The Federal Aviation Administration is planning to have remote ID service for drones – a foundational component of integrating unmanned aircraft into the national airspace – up and running by sometime next year.  Drone operators will be required to transmit their drone’s location, velocity, and identifying data to a centralized system, which a variety of remote ID UAS service suppliers (USS) share and retrieve information from in near-real-time.

How will the FAA access remote ID information?  Currently, the focus is on using a Discovery and Synchronization Service (DSS) defined in the remote ID standard published by ASTM International. Rather than a nationwide unmanned traffic management system, it appears the FAA, along with other qualified agencies and public-facing apps, would query flight information through the DSS from participating USSs based on a grid system.