The FAA is launching a new program that could see small uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS), or drones, integrated at greater scale.
The agency Thursday announced it will select eight new state, local, tribal or territorial government participants to launch the second phase of its BEYOND program, which aims to safely increase drone operations in the National Airspace System (NAS). Phase 1 began in 2020 and ended last year.
In remarks accompanying the announcement, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said BEYOND Phase 2 will seek to answer challenges raised in the previous phase, which include “on-airport operations.” An FAA spokesperson clarified that the administrator was referring to on-airport drone operations already taking place and coordinated with air traffic control (ATC), such as emergency response or runway inspection missions.
The agency aims to test increasingly complex on-airport operations, and possibly new use cases, but it does not intend to expand drone activities to new airspace, the spokesperson said. The FAA’s proposed Part 108, which headed to the federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for review in July, includes a provision that the FAA said will “prohibit any UAS operations that interfere with operations and traffic patterns at airports.”
The spokesperson described BEYOND Phase 2 as a separate effort.
Per a screening information request (SIR) for the BEYOND Phase 2 competitive selection process, on-airport operations are just one of five “operational focus areas” for the program. Others include operations in controlled airspace and cross-border operations.
“Phase 2 of BEYOND will expand the partnerships and operations needed to address remaining challenges in beyond visual line of sight [BVLOS] operations,” Bedford said.
BEYOND Phase 2 could ramp up around the time that Part 108 takes effect, barring any other setbacks to the long-delayed proposal.
The proposed rule is designed to enable scalable BVLOS operations for drones weighing up to 1,320 pounds and flying up to 400 feet. Under Part 108, the UAS would be authorized to use detect-and-avoid or electronic conspicuity technology to detect other aircraft, rather than a human operator. Today, that authorization can only be obtained via waiver or exemption.
Simultaneously, the FAA is overseeing the eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) Integration Pilot Program (eIPP), which is facilitating activities at airports nationwide with larger uncrewed and electric aircraft.
How We Got Here—and What’s Next
Since the FAA published its Part 107 rule for small UAS operations in 2016, activities have exploded. But the agency, facing pressure from the drone industry, seeks to safely open up even greater scale.
The FAA during President Donald Trump’s first administration launched the UAS Integration Pilot Program (IPP), which began in 2017 and ended in 2020, to evaluate civil and public drone operations. The IPP comprised nine lead participants and studied night operations, flights over people, and other operations that were either absent from or only partially covered by existing regulations.
The effort succeeded in generating data on complex operations, uncovering viable early use cases—including package delivery, public safety, and emergency management—and improving coordination between government and industry. It directly informed new regulations, such as the Operation of UAS Over People final rule published in 2021.
At the same time, the IPP identified gaps, most notably a lack of scale for operations beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) of human personnel. That’s where BEYOND comes in.
Phase 1 launched in 2020 and sought to shift FAA approval of BVLOS operations from waivers and exemptions to firm regulations, which are now being finalized as Part 108. The eight BEYOND Phase 1 participants logged more than 70,000 flights, more than 48,000 of which were BVLOS.
The Transportation Department’s Office of the Inspector General in 2025 found that the FAA increased BVLOS approvals from 1,229 in 2020 to nearly 27,000 in 2023. But it said that only a “small percentage” of BVLOS flights under Phase 1 were completed without human observers.
The OIG said the program’s effectiveness was hindered by a “lack of participant and mission variety,” and that data from the program has “limited use informing rulemakings.” Four of the eight lead participants said that performance metrics provided by the FAA were improperly tailored for their operations, and per the OIG, the majority failed to meet them.
In response, the FAA modified the performance metrics for Phase 2. Six of them will be tracked annually. These include operations in more complex airspace; decreasing or stabilizing accident rates; and the use of UAS traffic management (UTM) systems to expand service areas from primarily Class G to more complex airspace.
Phase 2 will double BEYOND’s current size by awarding up to eight Other Transaction Agreements (OTAs). The contracts would terminate in September 2028, unless the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024—whose Section 920 authorized the expanded Phase 2—is updated to extend the program. Proposals are due by September 10.
“America leads the world in aviation, and this expansion will help keep it that way,” said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in Thursday’s announcement.
