Why is America losing the commercial drone wars?

• Author: Kakaes, Konstantin

FOR YEARS, LOBBYISTS AND CONSERVATIVES HAVE MANAGED TO WRAP REGULATORY AGENCIES IN EVER MORE PROCEDURAL RED TAPE. NOW THOSE RESTRICTIONS ARE HAMSTRINGING WHAT OUGHT TO BE A SPRINTING AMERICAN INDUSTRY.

If the dictionary had an entry for "classic tech start-up," the company Airware could be the featured illustration. It certainly has all the requisite qualities. Founded by MIT graduates? Check. Given early-stage funding by prominent venture capital firms? Check. Operates out of an airy loft in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood? Check. Makes hard-to-describe products for a nascent, potentially huge industry most people are only vaguely aware of? Check.

Airware is in the commercial drone business--remotely piloted aircraft, typically equipped with cameras, that can potentially be used for everything from inspecting bridges to delivering packages. The company's eighty employees don't make the drones themselves, but develop the hardware and software used in them--"GPS, actuator interfaces, payload interfaces, onboard computing, datelines, ground control system software, configuration tools," explains (sort of) Jesse Kallman, Airware's head of business development.

Airware is one of hundreds of companies, large and small, that comprise a commercial drone industry that racked up $609 million in sales last year. That market could approach $5 billion by 2021, according to Winter-Green, a research firm.

That's just the drone industry itself. The technology's greater potential impact is on businesses doing the buying. Oil and gas companies are eyeing drones as a way to economically inspect thousands of miles of pipelines. Electric utilities see similar uses for the nation's complex (and aging) grid of high-tension lines and towers. Filmmakers love the idea of replacing camera-equipped helicopters with cheaper, more flexible drones.

But perhaps the most important immediate application is agriculture. Drones could "provide detailed scouting information on weed emergence, insect infestations, and potential nutrient shortages," Jeff Vanderwerff of the American Farm Bureau Federation told the U.S. Senate this spring. This valuable information allows the farmer to catch these threats "before they develop into significant and catastrophic problems." Down the road, drones could also enable so-called field-based phenotyping. This involves flying drones over test fields and taking images of experimental varieties of crops designed to, say, build more biomass or thrive in the heavy-rains-followed-by-drought conditions that climate change is causing. Plant geneticists would then analyze the data from the drones to see which tweaks they've made to the plants' DNA actually work best under real-life conditions. This, in theory, could dramatically speed up the process and lower the cost of developing new and better crop strains. "Maybe 'Holy Grail' is overstating it," says Sam Fiorello, CEO of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, which provides cutting-edge research for AgTech startups, "but it's a huge advance in plant research."

Commercial drones, then, could be a fundamental technology driving innovation and growth in coming years. As the world's traditional leader in aviation technology (and, for better or worse, the world's foremost military drone pioneer), the U.S. ought to command this industry.

There's only one hitch: companies like Airware can't sell many of their products in the U.S. That's because the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been slow to write the regulations drone makers need to test and operate in U.S. airspace. This past February, after years of missed deadlines, the FAA finally published a draft version of regulations for small drones--a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), in Washington argot. The finished version of the rule probably won't be ready until late 2016 or early 2017, according to the Government Accountability Office. Meanwhile, countries...