FCC DA 26-314: The Spectrum Reform That Could Unlock American BVLOS Operations

On April 1, 2026, the FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology released Public Notice DA 26-314, titled "Unleashing American Drone Dominance." Despite the date, it isn't a joke. Comments are due May 1; reply comments by May 18. And if you operate commercially, develop UAS, or run a counter-drone program, this proceeding deserves serious attention from your legal team and your lobbyists.

The notice covers six distinct policy areas: dedicated spectrum for UAS, experimental licensing modernization, testbeds and innovation zones, Counter-UAS regulatory barriers, federal coordination, and market investment incentives. That scope alone makes DA 26-314 the most consequential FCC drone proceeding since the agency added all foreign-produced UAS to its Covered List in December 2025. It builds directly on two executive orders signed June 6, 2025: Unleashing American Drone Dominance and Restoring American Airspace Sovereignty.

The Spectrum Problem Is Real — and Has Been for Years

Here is the uncomfortable truth the FCC finally states plainly in DA 26-314: the vast majority of U.S. drones operate on unlicensed spectrum. The same 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz bands your Wi-Fi router uses. That was fine when drones were hobbyist toys in open fields. It is not fine for commercial BVLOS operations at scale.

Unlicensed bands offer no interference protection. A construction site running a dozen Wi-Fi access points, a stadium full of smartphones, a competing drone program in the same airspace — any of these can degrade the command-and-control link that keeps your aircraft flying predictably. For BVLOS operations, link reliability isn't a preference, it's a safety-critical requirement. The FAA's proposed Part 108 rule depends on detect-and-avoid systems that require consistent, low-latency telemetry. You can't build that on a shared, unprotected frequency.

The 5030–5091 MHz band was supposed to solve this. The International Telecommunication Union recommended it for UAS use back in 2011. The FCC adopted initial service rules for the band in 2024, allocating a 10 MHz block at 5040–5050 MHz for licensed UAS operations. Then nothing happened. The implementing rules that would put the spectrum into actual use have not been issued. DA 26-314 asks the industry why, and what it would take to get there.

That's the right question, two years late. But it's being asked now, and the comment period is the mechanism to answer it on the record.

What Bands Are on the Table

Beyond the 5030–5091 MHz band, the FCC is revisiting spectrum territory it previously declined to open. The 960–1164 MHz band is back under review after an earlier determination that it shouldn't be available for UAS. The FCC also asks whether existing airborne restrictions in commercial flexible-use bands should be lifted or modified to support more intensive UAS operations.

The bands mentioned explicitly in the notice include:

• 800 MHz Cellular (Cellular Radiotelephone Service) — currently has airborne restrictions; FCC asks whether to remove them for UAS
• Citizens Broadband Radio Service, 3.5 GHz — shared spectrum with existing rules the commission wants to revisit for aerial use
• 960–1164 MHz — ITU-recommended since 2007; previously passed over, now back on the table
• 1670–1675 MHz, 1.4 GHz, 2.3 GHz, 3.7 GHz — each currently prohibits aeronautical mobile use; FCC is asking whether those prohibitions should remain
• 450 MHz band — Aura holds a waiver and has petitioned to modify technical rules consistent with it
• 24.45–24.65 GHz — Echodyne has petitioned for radiolocation use to facilitate UAS detection

The FCC is also asking whether drone pilots should be permitted to obtain licenses in the aeronautical VHF band (117.975–137 MHz) for direct communications with air traffic control. That would represent a fundamental shift in how UAS integrate with the NAS from a radio perspective, and it deserves careful comment from anyone who has worked with ATC coordination on commercial programs.

Experimental Licensing: Fixing a Process That Slows Innovation

The FCC's experimental licensing process is slow, and the agency admits it in the notice itself. Today, testing new UAS technology on spectrum requires a case-by-case application through the Office of Engineering and Technology. That framework was built for fixed research programs with known frequency needs, not for dynamic BVLOS systems that may need to test across multiple bands, move through varied geographic areas, and iterate quickly.

The FCC is asking whether to create a dedicated UAS experimental license category with faster approvals, broader geographic parameters, and expedited renewals. More consequentially, it's floating the idea of a blanket experimental authorization for "qualified drone developers" covering specified frequency bands and operating parameters, eliminating individual applications entirely within those parameters. If that concept makes it into a final rule, it would remove one of the more significant friction points in bringing new UAS hardware to market in the United States.

Pre-cleared test corridors are another concept in the notice, in coordination with the FAA and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). The idea: a geographic zone where licensed developers can conduct UAS experiments without additional spectrum approvals per test. The FCC points to its Aerial Experimentation and Research Platform for Advanced Wireless (AERPAW) testbed at North Carolina State University as an existing model, while acknowledging that AERPAW's capacity may not be sufficient for the scale and diversity of development now underway.

The Counter-UAS Legal Gray Zone

This is the section of DA 26-314 that deserves the most attention from public safety agencies and security operators, and it may be the most legally significant piece in the entire notice.

Section 333 of the Communications Act of 1934 prohibits willful interference with licensed radio communications. It predates drones by about 80 years and was written with no concept of UAS command-and-control links. Today, that statute creates a genuine legal problem for any counter-drone system that uses RF jamming or disruption to neutralize a hostile UAS, including systems operated by law enforcement agencies with explicit authority to do so under other statutes.

Every public safety agency running a Counter-UAS program that includes any radio-frequency mitigation has been operating in this gray area. The FCC has never formally addressed how Section 333 applies to operational drone interdiction. DA 26-314 finally asks out loud. The notice also asks whether the commission's experimental licensing rules for Counter-UAS technologies, currently limited to research and development use, should be revised to permit actual operational mitigation and enforcement applications.

If your agency or company runs counter-drone operations that involve any RF component, this comment period is where the rules get written. The FCC won't automatically get this right without input from practitioners who actually operate these systems. Submitting detailed, technically grounded comments is not optional if you want the resulting rules to reflect reality.

The Momentum Behind the Notice

DA 26-314 isn't a standing-start rulemaking. The FCC has been accelerating its drone-related work since January 2025, issuing 227 UAS experimental approvals — a 68 percent increase compared to the entire 2021–2024 period combined. FCC Chair Brendan Carr has issued the agency's first-ever Counter-UAS experimental licenses, eight of them, several to the Department of Defense for implementation of the administration's drone dominance strategy.

The December 2025 decision to add all foreign-produced drones and critical components to the Covered List was the most visible implementation of the June 2025 executive orders. That action drew DJI into federal court, where the company's Ninth Circuit challenge remains pending. Four enterprise systems received conditional approvals in March 2026 and were removed from the list, all from non-Chinese manufacturers. The supply chain pressure is real and ongoing.

DA 26-314 is the regulatory infrastructure side of that same push: rather than just restricting what you can't fly, the FCC is now trying to build the spectrum and licensing framework that lets American-made systems actually do the jobs the industry needs them to do.

What Happens Next

Comments close May 1, 2026. Reply comments close May 18. After that, the FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology will review the record and potentially issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking covering some or all of the topics in DA 26-314. From NPRM to final rule typically takes at least 12–18 months under normal FCC timelines. The administration has signaled it wants to move faster, but "faster" in federal rulemaking is still measured in months, not weeks.

The January 1, 2027 exemption deadline creates genuine pressure. The FCC will need to decide whether to extend existing exemptions while the rulemaking proceeds, or let the current window close and deal with the market disruption. FCC Chair Carr's public statements suggest the commission understands the sequencing problem, but understanding a problem and solving it before a statutory deadline are different things.

For commercial operators, the near-term action items are straightforward: review DA 26-314 with your legal counsel, identify which spectrum and licensing questions affect your specific program, and file substantive comments. The full text of DA 26-314 is available from the FCC's document system. If you need help interpreting what the proceeding means for your operations or program structure, that's exactly the kind of regulatory analysis our consulting practice is built for.

The FCC is asking the right questions. Whether the answers result in rules that actually serve commercial operators depends on who participates in the comment period. That means you.