaking—general rulemaking, 

and that is what we have to catch up with. This isn’t the first time 
95 

that has happened in history, I am sure, and I hope that—can you 

tell me—can anyone here tell me which is more dangerous, a small 

privately owned airplane flying from here to there or a drone flying 

from here to there? Anybody want to—— 

Mr. GUINN. I have had several friends that have been in helicopter crashes, actually specifically test—you know, going out the 

side of the door, taking pictures of power lines. So, you know, I 

can’t speak to the factual evidence here, but in my estimation, having a 2- or 3-pound drone flying over national grid power line taking photos, if they were to fail in any way, shape, or form, it doesn’t 

have to worry about auto rotating down to the ground when they 

are already flying outside the chart. All it does is bounce off the 

power line, fall to the ground, you take another one out of the truck 

and keep inspecting. So my guess is that that would be much more 

safe and would allow us to start saving lives today. 

Dr. HANSMAN. We have actually done analysis on this and it 

really depends on the size of the drone. So for a small drone, the 

risk to people on the ground and to people in the air is much lower. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Has there ever been anybody hurt from a 

crashing drone, on the ground? 

Mr. GUINN. I mean there has been ouch, you hit me in the head 

with that drone but—— 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. All right. 

Mr. GUINN. —you know. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let me ask about the—how the FAA is planning to do this, these testing areas, test sites that have been established to help you try to determine whether or not these pieces of 

equipment should be approved. Could somebody tell me what they 

do at those test sites? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, the primary intention for the test sites is to 

provide an opportunity for manufacturers to do their developmental 

tests and evaluation in support of moving forward toward approval. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. And that is what the—that is what we have 

spent $11 million on that, providing that to you last year and now 

that budget has been increased, is that right? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. No, sir. There has not been any appropriation to 

the FAA to directly support those test sites. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. We funded it out of our existing appropriations. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Is it possible that when we have these companies that are seeking profit, which is a good thing, and they have 

technology, which is a good technology, do you think that in order 

to facilitate and to move the process along that maybe it would be 

good to have the companies reimburse the government for the specific tests or be able to certify certain people to conduct those tests 

other than government employees? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. I believe that is the actual intent of the test sites. 

The cost for running the test sites is currently being borne by the 

States who sponsored them and they are getting compensation 

from the companies who come to them for testing, or the government. In a couple cases there have been some government testing 

done there. The FAA doesn’t fund the test site operating costs. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. 

Mr. WILLIAMS. They are independently run. 
96 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. We only have 14 of these things approved so 

I can’t imagine we have had much revenue so far, but I would hope 

that—— 

Mr. GUINN. So there is a small number of companies covering 

those costs, which is why it is prohibitively expensive to go to those 

sites to test—— 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well—— 

Mr. GUINN. —versus going to Canada or Mexico, our neighbors. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

And by the way, just to note, my family, which are catching a 

plane back to California, just happened to be coming in at the time 

when that drone was flying around and I guess they—my son got 

an interesting opinion of what his father does for a living so—— 

Dr. HANSMAN. And it kind of shows you how these vehicles actually stimulate the interest of the sort of next generation of young 

people. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher. 

The gentlewoman from Connecticut, Ms. Esty, is recognized for 

questions. 

Ms. ESTY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to the Ranking Member for having this hearing today, and thank you all for your testimony. 

Unmanned aircraft systems have already significantly impacted, 

as we have discussed today, particularly in the field of agriculture, 

changing the way farmers do business and increasing yields and 

decreasing the use of pesticides and this is all a very good thing. 

And coming from the State of Connecticut where we have been 

longtime leaders in aviation and aerospace, we are very excited 

about these opportunities. But we also live in an incredibly congested airspace and some of us that include Mr. Lipinski and I 

serve on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee where 

we are having hearings on the same issue. 

So I would like to turn to that a little bit and get you to help 

us understand how, on the R&D side, what are the risks we should 

be looking at? What should be the research priorities to avoid those 

issues which are a little different than the agricultural setting, 

those are the ‘‘what do you deal with LaGuardia to Logan’’ issues. 

And particularly as we follow up on the exciting possibility of improving our infrastructure, the grid, looking at lines, these are very 

important opportunities, but again, they do pose risks, particularly 

in the congested airspace. 

So anyone who wants to jump in and help us guide through research capabilities, what are the risks we face, and on the R&D 

side what should we be prioritizing to address those risks outside 

of regulation, actually understanding? 

Mr. GUINN. So—go ahead. 

Dr. HANSMAN. So from a risk standpoint if you look at the risks 

of UAV operations, we don’t have the risk to the passengers on 

board, so that two risk areas are ground impact hazard, people 

being hurt by drones coming out of the sky, or midair collision risk. 

The ground impact hazard, you can do the analysis, and it really 

scales significantly by vehicle mass. So we—and studies have been 
97 

done and you can look at the risk versus the reliability required 

to compare those with manned airplanes and set standards there. 

From the airborne collision risk standpoint, it also scales with size. 

So for very, very small UAVs we design airplanes so that they 

can take bird strikes. So an interesting research question is what 

is the threshold mass for UAV for which the existing regulatory 

guidance on bird strike criteria would allow you to work there? 

Above that size you need some method to separate the airplanes. 

The easy thing is to do segregation, okay, and that is where we are 

working now. The hard is to come up with, as I said before, concepts of operation that would allow you to operate in the same airspace and be coordinated in some way, and that is really where we 

have got to work is the concepts. 

Mr. GUINN. And I would completely agree with that, and I think 

that is why many other countries have said, you know, if it is less 

than 2 KG, it is going to be similar to a bird strike which planes 

are already designed to handle in that worst-case scenario if that 

were to happen. 

And I think the other thing that we need to do, like I said before 

is, you know, by going to FAA test sites with a team of Ph.D.’s flying a perfectly assembled drone, we are not figuring out what the 

fringe cases are. We are not figuring out what the real risks are 

when you integrate thousands of these systems. And the concept of 

integrating thousands and thousands of systems that are far beyond what would be considered a bird strike is extremely scary. So 

to me starting with those lightweight systems so that we can collect all that data and start figuring out, okay, here are the fringe 

cases, here are the failure points, here are the risks. Now, how do 

we mitigate those for the next set of heavier aircraft? 

Dr. LAUBER. And I might add if I may that one of the four high 

priority most difficult research projects we identified in our study 

had to do with these very issues, the question of verification, validation, and certification and how you go about setting appropriate 

standards of risk that apply to these light small UAS systems in 

a world that was basically created to deal with manned aircraft 

systems of much larger mass. It is a very different world and demands very high priority in our view. 

Dr. WAGGONER. And as Dr. Hansman mentioned, the harder 

problem of interoperability, particularly with a larger aircraft, so 

that is something that NASA has taken on and we are doing that 

research, so the sense-and-avoid work. But also, as you—the senseand-avoid systems work, how you display that information to the 

pilot so that they can make informed decisions, and we are doing 

research in both of those areas in support of the FAA’s standards 

development. 

Ms. ESTY. Thank you. That is all very helpful. And those who 

have thoughts on how this might integrate with the NextGen system and if there are issues around UAS that we should be thinking 

about as we are addressing NextGen as part of the FAA authorization, I would love to follow up with—— 

Dr. HANSMAN. I would just say we need to leverage off of our investment in ADS–B and some of the communications architectures. 

Ms. ESTY. Thank you very much. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Ms. Esty. 
98 

The gentleman from California, Mr. Knight, is recognized for his 

questions. 

Mr. KNIGHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for having 

this esteemed panel. I have just a couple statements, maybe a 

quick question. 

You know, the UAS systems have helped quite a bit. I know that 

these aren’t something new; they have been around for 50 or 60 

years. I can remember the HiMAP program which helped us get 

into the fourth and fifth generation fighters that we have today. 

And also I appreciate what they do to help pilots have a safer 

flight. The G–CAST system that we are working on right now in 

the United States Air Force and the Navy, we put that on a UAS 

system because flying an airplane into the ground was not what a 

pilot wanted to do. So you put that on a UAS and hopefully the 

software worked, which it did, and the plane didn’t crash, and then 

you might get a test pilot to do that. 

But my questions are more in line with privacy and how Congress is going to move forward in the next 20 years, especially 

when it comes to law enforcement. And law enforcement has been 

part of the UAS discussion over the last ten years especially. If you 

have a helicopter that is chasing a bad guy and he flurs that area 

down there, we have decided that that is okay, but if you used a 

UAS, we have decided that that is probably not okay. And so the 

discussion is going to go—and I can already see—Mr. Williams, you 

probably want to answer this—is how do we go about that? How 

is the lawmaking? How is the rulemaking going to be when we talk 

about UAS in the law enforcement arena? 

Mr. GUINN. I think that is a great question. Thank you. And I 

think for law enforcement it is probably the easiest to solve because you just simply say these are the rules for whether or not 

you can engage with a UAS and whether or not that evidence can 

be, you know, admitted into a hearing because obviously the point 

of law enforcement is to stop crime and the only way to stop crime 

is to be able to convict, and the only way to be able to convict is 

to use admissible evidence, right? So I think that one is pretty simple to say this is what is allowed, this is not—what is not allowed. 

You have Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, people vote on it, and decide. 

I think the stickier point is the guy that is not being regulated, 

the hobbyist who is, you know, using these systems to peek into 

somebody’s window, right? And there is a lot of people that have 

those concerns and they are valid concerns. But I would hearken 

this back to when they—when phone manufacturers started putting cameras in cell phones. People were very concerned about this. 

Samsung, as a matter of fact, there was a rule that you could not 

have a camera-equipped phone on the campus of Samsung, right? 

Now obviously every single employee has a camera in their pocket. 

And so I think that people realize with this new technology that 

there is probably not tens of thousands of would-be criminals just 

waiting for this perfect technology to be able to spy on each other 

and I think this is a matter of education. You know, what can you 

get at the Apple Store? Wireless baby monitors and drop cams and 

things like that that could easily be set up silently and very small 
99 

and not noticeable in somebody’s house versus a loud, blinky, lit up 

drone flying out the window. 

The reason—I mean that is—you know, so I think it is just a 

matter of education and a matter of saying, you know, let’s leverage existing anti-invasion of privacy laws and make sure that those 

laws are, you know, applied to whatever technology is being used 

to invade somebody’s privacy, and there should be consequences. 

Mr. KNIGHT. And I guess what I would follow up on is that we 

already have an existing technology that does this, that chases bad 

guys from the air. So I guess, Mr. Williams, you can answer this. 

Would the FAA decide that they would follow the same exact rules 

as maybe an air unit does in today’s law enforcement? Would they 

follow the same rules or would they be able to do different things 

because, you know, a helicopter can’t fly like a UAS can, a helicopter can’t do the things that a small UAS can do. So that is— 

I think will be a question for Congress is are we going to lax those 

rules to make it more available for the troops on the ground, the 

cops on the ground to use it in a different manner? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, one of the initiatives we took back in 2012 

was to set up a special process called for in our reauthorization of 

2012 for law enforcement and we have been working directly with 

individual law enforcement agencies around the country. There are 

some that have had some spectacular success with their aircraft 

and it is a priority for my office to continue to support law enforcement use of unmanned aircraft and find ways to approve their operation. And I have two individuals who do that as there full-time 

jobs so we very much support finding ways for law enforcement to 

use unmanned aircraft safely. 

Mr. KNIGHT. Thank you. 

Mr. WYNNE. Yeah, Congressman, I just wanted to point out that 

AUVSI, in an earlier effort, we did work with the International Association of Chiefs of Police to develop guidelines. I would be happy 

to submit those for the record. 

Mr. KNIGHT. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Knight. 

The gentleman from Washington, Mr. Newhouse, is recognized 

for his questions. 

Mr. NEWHOUSE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank 

all of you for being here today to enlighten us about this very exciting and important subject. 

Being in agriculture, I do share the vision for the future and how 

we can produce our crops more efficiently and effectively. 

But a couple questions, I think that, Dr. Lauber, if I might start 

with you, I have heard a couple things, at least two today that 

talks about the potential of the unmanned industry as far as both 

public and privately, and then also the importance of safety of integrating these unmanned systems into the national airspace. And so 

speaking about that and the—and realizing the speed some of 

these innovations are happening, it certainly seems that safety 

should be a primary focus of what we are talking about. And so I 

am curious about the investment of harmonizing these systems 

with manned platforms, specifically talking about collision avoidance systems in general, perhaps specifically an ADS–B trans-
100 

ponder, those kinds of things. If you could talk a little bit about 

that, I would be appreciative. 

Dr. LAUBER. I think that you have already addressed several of 

the key considerations that we took up in our report. Clearly in 

order to achieve success in integrating these systems into the airspace and then realizing the potential benefits of these systems, we 

have to do it in such a way that safety is not adversely impacted. 

It will not fly, so to speak, to introduce these things in such a way 

that it imposes or adds risk to the system. Dr. Hansman has already outlined a couple of the key risks that have to be understood, 

collision with other aircraft and collision with the ground and trying to systematically understand those things is very important. 

And the FAA’s effort to undertake a systematic analysis of risk as 

it applies to these systems is an equally vital part of this. 

You know, one of the top four and most difficult research projects 

that we identified was what we called continuous operation without 

human intervention, and in order for UASs to do this, basically a 

UAS must have the capability of doing what any manned aviation 

system does in the present environment. So you have got to make 

up for all of the missing sensors, taking people’s eyeballs out of the 

vehicle. You have to somehow substitute for that. The ability of humans to make decisions in real time based on unexpected or unanticipated situations, you have to be able to build that into the technology in order to maintain the levels of risk that we have now. 

So these are of fundamental importance as far as our study is concerned. 

Mr. NEWHOUSE. Thank you. 

And then just another question, I can’t let the FAA off the hook 

totally, in a recent interview in Business Insider magazine, the 

CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos was asked a question about when they 

might possibly be delivering packages using these systems, and 

maybe you have read that article, but it highlights some of the— 

perhaps some of the, lack of term, overregulation in the R&D of— 

in the United States. He answered a longer answer than I have 

time for but the technology is not going to be the long pole; the long 

pole will be regulation. And so, as was already talked about with, 

what, a dozen or 14 approvals already for commercial UAS, could 

you explain why there may be hundreds or even thousands in other 

countries that have been approved and here we lag behind so to 

speak? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, I am not sure I agree that we have lagged 

behind. Yes, we don’t have a specific rule for small unmanned aircraft but we also have the most complex airspace in the world, we 

have the largest number of general aviation operators in the world, 

and it is a different regulatory and legal framework here than in 

some of the other countries. Part of my job is to interact with my 

counterparts from around the world and understand what they are 

doing and benefit from their experience so we are—and we are taking those things into consideration as we move forward. 

There is a—there are multiple paths for commercial operations. 

We have two operators approved up in Alaska. We are using certificated aircraft that have gone through the manned certification 

process, adapted for use by—you know, for an unmanned aircraft. 

Obviously all the rules for unmanned—for manned aircraft didn’t 
101 

apply to them. But there are commercial operations available that 

way in addition to this new way we found through the Section 333 

process that is designed to bridge us to that regulatory environment we are trying to achieve with the small unmanned aircraft 

rule. 

Mr. NEWHOUSE. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Newhouse. 

The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Weber, is recognized. 

Mr. WEBER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I don’t know where to start. Are the permits issued from 

the—there has been—let me understand this. I came in late. So 

there has been 14 permits approved, is that right? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. For small civil aircraft operators, yes. We have 

two certificated aircraft that are operating commercially in Alaska 

and there are a tremendous number of—over 700 public aircraft 

operators, in other words government operators that we have approved. 

Mr. WEBER. Are they based on size, Mr. Williams? A category 1 

might be that you could fly up to something that is 200 pounds, 

500 pounds, or is there a weight limit? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, the FAA in general takes a risk-based approach to all our approvals and so we have—the reason there are 

different levels of approval is there are different levels of risk. So 

for these very small ones that we are now approving through an 

exemption process, we are essentially—because of their size, 

weight, and operating environment, approving—basically waiving 

most of the manned aircraft rules so they don’t have to comply. 

Mr. WEBER. So what is a small weight? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Under 55 pounds was legislated in the—in our 

2012 reauthorization—was defined as small under that legislation. 

Mr. WEBER. Are there approved operators that get above 55 

pounds? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, sir. The—on the public aircraft operations 

side they go up to—the Global Hawk aircraft that both NASA and 

the DOD fly is approximately the same size as a 727. 

Mr. WEBER. Are they able to cross into Mexico and Canada without violating airspace issues? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. I believe the DOD flies around the world with 

their unmanned aircraft and they are following the ICAO rules for 

manned aircraft the same way as they do for—— 

Mr. WEBER. What about private companies? Have they crossed 

from the United States into Canada? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. We currently don’t have any approved private 

companies that are operating across the borders, and there is a 

committee—or what they call a panel has been formed at ICAO to 

develop the international standards and recommended practices for 

unmanned aircraft crossing between countries. So that regulatory 

framework internationally is being developed. 

Mr. WEBER. So when a company gets approval, has—it is permitted or licensed? What do you call it? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, we called the pilots—getting certificated I 

guess would be the correct term. 

Mr. WEBER. Certificated, okay. Does that process of certification 

get reviewed after one year, 2 years? 
102 

Mr. WILLIAMS. From a standpoint of—if the aircraft is approved 

through a type certificate, then it is indefinite. There is no restriction on that. 

Mr. WEBER. So—— 

Mr. WILLIAMS. For the processes that we are doing through the 

exemptions, those are good for 2 years. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. So if a UAV—if one of these units falls out 

of the sky and hits a car on the ground, the liability insurance— 

do people market insurance for these things? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, sir. There is insurance available through the 

multiple different insurance companies. 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. The little cameras on it—and I know, Mr. 

Guinn, you talked about the high-definition camera. Are they able 

to transmit back video back on the ground? Is that standard—pretty much standard? 

Mr. GUINN. Yes, absolutely. Even what Baptiste was flying today 

from Parrot it transmits high-def video back to your tablet. 

Mr. WEBER. Is it captured, for lack of a better term, in a little 

black box? Does it record its own? 

Mr. GUINN. There is a myriad of ways to do it so we can actually 

record on the ground, at the same time we are recording a much 

higher bit rate stream on the camera in the air. So for later review 

if you need to zoom into an image and check a power line or something like that—— 

Mr. WEBER. But you said it had a computer on it. Does it have 

the capability of storing that right on board? 

Mr. GUINN. Absolutely. Yeah. Most of the cameras that are on 

board have their own memory card slots and you are storing it 

right on the memory card. 

Mr. WEBER. Has—and I know this is getting way out there, what 

are people able—I mean you think about people hacking in to different things. Are they going to be able to hack into these and commandeer these? 

Mr. GUINN. That is a good question. I think that, you know, 

probably for Dr. Lauber a much better question. 

Dr. LAUBER. I will just add that cyber physical security is one of 

the key issues that we identify in our report. It is a concern and 

it needs to be addressed from the outset. 

Mr. WEBER. How many drone manufacturers are there? Ten, 

twenty—— 

Mr. GUINN. At least hundreds. 

Mr. WEBER. Hundreds? 

Mr. GUINN. Um-hum. Yes. 

Mr. WEBER. How many in the United States? 

Mr. GUINN. Much less than anywhere else in the world, so I 

mean—— 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. 

Mr. GUINN. —3D Robotics, our company is the largest and then 

that is—— 

Mr. WEBER. One final question. You see planes fly over with the 

number on the bottom of it, you can identify the number. Are the 

drones numbered, identified? 

Mr. GUINN. They are not today but that is one of the considerations, especially for the heavier systems, to have a tail number. 
103 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Well—— 

Mr. WEBER. Okay. And let me go one more question if I may, Mr. 

Chairman. So Google has a car that they can drive they say wherever without—can you program one of these drones to go somewhere and back and basically never have a—never touch it? 

Mr. GUINN. Absolutely, yes, just right from your smartphone if 

you need to. 

Mr. WEBER. Thank you. I yield back. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Weber. 

The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Posey, is recognized. 

Mr. POSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would like to thank 

all the witnesses for showing up today and bringing their great testimony. I had the opportunity to read the written testimony. This 

is one of those days where another committee meeting with votes 

required conflicted with the early part of the schedule so some of 

us didn’t get to see the demonstration of your vehicle. And if the 

Chairman would indulge us, I would be interested and I think 

some of the others would be interested in seeing it. 

Chairman SMITH. Do we still have the vehicle and the pilot? 

Mr. GUINN. Yeah, we can get it back up in the air in just about 

1 minute. 

Mr. POSEY. All right. That will work. 

Chairman SMITH. All right. Let’s have another quick brief demonstration but perhaps you can use more airspace this time, too. 

Mr. GUINN. He is going to get saucy with it, Baptiste. 

Chairman SMITH. And we will define haircuts within 2 feet of 

someone’s head, so if you can stay above that, that will be—— 

Mr. GUINN. He is going to show you leaf blower mode with your 

papers on your desk. 

Chairman SMITH. We didn’t give you much advanced notice here 

but—— 

Mr. GUINN. It will take him about 30 seconds or 45 seconds to 

connect to the Wi-Fi network before he can take off. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. 

Mr. GUINN. Did you have any quick questions in the meantime? 

Mr. POSEY. Silence is golden in this committee, too. 

Mr. GUINN. Okay. Perfect. Sounds good. Another fun fact is that 

he will be piloting this drone from his iPhone, as well as seeing a 

live HD feed right on his phone that is being digitally stabilized, 

so pretty cool for 500 bucks. 

Mr. POSEY. We will all have one by the next time you come and 

testify here. 

Chairman SMITH. Well—— 

Mr. GUINN. My kids got them for Christmas. And that is your 

worst-case scenario, oh, my gosh—— 

Chairman SMITH. You know, maybe—— 

Mr. GUINN. —drone crash. Drone crash. 

Chairman SMITH. Maybe we won’t fly over people. 

Mr. GUINN. Yeah, well, while he is flying over, you just do this 

just in case. 

Chairman SMITH. Yeah. 

Mr. GUINN. A fringe case is when you are asked to fly a drone 

in 60 seconds in front of Congress. 

Chairman SMITH. Yeah. 
104 

Mr. GUINN. This is the kind of data we need to be collecting out 

in the real world. 

Chairman SMITH. We need to make allowances for this. Tell you 

what, just to take the pressure off of you, maybe we ought to— 

okay. 

Mr. GUINN. All right. Here we go. 

Chairman SMITH. Oh, there we go. Okay. Okay. Can you head towards Mr. Posey and just keep it right out of—there we go. 

Mr. GUINN. Leaf blower mode, here we go. Baptiste, can I push 

it around a little bit, show its stability or do you want to? Yes, in 

a very French and stylish way. Thank you. 

Chairman SMITH. Thanks again for that. 

Mr. Posey, anything else? 

Mr. POSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. Okay. The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. 

Hultgren, is recognized. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Well, thank you all for being here. This is important and interesting and I really do appreciate the work that you 

are doing and we do want to be helpful in making sure we do this 

well. 

With development and usage, I know of UAS expanding it certainly is crucial that we understand the research our government 

is doing, especially the research that will affect the rulemaking 

process FAA is currently undergoing. From a competitive standpoint, it is also crucial that we do this right so that we are not encouraging businesses to move elsewhere or denying access to researchers for the best, most cost-effective tools that they need to do 

their work. 

To be frank, sometimes I don’t—I find the FAA’s process to be 

a little bit confusing and I agree certainly with the need for public 

safety, that should always be our top goal, but right now my fear 

is—in the name of safety I am afraid we are stifling innovation and 

research opportunities by keeping pretty harmless UASs out of the 

sky. At the same time, on an unrelated topic but one that is important to me, I have been trying to get answers from the FAA about 

their air traffic controller hiring practices, which were recently 

changed, and I believe could jeopardize the safety of airline passengers across the country. And we are going to continue to try and 

get answers there from the FAA. 

But getting to questions, Mr. Williams, in early December 2014 

the Association of American Universities and Association of Public 

Land Grant Universities wrote a letter to FAA stating, ‘‘there is no 

timely workable mechanism for both public and private universities 

to secure FAA approval to conduct important research utilizing 

small unmanned aerial systems, or sUAS, technology.’’ I wondered, 

has FAA considered issuing a rule to make it easier for universities 

to research sUASs such as allowing universities to research sUASs 

on their own property below 400 feet? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, we believe that our small rule will address 

the needs of the universities. We also believe that—and I have had 

discussions with several universities about this, that they can move 

forward using our Section 333 process to conduct their training, research, et cetera. And I have had discussions with several univer-
105 

sities about the possibility of doing that and I think they are interested. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Okay. So in the meantime there is some opportunities there but also you expect that the rule would give them this 

ability to do some of the research that they are looking to do? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. Um-hum. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Mr. Williams, roughly how much interest is 

there in the FAA test sites in terms of calls, meetings, and website 

visits? How many organizations have actually used the test sites? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. I don’t have the data with me, sir. We can certainly get back to you—— 

Mr. HULTGREN. Could you? That would be great. If you can 

maybe get that back to us or to the Committee, that would be terrific. 

Mr. Wynne and Mr. Guinn, how would you organize the FAA 

UAS test sites to best accommodate industry’s R&D needs? 

Mr. WYNNE. Sir, we are—we want to get this word out. I think 

the—you know, it is early days for the test sites so we have got 

to make the—I think them more accessible. We have discussed earlier the need for greater transparency, getting the costs down, et 

cetera. I think there is also a need to focus the research on the specific areas that we have been all agreeing needs to be advanced, 

so I think those are the primary elements that we have been looking at. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Do you have anything to add? 

Mr. GUINN. I would take the six FAA test sites that exist in remote locations and expand that to test sites that might be on your 

company’s private property that have, you know, strict regulations 

around what you are allowed to do, geo-fenced. You know, the 

drones with a geo-fence will not cross that barrier. They have that 

level of intelligence today. So sub 400 feet, you know, don’t cross 

the geo-fence, remain line of sight, and now that test site can be 

on your own company’s property. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Are they—have you heard if they are open to 

that, looking into that? 

Mr. GUINN. Are you guys open to that? 

Mr. HULTGREN. Mr. Williams? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. I believe that we have the experimental process 

that could accommodate that type of operation. We have experimental airworthiness certificates that we issue for development, research, et cetera, that have been taken advantage of by other companies to do exactly that. So that process does remain available to 

anyone who chooses to use it. 

Mr. GUINN. And I hear that a lot and that is the same—is that 

the same airworthiness certificate that there has been 14 total 

granted so far in the country of all the people that want to fly 

drones? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. No, we have issued quite a few more experimental 

certificates. 

Mr. GUINN. So the Section 333, is that—that is what is required 

for a private drone operator to be able to operate and do test 

flights? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. That is for commercial use. I mean the experimental process is for the developmental use. 
106 

Mr. GUINN. Okay. So I guess I am talking about more for private 

sector versus government. Is that—— 

Mr. HULTGREN. Let me ask you this real quick because I am running out of time, but on that, how do you see other countries openness to doing this versus the United States, your members? Have 

you seen similar openness here as in other countries or do you see 

greater challenge? And I am out of time. 

Mr. GUINN. Well, there is a huge disparity, and I think in other 

countries they just use a simple, you know, proportional risk-based 

system to say if the drone is very lightweight and being flown low 

altitude, line of sight, there is a lot less regulation than a heavy 

drone being flown out of line of sight at higher altitudes. So it is 

pretty logical. 

Mr. HULTGREN. It makes common sense. Yeah. 

Mr. GUINN. Pretty logical. 

Mr. HULTGREN. Hopefully we can see what other countries have 

been doing, doing safely, and we can do the same thing here. 

Thank you, Chairman, for your indulgence. I yield back. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Hultgren. 

And the gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Palmer, is recognized for 

questions. 

Mr. PALMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I was called away to another meeting so I missed a lot of this. 

And thank you for the demonstration. I might ask for one of those 

for Christmas myself. 

A couple of things, I don’t know if this has been asked, but has 

anyone done an estimate of economic impact in the context of what 

it would be worth to the U.S. economy for—if we had the design 

and engineering done here in the United States, if we do the construction here—manufacture, I should say the manufacture of 

the—well, if you are doing UAS as—did you say as large as a 727? 

Is that what you said? 

Mr. WILLIAMS. [Nonverbal response.] 

Mr. PALMER. So you would be doing design engineering and construction. Has anyone looked at what the economic impact of that 

might be? 

Mr. WYNNE. Yes, sir. The numbers that my organization have 

put together in 2013 suggest that after we have access to the national airspace the economic impact amounts to about $82 billion 

and 100,000 jobs, 100,000 plus jobs. Those numbers were put together in 2013. We think they probably—we are going to update 

those numbers. They probably understate the opportunity. 

Mr. PALMER. Now, that is just the design, engineering, construction? That is my question. 

Mr. WYNNE. And ancillary. 

Mr. PALMER. So that would be the commercial use? 

Mr. WYNNE. No, that does not include commercial use. 

Mr. PALMER. Okay. 

Mr. WYNNE. Profitability for other business—— 

Mr. PALMER. All right. All right. Are we losing any technological 

advantage by the delays in approval for testing, in other words, if 

this is—if this goes offshore? 

Mr. WYNNE. For the design and test, and those numbers I think, 

yes, sir. I think that is an important distinction. The markets that 
107 

we—the end user community such as the insurance industry, the 

agriculture community, et cetera, they will still want to utilize the 

technology. The question is whether or not they will be using 

American-built technology. 

Dr. LAUBER. And if I may add to that, during the course of our 

study, we heard presentations from many in the industry. Many of 

them told us that they could not conduct the kind of research and 

development that they needed to do in the United States and that 

they were taking their operations offshore. 

And if I may briefly add in November I participated in a meeting 

sponsored by the National Air and Space Academy in France and 

one of the key things that came out of that conference was the fact 

that the DGAC, the French FAA, in 2012 issued a risk-based set 

of regulations covering the very small UASs, I think 2–1/2 kilos. 

They put those in place. As of the time of the conference, which 

was in November, there were over 1,000 certified operators, more 

than 1,600 vehicles in French airspace alone, and there were multiple manufacturers and others participating in this. It was really 

quite interesting to see this industry taking off there. 

Mr. GUINN. And those numbers for France, that—France has approximately 90 percent the populous of Texas, is that right? So, 

yeah, we could probably get some pretty amazing economic benefit 

for the whole country. 

Mr. PALMER. Going back to the size of these things is, you said 

a 727. Do you foresee a company like Federal Express or one of the 

big commercial carriers utilizing these for high-capacity transports? 

Dr. HANSMAN. There is interest on the part of Federal Express 

explicitly and several other particularly cargo operators. It—this is 

going to be a long time in the future. These capabilities will first 

come through in the military, demonstrated, and the risk issues 

will be demonstrated. But 50 years from now, 60 years from now 

there will be UAVs. We can do it technically today. The issue is to 

work out all the operational details. 

Mr. PALMER. And one of those operational details, I would assume, would be ensuring that the guidance systems cannot be 

hacked? 

Dr. HANSMAN. Exactly. That is the comment that Dr. Lauber 

talked about. One of the key research areas are the cybersecurity 

issues particularly associated with the uplink—command uplink. 

Mr. PALMER. My last question has to do with utilizing these for 

high altitude subspace, maybe even, you know, launch and return 

capabilities, high altitude subspace for, say, weather evaluations, 

things like that. Do you—is that something that is on the drawing 

board? 

Dr. HANSMAN. One of the biggest potential markets is actually 

the use of these vehicles for high altitude relay for basically internet on the surface. So you can have long persistence vehicles at 

high altitude that can now act effectively as satellites and be doing 

broadband distribution to the ground. 

Mr. PALMER. And I guess my B part of the last question would 

be, for instance, an unmanned flight to the International Space 

Station, would you—do you foresee having the capability for launch 

and return for a mission like that? 
108 

Dr. HANSMAN. Well, we do today. That is—we have unmanned 

vehicles that are flying cargo missions to the Space Station today. 

Mr. PALMER. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman SMITH. And thank you, Mr. Palmer. 

And let me thank all of our witnesses today. This has been a particularly interesting and informative panel. We wish Mr. Williams, 

however, the FAA had told us when they might have the rule 

ready, but with that possible exception, I appreciate all your contributions. 

And this has really been helpful, I think, to members of the 

Science Committee and we look forward to hearing from you all in 

the future and to waiting and watching to see how the development 

goes with the integration and with the use of drones both in the 

private sector and in the commercial sector as well. 

So thank you all again for being here. 

[Whereupon, at 4:58 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 
(109) 

Appendix I 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
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ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Dr. Ed Waggoner 
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Responses by Mr. James Williams 
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Responses by Dr. John Lauber 
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Responses by Mr. Brian Wynne 
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Responses by Mr. Colin Guinn 
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Responses by Dr. John Hansman 
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Appendix II 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR THE RECORD
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STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY RANKING MEMBER EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON
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STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY REPRESENATIVE DONNA R. EDWARDS
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LETTERS SUBMITTED BY CHAIRMAN LAMAR S. SMITH
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LETTER SUBMITTED BY RANKING MEMBER EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON
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