The Virginia-based Mercatus Center just released its fourth annual 50-state drone commerce report.  As with its three previous reports, this year’s edition seeks to rank all 50 states in terms of their readiness to advance the drone industry, as measured by five characteristics:

1. Whether an executive-level task force is in place to promote the drone industry.
2. The availability of drone airspace access above state and local roads.
3. Laws to compensate private property owners for commercial overflights.
4. The existence of a single focal point for the development and testing of UAVs (i.e., a drone “sandbox”).
5. The size of the labor market for drone jobs.

The center’s chief investigator, Brent Skorup, assigns points to each element, and then each state is rated and ranked based on its combined score, with a maximum of 100 points possible.   Most of the state rankings have remained unchanged since the center’s 2021-2022 report, but there were some notable areas of progress, too.

Four states – Arkansas, Florida, Massachusetts and Maine  – experienced 20-point jumps in their respective scores, which allowed them to move much further up the national rankings.  Arkansas, which previously ranked 3rd at 70 points jumped to first place with 90 points – the highest ranking achieved by any state in the four years of ranking to date.  An even bigger jump was recorded for Massachusetts, which went from 22nd in the rankings last year to 8th place in 2023.

Two other states – Florida and Maine – which had placed in the bottom tenth in the rankings in 2022, jumped 10 points.  Both states went from a tie for 41st in the rankings to a tie for 35th in 2023.

What accounts for these shifts?

In the case of Arkansas, it was the state’s establishment of an executive-level task force to propel additional drone development, including a move by the state legislature to authorize drone inspections of all major public infrastructure to safeguard them from attack as well as to keep abreast of possible damage and deterioration.

State and local law enforcement agencies in Arkansas are also expanding drone use to track criminal suspects, find lost and missing persons and support SWAT operations.  In addition, Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, which has its national headquarter in Arkansas, hopes to expand its retail drone deliveries begun last year across the entire state in 2023.

Massachusetts jumped to 8th place for the same reason as Arkansas: the state decided to create an executive-level drone task force charged with providing new business incentives to drone companies.  Previously, it had an office in the state DOT to foster drone use among government agencies, which is the case in several other US states.  The same is true for Florida and Maine: neither had a state drone task force in 2021-2022, but both states created one in 2022-2023, in theory, spurring more drone commercial development.

Skorup’s report notes that a drone task force is an important step – but it’s still only a step.  Many states have passed laws to allow for drone “highways” above state and local roads and to compensate landowners for commercial and public safety access – without having a state task force in place.  In fact, Florida and Maine, unlike Arkansa and Massachsuets, have yet to institute these important legal and regulatory changes, and neither has a drone sandbox to attract drone companies to develop and test their aircraft within the state.  That’s why their Mercatus ranking, while progressing, is still relatively low.

Overall, the latest Mercatus center report finds continuing unevenness among states in their commitment to promoting drone industry growth.  Concerns over unwarranted drone surveillance by police agencies, infringement on private property rights, or invasions of personal privacy are still widespread in some states and regions – especially in New England and the South.  By contrast, most states in the mid-Atlantic – especially Maryland and Virginia – are extremely drone friendly, placing them in the top 15 of the national rankings..  And upper Midwest states like North Dakota, Minnesota and Montana still rank among the most supportive of drone industry development – 3rd, 7th and 11th, respectively.

Looking ahead, Skorup sees a growing number of states making progress in 2024.  One issue of great concern – how to balance the FAA’s overarching legal authority for regulating the nation’s airspaces, with the desire of states and localities for a greater say in implementation, is being resolved, giving commercial drone companies and their clients more assurances of support and greater clarity about how to proceed, he notes.

Another pending breakthrough is the increased willingness of the FAA – under pressure from congress and industry stakeholders – to grant Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) authority to drone companies to fly at greater distances across different jurisdictions, without the need for remote piloting or ongoing visual monitoring and safety checks.  Many companies granted partial waivers or exemptions thus far would like to expand their pilot operations beyond a single company and its limited sphere of operations to reduce costs and achieve scale.  That’s likely to be the case in 2024 and beyond.

Drone hold-outs like Rhode Island, Mississippi and Nebraska – which have ranked at the bottom of the Mercatus list for years – will persist.  And given the state of the economy and the current investment crunch in the tech sector, progress in other states could remain slower than hoped.  But as more states and their citizens come to appreciate the extraordinary commercial benefits that UAVs can provide – reduced fuel and labor costs, increased operational efficiency, lower safety risks, and enhanced sustainability, among them  – barriers to further progress will continue to slip away, allowing even more states to forge ahead.

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