GRAND FORKS – A waiver issued to the Northern Plains UAS Test Site by the Federal Aviation Administration will make it easier for companies to test their aircraft at the Grand Forks test site.

Announced by U.S. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., on Monday, March 27, the waiver allows Northern Plains UAS Test Site to support unmanned aircraft systems flights involving aircraft that do not have a public designation.

Under FAA rules, aircraft can be tested for research and development purposes at UAS test sites as long as it is being done in the interest of public good. But, Trevor Woods, executive director of the Northern Plains UAS Test Site, says the public aircraft operation designation has a narrow definition and requires a lot of paperwork. The designation also prohibits a lot of commercial operations like carrying cargo or passengers.

“If you’re an aircraft manufacturer trying to get into the space, you might take advantage of public aircraft operations or public designation, but it doesn’t really accomplish what you’re trying to do at the end of the day, which is to create an operation that is doing something — serving a good, serving a service,” Woods said.

The waiver will allow companies to test aircraft at Northern Plains without flights having to be considered public aircraft operations. This will streamline the regulatory process for companies hoping to test aircraft at Northern Plains.

“This new waiver will allow many companies to work within the airspace governed by North Dakota’s test site without needing a public designation, giving the state an even greater competitive edge in the UAS industry,” Hoeven said in the press release. “Now, companies will be able to come to North Dakota to establish the safety record necessary to expand their UAS operations. This is an important step for North Dakota and our continued leadership in all things UAS.”

Woods says the test site will not focus on commercial operations, but the waiver will allow more companies to use the test site to rack up flight time required to be able to fly their aircraft in the public airspace and eventually get approval for commercial operations from the FAA.

“If you’re wanting to do development on anything, sometimes you just need to go fly the heck out of the system or operate the heck out of the system — you just need to get flight time on it,” Woods said. “Quite frankly, this approval just lets companies do that, instead of having to have the burden of a greater good of the public and other contractual mechanisms in place.”

Monday’s waiver announcement comes one week after Hoeven met with the UAS industry, UND and Grand Forks city leaders last week to discuss

unknown aerial phenomena.

At the March 20 meeting, Hoeven announced that the FAA had approved waivers for beyond-visual-line-of-sight flights conducted by the Northern Plains UAS Test Site and General Atomics using enhanced radar software.