Currently drones civilian or military are not allowed to fly in U.S. airspace, but the FAA wants to explore the impacts of them. Amazon and the UPS have both expressed the need to let civilian drones to fly. Theres a lot of concerns that the FAA has with allowing drones to fly in American airspace. Each partner will carry out testing in key research areas highlighted by the FAA: sense and avoid, command and control, ground control station standards and human factors, airworthiness, lost link procedures and interface with air traffic control. The results of which will go towards developing regulations for “commercial and civil use”
The six sites include the University of Alaska, the state of Nevada, New York’s Griffiss International Airport, North Dakota Department of Commerce , Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi and Virginia Tech. All chosen for their geographical and climatic diversity. Each of the sites are allowed to test until Feb. 13, 2017 under current rules.
This does not mean that drones will be delivering our packages or watching traffic anytime soon. These are just places to test what effects they will have on the airspace and what rules and regulations they should have in place. In the near future though the drones could be assisting in watching traffic and identifying accidents, delivering packages, and used by civilians who want to fly their drones.