The FAA Built a Drone Regulation That References Standards That Don't Fully Exist Yet

The FAA's proposed Part 108 rule (August 2025) establishes a performance-based framework for beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) drone operations that replaces traditional airworthiness certification with "airworthiness acceptance" based on industry consensus standards. The problem: those consensus standards don't fully exist. ASTM Committee F38 has published foundational standards (F3478, F3269), but critical gaps remain in detect-and-avoid performance standards, command-and-control link reliability standards, and comprehensive autonomous flight standards. The FAA's own Inspector General found that "FAA's BVLOS operational goals and metrics were difficult for most lead participants to meet" and that "the Agency is not using comprehensive data to inform rulemaking."

Commercial drone delivery, infrastructure inspection, agricultural monitoring, and emergency response have been "just around the corner" for a decade but remain operationally constrained. As of October 2024, the FAA had issued only 190 BVLOS waivers total. The February 2026 deadline for a final Part 108 rule creates acute urgency — if ASTM cannot finalize the standards the rule will reference, the FAA may default to prescriptive requirements that replicate traditional manned aviation certification overhead, defeating the purpose of the performance-based approach. The EU's U-space regulation is proceeding with its own standards framework, creating risk of transatlantic regulatory divergence that would fragment a global drone industry.

The BVLOS Aviation Rulemaking Committee released a 381-page report with 70 recommendations in March 2022. ASTM F3478 was published as a "pillar" standard for UAS certification and recognized by EASA. ASTM F3269 provides a run-time assurance framework for bounding complex function behavior. The FAA's Strategic Advisory Committee (AC377) published a technical report on autonomy terminology. However, industry participants noted that "many airworthiness design and test requirements from the TC process are overly prescriptive and do not adhere to the performance-based approach." ASTM standards were designed for the existing regulatory paradigm, not the new Part 108 framework. The standards community cannot finalize what to write until the rule is final, but the rule needs standards to reference — a dependency deadlock. The FAA OIG found the agency lacks "comprehensive data to inform rulemaking," meaning the rule itself may be poorly calibrated.

Parallel, coordinated development of three interlinked standards: (1) detect-and-avoid system performance requirements validated against representative encounter geometries; (2) command-and-control link reliability requirements based on mission-risk classification; and (3) a modular autonomy assurance framework that extends ASTM F3269 to full mission autonomy. These need to be written to the performance-based philosophy of Part 108, not retrofitted from manned aviation type certification.

A team could develop and test a low-cost detect-and-avoid system for small UAS (using cameras and/or ADS-B receivers) and characterize its performance envelope — detection range, false positive rate, latency — against manned aircraft encounter scenarios. This directly contributes to the performance data ASTM F38 needs. A policy-focused team could analyze the BVLOS waiver database (190 waivers, publicly available) to identify which operational conditions and mitigations have been approved, producing an empirical map of regulatory acceptance. Relevant disciplines: aerospace engineering, computer vision, systems engineering, aviation policy.