Trump’s Restoring American Airspace Sovereignty Executive Order Released

Summary

The Restoring American Airspace Sovereignty Executive Order (RAAS E.O.[1]), released on Friday, increases domestic monitoring of drone operations across the United States, a need brought into sharp focus after Ukraine’s execution of the Spider’s Web attacks in Russia on June 1st. The Agricultural Drone Initiative (ADI) applauds the Trump Administration’s efforts to improve the security of our National Airspace System (NAS). While the Unleashing American Drone Dominance Executive Order (UADD E.O.) will, understandably, occupy much of the industry’s attention in the coming days and weeks, the RAAS E.O. should not be ignored.

The RAAS E.O. requires the FAA to share the burden of monitoring drones with state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) agencies, representing a major shift in the enforcement of the FAA’s drone regulations. This increased enforcement responsibility by local law enforcement officers will likely lead to more scrutiny and monitoring for all drone operators across the U.S. While clearly not the intended target of these regulations, we expect that ag-drone operators will face increased scrutiny, as SLTTs experience pressure from leadership to improve drone-operation monitoring.

Full Analysis

The RAAS E.O. Will Result in Increased Compliance Pressures

While the explicit intent of the RAAS E.O is to protect America from “criminals, terrorists, and hostile foreign actors” (see § 1 of the E.O.), to deliver on that objective, all drones in American airspace will need to be monitored. While agricultural drone operators may, rightfully, feel that they are a world away from those threat cases, the E.O. makes clear that the FAA should consider “threats posed by the careless or unlawful use of UAS” (see § 3) as part of the threat landscape - this would include the operation of unregistered ag-drones. 

One of the major challenges for the ag-drone industry is the tension between the FAA’s legitimate interest in keeping our airspace safe and the behavioral-economic dynamics of farmers who need equipment to produce income as quickly and effectively as possible. 

The current licensing process, reliant on waivers, is a Byzantine, year-long process with little transparency or insight, where a simple error can return a farmer back to the back of the line. When wanting to operate a $40,000 piece of equipment fifteen feet in the air over your own property, most farmers, knowing that, while permitting may be delayed month-after-month, the loan-payment, and the growing crops, are far less patient, tend to choose the lesser of two evils and fly without proper permitting.

By ADI’s best estimates, approximately 80% of ag-drones in America are unregistered. The increased monitoring from this E.O. will likely force a large number of unlicensed operators into compliance in relatively short order. Unfortunately, because of the inefficiencies in the registration process already, if the number of applications increase further because of heightened compliance pressure, ADI anticipates that non-compliance may, paradoxically, become more appealing for some operators. This further demonstrates the reality that, if the FAA wants to truly incentivize heavy-lift ag-drone registration and licensing, a more efficient process must be implemented.

The FAA Will Become Increasingly Strict About Compliance Pressures

Section six of the RAAS E.O. orders the FAA to pursue ‘full enforcement’ of all its regulations. This is another indication that FAA’s toleration of non-compliance should be expected to decrease in the near future. To that end, section 6(c) of the RAAS E.O. directs the Attorney General and the Department of Homeland Security to “ensure that their… grant programs permit otherwise eligible State, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) agencies to receive grants to purchase UAS or equipment or services for the detection, tracking, or identification of drones and drone signals…” 

Further, sections four and nine develop a task force to secure American airspace against UAS threats and stresses the importance of building counter-UAS capabilities nationwide, especially around major events and critical infrastructure. These two directives represent a significant doctrinal shift for the federal government and FAA. Delegating monitoring and enforcement down to SLTTs means that operators should anticipate their local law enforcement will shift from a permissive treatment of drones, usually assumed to be a federal, not state, issue - to more suspicious approach to drones in general. 

It is easy to dismiss this E.O. as not impacting agricultural drones, operating in rural areas where communities are small enough that operators and local SLTT officials often know each other, however ADI would caution against complacency. This E.O., and the policy memos that will come out of it, should be anticipated to increase top-down pressure for SLTT’s to have a good sense of all the drones operating in their jurisdiction and to ensure they are operating legally. As such, ADI advises all ag-drone operators to anticipate friendly, but thorough, conversations with local law enforcement, even if you’re friendly with them, that start “Hate to have to ask, but word from the top is that I’ve got to check…”

While ADI strongly supports compliance with all relevant laws and regulations, we are concerned that rushing to partner with state and local officials could lead to confusion around enforcement efforts by well-intentioned officials without the proper training to understand the nuances of the applicable FAA regulations. 

State and Local Law Enforcement Will To Get Access to PII Submitted to FAA

Section 7(c) of the RAAS E.O. requires that the FAA provide real-time access to personal identifying information (PII) to SLTTs for enforcement purposes. The PII contained in Remote ID data is not any more sensitive than information for a vehicle registration, however, it is still notable, as it points to the FAA’s collaboration with SLTTs being serious.  

The FAA is Likely Building Towards Live Tracking and Dynamic Forced Geofencing

While this is somewhat speculative, we wanted to discuss one longer-term goal that this E.O. appears to be building momentum towards. 

Section 5(c) of the RAAS directs the FAA to implement a system to convert NOTAMs and TFRs to a format to facilitate ‘live’ geofencing and navigation. Presumably, this will be a publicly available API with which exogenous public and private software can interface with. ADI expects this will, in the mid-to-long term, be combined with the updated Remote ID access plan laid out in section 7 of the E.O. to cement dynamic geofencing capabilities for all drones.

Once a Real ID tracking mesh is developed across the country, ADI expects the FAA to take the NOTAM-integrated geofencing and mandate that all American drone manufacturers implement some form of ‘hard’ geofencing.[2] This will, in turn, create an environment in which drones are detected and monitored automatically any time they are powered on. 

Further, it is our projection that the FAA will try to have dynamic, live geofencing capabilities to know that no legally-operating drone can be in a given area, increasing the capacity to aggressively (and kinetically) counter wayward UAVs with less hesitation - an especially acute concern after Operation Spider’s Web. While this would be a significant shift, ADI supports any objective that makes our NAS safer and hopes that such changes will lead to simpler regulations around the operation of agricultural drones on private farmland. 

This points to plans of aggressive policy interventions in how drone software is drafted and promulgated in the coming years - something that is only possible if the drones operating in the U.S. are owned by companies subject to (and respectful of) American laws and regulations.

Footnotes:

[1]  As the Government Publishing Office has yet to assign an enumeration to this Executive Order, ADI is referring to it by its acronym.

[2]  ‘Hard Geofencing’ differentiates between getting a warning when you enter an area (soft geofencing) and the software affirmatively blocking the operator from flying into an area (hard geofencing). DJI had a robust soft geofencing system in place for a long time, but removed it from U.S. drones in 2024.