The Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) on Thursday announced the program for its Drone & AAM Policy Symposium, November 9 and 10 at Nationals Park in Washington. Its published speaker list names four Federal Communications Commission officials and four from the FAA, which also gets an executive session of its own. One of the FCC four is Hunter Deeley, who took over the agency’s Enforcement Bureau on August 31.
The program runs 27 sessions with more than 50 speakers, and Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) and Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) give the keynotes. It is the first symposium under Heather Lee, who took charge of AUVSI on October 1 after Michael Robbins left for the Semiconductor Industry Association and now carries the title of interim president and CEO. “Restrictions protect the industry, and strategy is what builds it,” Lee said in the announcement.
Titus is billed to discuss implementation of the FAA’s Part 108 BVLOS rule on November 10. Federal law requires that rule by December 7, and the FAA has not published it.
The FCC Bureau That Fined Suspected DJI Fronts Gets a Monday Panel
Deeley shares a 25-minute panel at 2:20 p.m. on November 9 with Cliff Jones, chief of the FCC Laboratory Division, and Peter Hyun of Rainfall Strategies, on enforcing drone equipment authorization and supply-chain rules. The bureau Deeley now runs proposed $25,000 fines in July against eight suspected DJI front companies.
Patrick Webre, Deeley’s predecessor, signed those notices after the eight companies ignored the bureau’s letters of inquiry. A week later the bureau proposed cutting off imports and sales from nine companies, XAG among them. Before his promotion Deeley was the bureau’s chief of staff and deputy chief, and the FCC’s announcement says he supervised its national-security enforcement work. He came to the FCC from the Justice Department’s National Security Division, where he handled CFIUS and Team Telecom reviews.
The other two FCC officials appear in separate sessions, according to AUVSI’s published program. Arpan Sura, senior counsel to Chairman Brendan Carr, holds a 20-minute fireside chat on spectrum with Qualcomm’s Leslie Barnes on Monday, 11 days after the commission voted to open the 800 MHz cellular band to drones, an order AUVSI publicly backed. Adam Chan, the FCC’s senior national security counsel, joins Assistant Secretary of Commerce Steven Haines and Hidden Level’s Brad Garber at 2 p.m. Tuesday for a session on supply chain security and domestic manufacturing.
Part 108 Is Still Unpublished as Titus Prepares to Discuss Implementation
Titus, co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus, speaks at 11:30 a.m. on November 10. The FAA proposed Part 108 on August 7, 2025. The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 gave the agency 16 months to finish it, so her keynote lands 27 days before the deadline.
The rule still sat unsigned when the FAA put $12 million into its drone test sites in early October. Its companion, Part 146, would certify the automated data service providers that BVLOS operators lean on, and it gets its own Tuesday session with the FAA’s Marcus Cunningham. Welch follows Titus at 12:15 p.m. as lead Senate sponsor of the Aviation Innovation and Global Competitiveness Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at making FAA certification faster and more predictable.
A Tuesday afternoon panel takes on the FAA’s Section 2209 proposal, published May 6, which lets critical infrastructure sites apply for drone flight restrictions. The FAA counted roughly 125,000 candidate facilities. AUVSI’s announcement calls it one of the most consequential proposed rules for large UAS operations. Skydio’s Jenn Player and Southern Company’s William Wheeler are on that panel, and the FAA, DOT and NTSB are listed as invited agencies.
AUVSI holds a separate forum, AUVSI Defense, in the same space on the same two days, with Sen. James Lankford, Rep. Rob Wittman and Col. Gregory Merkl, the Army’s Director for Drone Dominance. That forum is closed to media under the Chatham House Rule, while the policy symposium is open to credentialed press.
DroneXL’s Take
The FCC gets as many named speakers as the FAA because it now decides which drones can be sold in this country. Robbins welcomed the December Covered List action for AUVSI within hours, and Lee’s opening line still treats restrictions as protection. In August the Drone Service Providers Alliance asked AUVSI for a reset built on measurable risk rather than country of origin, and my read is that this isn’t it.
The FCC’s proposed ban on foreign “military-grade” drones in PS Docket 26-189 drew comments from DJI and from the spray drone distributors’ coalition, which says U.S. spray drone sales fell 59% between 2024 and 2025. Someone in the Champions Club on Monday afternoon should ask Deeley and Jones what enforcement looks like for a dealer holding previously authorized aircraft if that proposal is adopted. The operators who can’t afford a fleet swap need that answer, and the panel runs long enough to ask for it.
Sources: AUVSI announcement, October 29, 2026, AUVSI Drone & AAM Policy Symposium program, AUVSI 2026 speaker list, FCC announcement of Hunter Deeley as Enforcement Bureau chief, August 31, 2026
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