Review - FAA Publishes UAS Facility Restriction NPRM

 Today, DOT’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) in the Federal Register (91 FR 24650-24704) on “Designation-Restrict the Operation of Unmanned Aircraft in Close Proximity to a Fixed Site Facility”. The rulemaking would implement section 2209, of the FAA Extension, Safety and Security Act of 2016 {PL 114-190 (130 STAT. 634)}. FAA proposes a new part 74 to implement this mandate and properly balance FAA's other statutory mandates. 

More details about the provisions of this rule will be covered in future posts. 

Public Comments  

The FAA is soliciting public comments on this NPRM. Comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # FAA-2026-4558). Comments should be received by July 6th, 2026. 

For more details about the provisions of this NPRM, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/phmsa-publishes-uas-facility-restriction - subscription required. 

DOT Sends UAS Flight Restriction Application NPRM to OMB

Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had received a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) from the DOT’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on “Designation - Restrict the Operation of an Unmanned Aircraft in Close Proximity to a Fixed Site Facility”. This rulemaking was required by §2209 of the FAA Extension, Safety and Security Act (PL 114-190, 130 STAT. 634), and was supposed to have been completed by January 11^th, 2017.

According to the Fall 2024 Unified Agenda entry for this rulemaking:

“This action would implement section 2209, Applications for designation, of Public Law 114-190, the FAA Extension, Safety and Security Act of 2016 (130 Stat. 634). Specifically, this rule would establish the criteria and procedures for the operator or proprietor of eligible fixed site facilities to apply to the FAA for an unmanned aircraft-specific flight restriction. In addition, this rule would establish the substantive criteria based on the enumerated statutory considerations (i.e. national security and aviation safety) that the FAA will use in determining to grant or deny a petition, as well as the procedures for notifying the petitioner of the determination made and the process for resubmission of any denial. Lastly, this rule would establish the process to be used by the FAA to implement the unmanned aircraft-specific flight restriction and notify the public.”

This rulemaking will almost certainly not provide any authority to facilities to take actions to enforce the flight restrictions. That would require additional legislative action.

HR 636 Proceeding in Senate

Yesterday the Senate adopted the substitute language for HR 636 that would turn it into the FAA authorization bill without debate or vote. The then voted to close debate on HR 636 by a recorded vote of 89-5. The final debate on the bill will start this morning at 11:00 EDT and the Senate will vote on the bill at noon.

The bill includes a number of cybersecurity provisions including:

§4109 – Cybersecurity (from S 2658);

§4110 – Securing aircraft avionics systems; and

§5029 – Aviation Cybersecurity

It also includes two unmanned aircraft system (UAS) provisions of specific interest to critical infrastructure owners:

§2154 – No fly-zone designations (from S 2658); and

§2126 {§44805(f)} – CI owner overflight rights.

Based upon the cloture vote results, this bill will easily pass with substantial bipartisan support.

NOTE: After the vote on HR 636, the Senate is scheduled to take up final consideration of S 2012, the energy authorization bill which also has a number of cybersecurity provisions.

OMB Approves CI Security Clearance ICR

Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affair (OIRA) announced that it had approved an information collection request (ICR) from DHS National Programs and Protection Directorate (NPPD) for information collected to support the Critical Infrastructure/Key Private Sector Clearance Program (CI PSCP). This is the security clearance program for members of the Sector Coordinating Council (SCC) and selected representatives of various private sector critical infrastructure organizations.

This is a revision of an existing ICR (1670-0013). There were significant changes made to the collection burden estimates for this revision. The estimated number of annual information collection requests was increased from 450 to 500 to reflect the increase in submissions to this program in 2013 and 2014. According to the ICR approval notice OMB is reporting that the hours burden for this collection has increased from 75 hours to 833 hours. That is almost certainly a misprint because the supporting information provided by NPPD to OIRA (pg 6) indicates that the total hour burden for this ICR is only 83.33 hour (500 x 10 minutes/submission). This reflects no change in the per request burden estimate.

Commentary

As various threat information sharing programs start to come on-line or expand, this program at DHS will also likely see and expansion of the number of security clearance requests. Depending on how those programs are structured, DHS will expand this collection effort or initiate new ones. One would like to think that they would use the same form as the current program which would lead to an expansion of the expected burden numbers for this ICR.