Beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) is no longer just a regulatory milestone. It is a systems challenge that depends on UAS Traffic Management, spectrum policy, secure supply chains and realistic security expectations all maturing at once. That was the argument from this year’s Law-Tech Connect panel “Drone Pathways in the Sky: Global UTM and BVLOS Integration,” where moderator Mary-Caitlin Ray (Crowell) led experts Jennifer Richter (Akin Gump) and Matthew Satterly (Greenberg Traurig) through a candid look at how UTM architectures, FCC equipment authorization, the covered list and remote identification will shape the next phase of drone growth in the United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
FCC, Spectrum and The Real Bottlenecks
Before the panel turned to UTM, Richter made the case that companies need to pay much closer attention to FCC policy. FCC equipment authorization has long applied to devices that emit radio frequency energy, but the process has become far more consequential as federal policymakers use it to police drone supply chains and communications dependencies. (Watch previous deep-dive webinar with Richter and Hallie Peacher of Akin on FCC issues).
That shift became much more serious when the FCC put all foreign UAS and UAS components onto the covered list, rather than limiting the policy to a short list of named foreign firms. Richter explained that this broadened the issue well beyond radios and data links by pulling in batteries, motors, sensors, cameras, flight controllers, navigation systems, ground control stations, and other core drone components that many manufacturers did not initially associate with FCC scrutiny. (See prior AG coverage of the FCC covered list).
The practical effect is that many companies now face a compliance problem before they ever get to scale operations. If foreign components are on the covered list, manufacturers and operators have to find a path off that list through routes such as Blue UAS qualification, a strict Buy American threshold or conditional approvals built around onshoring plans. Richter noted that very few domestic manufacturers can meet the 65 percent domestic content threshold for Buy American today because high-cost components like batteries and motors are not widely produced in the United States at scale.
That dynamic turns supply chain policy into a direct BVLOS issue. Some of the companies already flying at very high volume in the United States are now confronting the basic question that even if the rules allow more advanced operations, will they have enough compliant aircraft to support demand? The panel warned that operators and manufacturers can no longer treat FCC policy as a niche legal matter because it is now a core determinant of fleet availability and commercial growth.
The same logic applies to spectrum. Richter emphasized that many operators are using commercial wireless assets, including 4G and 5G networks, as part of their drone communications and UTM architecture, but that use is not fully settled from the FCC’s perspective. The FCC has raised concerns for years about how high-density drone activity at altitude could affect terrestrial users of the same spectrum. Those questions remain unresolved in formal policy even as real-world operations continue to expand.
At the same time, dedicated aviation spectrum in the 5030 to 5091 MHz band remains part of the long-term vision for drone communications, along with a dynamic frequency management system, but those rulemakings are still incomplete. The result is a policy gap between what industry is doing now and what regulators have fully authorized for the future.
UTM: The Interoperability Layer
Once that hardware and communications context is in view, the panel’s UTM discussion becomes much easier to understand. Satterly argued that UTM should not be viewed as a standalone software product. He described it instead as a suite of safety services that helps operators manage air and ground risk, with interoperability standing out as the feature that matters most for scale.
Some UTM services are relatively static. Terrain and obstacle information, along with low-altitude airspace access tools, provide useful support to individual operators. But the panel stressed that those tools alone do not create a scalable drone ecosystem. The real value comes from interoperable services that let multiple operators, service providers and regulators share information early enough to prevent conflicts and coordinate activity across a common operating picture.
That interoperability layer ties directly back to Richter’s spectrum warning. UTM only works at scale if the communications paths underneath it are reliable, lawful, and flexible enough to evolve with the market. Satterly noted that many operators do not want regulators to lock them into one band or one connectivity method because their operational needs may shift from LTE to vehicle-to-vehicle coordination, satellite backstops or other architectures as density, geography and mission risk change.
The panel advocated that the industry needs a performance-based framework that allows multiple communications tools to coexist. It also needs regulators to understand how those tools are already being used in the field, rather than making decisions in isolation from current operations. In that sense, UTM is not just a traffic management conversation. It is a coordination problem that sits at the intersection of aviation regulation, telecom policy and operational design.
North Texas: A Live Model
The strongest U.S. example on the panel came from North Texas, where drone delivery operators and other advanced users began coordinating overlapping operations before the FAA had fully formalized a UTM pathway. According to Satterly, companies facing shared airspace demand effectively decided to start doing UTM in practice, rather than waiting for perfect guidance.
That operator-led activity gave the FAA something concrete to work with. Instead of trying to imagine what the sector might need ten years from now, the agency responded to active demand, joined the coordination effort and helped shape governance structures around strategic deconfliction and other services. The panel described that iterative model as one of the most important strengths of the U.S. approach.
It also helps explain why UTM progress in the United States has felt more grounded in operations than in theory. The FAA has moved unusually quickly in some cases, including UTM-related certifications completed in roughly six months, because it is building around demonstrated use cases rather than imposing a complete architecture in advance. That approach stands in contrast to more top-down systems elsewhere, and it gives industry a stronger basis for proving that dense operations can work safely in the real world.
The panelists also argued that these real-world case studies need to reach the FCC. Richter said FCC regulators need direct exposure to actual operating environments so that policy debates about spectrum congestion and communications risk are informed by evidence rather than assumptions. Satterly added that the North Texas market has not produced the kind of “darkening of the skies” scenario that critics often imply, even with substantial drone activity, which makes it a useful case study for future rulemaking.
Europe’s U-space Lesson
The panel’s international comparison began with Europe, where U-space has become the most visible attempt to build a comprehensive drone traffic management framework. (See prior AG coverage of U-space). Satterly, who worked closely on U-space material, described the model as ambitious and well intentioned because it tried to give operators and advanced air mobility stakeholders long-range regulatory certainty.
But that ambition has come with operational weight. The panel suggested that Europe tried to solve too much at once, which created an implementation burden that has slowed actual deployment in several countries. One example cited on stage involved a service provider that spent two years securing U-space certification and still had not supported a single flight under the framework.
That does not mean U-space lacks value. It means that a highly structured framework still needs practical implementation pathways and enough flexibility to meet operator demand. The speakers pointed to Switzerland as a more adaptive example, where regulators have worked more creatively with industry to make the framework usable in practice.
For U.S. stakeholders, the lesson is that a comprehensive system can create certainty, but too much front-loaded complexity can delay the very operations it was designed to support. That is one reason the FAA’s more iterative approach drew such favorable comparisons during the discussion.
Asia-Pacific’s Diverging Paths
Asia-Pacific provided a different set of case studies, especially around the question of centralization versus federation. Satterly said the U.S. conversation has long assumed a federated model in which industry supports multiple UTM actors under government oversight. Outside the United States, that assumption is far less settled.
Singapore has leaned toward a more centralized model where the government takes responsibility for owning and operating important parts of UTM functionality. Japan appears to be moving closer to the U.S. approach, recognizing the value of a federated, industry-supported structure. Australia remains stuck between those poles, with a regulator that favors federation and an air navigation service provider that prefers centralization, which has slowed decisions.
Those differences matter because they shape how quickly services can launch, who controls the data and how much room private providers have to innovate. They also show that UTM is no longer a purely technical discussion. It is a governance question about which functions belong to the state, which can be delegated to industry and how accountability should work when drone traffic becomes routine.
Remote ID and the Security Layer
Remote identification surfaced as another key layer in the stack. Satterly said the industry-led governance structure that began with strategic deconfliction is now moving toward network identification, which he and other panelists view as more useful than a purely broadcast-based model for both operators and public safety users.
The panel noted that the FAA is involved in those discussions and has advised on how network identification services could be rolled out, even though operators may not yet receive formal regulatory credit for them. Richter, who had been involved in earlier remote ID debates, welcomed that direction and suggested that network ID better reflects how a scalable, modern UTM environment should function.
That shift also connects directly to the security community. The speakers said public safety and homeland security stakeholders are beginning to engage more seriously with networked approaches because they offer better situational awareness than broadcast-only tools. At the same time, those stakeholders continue to ask hard questions about data access, privacy and who pays for the infrastructure required to process growing volumes of drone traffic information.
What Industry Should Take Away
Compliance now sits at the center of drone business strategy. The companies who have to build long-term plans around rules that are still evolving will most likely succeed in this environment will be the ones that don’t just wait for a single final rule to solve everything. They will be the ones that treat spectrum, supply chain resilience, remote identification, agency coordination and UTM integration as interlocking business requirements. Firms which understand those dependencies early will be better positioned to turn advanced operations into durable commercial scale.That is the larger significance of “Drone Pathways in the Sky.” The future of BVLOS is not just a matter of legal permission. It is a matter of whether regulators and industry can build an operational framework where aircraft, communications systems, interoperable services and security expectations all work together.
Watch Law-Tech Connect Online (LTCO), “Drone Pathways in the Sky: Global UTM and BVLOS Integration” here.
LTCO is made possible by the generous support of this year’s LTC Premium Sponsors: Akin (Gold), Crowell and Greenberg Traurig (Silver), Venable and GrandSKY (Bronze).