Matt Sloane is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at SkyfireAI. With over a decade of experience in public safety and drone technology, Matt has helped countless agencies integrate drones into their critical incident response. Prior to Skyfire, he worked as a medical news producer at CNN and served as an EMT. Matt is actively involved in shaping drone regulations and policy and is a licensed pilot.

Having spent 11 years as a part of the drone world, I can say unequivocally that there has never been a more exciting time to be part of this industry.

As many of you have no doubt already seen, on June 6th President Trump signed two executive orders — “Restoring American Airspace Sovereignty” and “Unleashing American Drone Dominance” — that will change the drone space permanently, and for the better.

The first one reaffirms something many of us have been saying for years — there is a CRITICAL need to protect our airspace, our critical infrastructure and all of us – from the nefarious use of drones. 

This executive action does things like advancing Section 2209, which provides for more airspace security over more critical infrastructure sites; makes Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) easier to find, and increase penalties for nefarious actors using drones.

Even more critically, it provides a roadmap for state, local, tribal and territorial governments to implement more drone detection capabilities; and FINALLY calls for the establishment of a Counter UAS Center of Excellence and training right here in Huntsville.

The second order calls for “accelerating the safe commercialization of drone technologies and fully integrat[ing] UAS into the National Airspace System,” something we’ve been clamoring for for years.

It mandates that we will see proposed rule making on true Beyond Visual Line of Sight operations within THIRTY days, and a final rule within 240 days. This is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL for the life-saving potential of drones to be realized in this country.

It provides a pathway for developing a more robust industrial base here in the American drone manufacturing space, which is long overdue — and as a potential way to support that, calls for common sense changes in the Department of Defense’s acquisition processes; and a more common sense approach to “blue listing” drones.

In many ways, the Blue List has been seen as an elite club of manufacturers, with a complex and often opaque process to getting into the club. This excludes many great companies who can’t or won’t jump through all of the hoops to get on board – so this change should pave the way for more companies to have a shot at defense and federal contracts accordingly.

By way of these executive orders, I think it’s clear we are leaving the beginning stages of the drone industry behind, and finally entering the beginning of the middle stages of adoption… and not a moment too soon!