North Carolina Legislative Framework and Federal Recommendations

Prepared for legislative and public policy consideration

September 2026

Purpose

This proposal establishes a practical framework for integrating useful drone technology while protecting crewed aviation, personal privacy, children, public gatherings, agriculture, and critical infrastructure. It distinguishes matters North Carolina can regulate from matters that require Congress or the Federal Aviation Administration to act.

Policy status This document is a legislative policy framework. Legislative counsel should convert its recommendations into bill language and confirm final statutory cross-references before introduction.

Executive Summary

Drone use will continue to expand in agriculture, delivery, inspection, public safety, recreation, and passenger transportation. The same aircraft can also interfere with airplanes and helicopters, conduct invasive surveillance, deliver contraband, or carry a dangerous payload. Existing law addresses parts of these risks, but identification, enforcement, low-altitude traffic management, privacy, and counter-drone response remain incomplete.

The recommended approach applies stricter requirements as an aircraft becomes heavier, more autonomous, more difficult to identify, capable of operating beyond visual line of sight, or able to carry cameras, chemicals, passengers, or weapons. Legitimate operators receive clear rules and affordable compliance options. Deliberately anonymous, invasive, or weaponized operations receive strong penalties.

Immediate Legislative Priorities

1. Preserve the unconditional right-of-way of every crewed aircraft over every uncrewed aircraft.

2. Require secure identification for every drone operated outdoors, subject only to narrow exceptions, and create a free public flight map that protects owner information.

3. Establish airport protection zones with a one-nautical-mile prohibition on unauthorized operations and stronger protection for runway approach and departure paths.

4. Modernize North Carolina privacy law to cover targeted aerial surveillance, advanced sensors, persistent tracking, sexual exploitation, and harmful data use.

5. Regulate spray-capable aircraft, dangerous payloads, and mobile fiber-optic-controlled drones according to the risks they create.

6. Create trained regional counter-UAS teams so airports, schools, communities, and rural counties can obtain rapid assistance without authorizing dangerous private countermeasures.

Guiding Principles

A crewed aircraft never loses right-of-way because it lacks an electronic transmitter or because that equipment fails.
Every meaningful outdoor drone should be identifiable. The public may confirm the flight, while personal registration information remains restricted.
Privacy laws should regulate targeting, persistence, sensors, and data use rather than attempting to claim local ownership of navigable airspace.
A missing identification signal is grounds for investigation, not automatic proof that an aircraft is hostile.
Physical or electronic mitigation belongs to trained and legally authorized public agencies, not private citizens or ordinary security personnel.
Agricultural, emergency, infrastructure, research, and recreational uses should remain lawful when conducted under rules appropriate to their risk.

Division of Legislative Responsibility

Congress and the FAA should control aircraft certification, airspace, right-of-way, airport flight restrictions, national identification standards, beyond-line-of-sight operations, and interstate commercial operations. North Carolina should regulate privacy, stalking, voyeurism, harmful payloads, pesticides, state criminal offenses, civil remedies, public-safety organization, and takeoff or landing from state and local property. Local governments should use a state model ordinance rather than create conflicting airspace rules.

This division is necessary because the federal government has exclusive authority over aviation safety and use of the national airspace. The FAA recognizes that states retain substantial authority over privacy, harassment, trespass, reckless endangerment, police warrants, and similar conduct. State legislation should therefore address harmful behavior without setting independent flight routes or aircraft equipment standards that conflict with federal law.

Part One Federal Aviation and Identification Policy

1 Universal Drone Identification

Recommended policy Congress should require every unmanned aircraft operated outdoors to transmit a secure identification signal. Narrow exceptions may cover operation wholly inside an enclosed building and traditional model aircraft operating only within an FAA-recognized identification area. Small size alone should not create an exception when an aircraft carries a camera, sensor, or payload.

The transmission must use a tamper-resistant unique identifier and a digitally authenticated message. Deliberately disabling, cloning, altering, or falsely transmitting the identifier should be a separate offense.

Required public data should include aircraft position, altitude, direction, speed, time, operational category, authorization status, and a pseudonymous identification number.
Restricted data should include the owner name, home address, telephone number, exact controller location, and complete historical flight record.
FAA and authorized law enforcement should receive immediate access to registration, controller, permit, and retained flight information.
An accidental equipment failure should normally result in a landing direction and corrective action. Knowing evasion or spoofing should carry stronger penalties.

Explanation Current Remote ID generally follows the federal registration requirement. Some recreational drones weighing 0.55 pound or less are not required to register, even though a small aircraft may carry a capable camera. Existing Remote ID also depends upon a compliant aircraft continuing to broadcast. Secure authentication would help authorities distinguish a genuine signal from a copied or falsified one.

2 Free Public Flight Map

Recommended policy The FAA should establish or approve a free national website and mobile application that displays active drone operations. The public display should show the pseudonymous aircraft identifier and operational information needed to determine whether a nearby drone appears registered and authorized. It should not display the owner identity.

The public may view the active flight and a short recent track, such as the preceding 30 minutes. Complete records should remain in a protected government system for no longer than 60 days unless an accident, complaint, investigation, litigation hold, or other documented need requires preservation.

The application should include a simple method to report a hazardous or invasive flight and preserve the relevant identifier and track.
Public records must not enable searches by owner name or creation of long-term movement profiles.
All government access must be logged and subject to audit.

Explanation A broadcast signal alone does not create nationwide coverage. Airports, schools, prisons, stadiums, public-safety agencies, and critical facilities need receiving equipment, and approved consumer applications could securely relay signed signals. Sensitive military, counter-UAS, and active law-enforcement flights may require delayed or limited public display, but their positions must remain available to the FAA, air traffic control, and other authorized aviation users.

3 Legacy Drone Compliance

Recommended policy Existing drones should receive a 24-month transition period. Owners may comply through a manufacturer firmware update, an affordable certified broadcast module, or a trade-in program. Existing ownership should remain lawful, but permanent anonymous outdoor operation should not.

Commercial fleets should bear ordinary compliance costs. Congress should authorize rebates or credits for recreational owners, small farms, volunteer emergency organizations, and nonprofit model-aircraft clubs when the cost would otherwise force useful equipment out of service.

Explanation Federal rules already allow certain older aircraft to use a Remote ID broadcast module. A transition based on retrofits avoids unnecessary confiscation and waste. Aircraft that physically cannot support an approved module should be limited to indoor use or an approved identification area after the transition, unless a narrowly defined emergency authorization applies.

4 Airport and Heliport Protection Zones

Recommended policy Congress should direct the FAA to establish uniform, machine-readable protection zones for active FAA-listed airports, military airports, heliports, seaplane bases, and properly registered private and agricultural strips. The FAA, rather than individual local governments, should define and publish the airspace boundaries.

No person should operate a drone within one nautical mile of an airport movement-area boundary without affirmative FAA authorization. Within three nautical miles, an authorized drone should remain at or below 200 feet AGL or the lower altitude published on the applicable FAA facility map, unless the FAA grants a mission-specific approval for a higher altitude. The ordinary allowance to fly above a nearby structure should not apply in this area.

Designated approach and departure corridors should extend at least three nautical miles beyond runway ends and prohibit unauthorized drone operations at any altitude.
Emergency medical, firefighting, search-and-rescue, airport inspection, construction, and similar flights may receive expedited authorization.
Owners of private and agricultural strips must keep facility status and coordinates current so inactive locations do not create permanent restrictions.
Violations involving interference with a crewed aircraft, runway, emergency operation, or wildfire response should receive enhanced penalties.

Explanation The current general ceiling for small drones is 400 feet AGL, subject to a structure-related allowance. A 500-foot ceiling near an airport would therefore provide less protection than current general rules and would place drones at altitudes used by approaching aircraft. A 200-foot ceiling provides more separation, but distance alone is not enough because risk is concentrated along runway paths.

5 Crewed Aircraft Right of Way

Recommended policy Federal law should state without qualification that every unmanned aircraft must yield to every crewed aircraft. The duty must apply whether or not the crewed aircraft transmits ADS-B or another electronic conspicuity signal.

The FAA should remove any provision from the 2025 Part 108 proposed rule that would give an unmanned aircraft priority over a crewed aircraft merely because the crewed aircraft is not electronically broadcasting. As of September 12, 2026, the final rule remained under federal review and had not taken effect.

Explanation Agricultural airplanes, helicopters, ultralights, emergency aircraft, and some general aviation aircraft legally operate without continuous electronic broadcasting. Equipment can also fail. The newer entrant should carry the detect-and-avoid burden. Congress may support voluntary, affordable electronic conspicuity equipment without making a pilot's right-of-way depend upon it.

6 Beyond Visual Line of Sight Operations

Recommended policy Routine beyond-visual-line-of-sight operation should require participation in an FAA-approved traffic-management service, submission of flight intent, route-conformance monitoring, secure command and navigation, and a documented lost-link and emergency-landing plan. Detect-and-avoid equipment must account for aircraft that are not electronically broadcasting.

Requirements should increase with weight, speed, population exposure, fleet size, autonomy, and payload. One standard should not govern both a small survey aircraft over an empty field and a heavy delivery aircraft crossing a populated area.

Explanation A cooperative traffic system can coordinate known aircraft, but it cannot by itself protect against a silent, malfunctioning, or malicious aircraft. Noncooperative detection and safe containment remain necessary around airports, hospitals, agricultural operations, firefighting activity, and populated areas.

7 Mobile Fiber Optic Controlled Drones

Recommended policy Congress should prohibit the knowing, unlicensed civilian manufacture, importation, sale, possession, and operation of a completed or configured mobile unmanned aircraft that deploys a fiber-optic cable, wire, or other physical communication line during flight for command, navigation, targeting, or video transmission. The offense should also cover a completed conversion system primarily designed to give a conventional aircraft that capability.

Narrow licenses may be issued for the Armed Forces, certified law enforcement, approved counter-UAS testing, and controlled defense research. A stationary aircraft connected vertically to a fixed ground station for power, inspection, emergency communications, or public safety should not fall within this prohibition merely because it uses a tether.

Explanation Mobile fiber-optic systems can continue receiving commands when ordinary radio-frequency jamming is used. The legal definition must use the actual technology rather than the broad phrase fly by wire, which would otherwise describe the electronic flight controls used by most modern drones and many crewed aircraft. Any authorized fiber-controlled aircraft should still carry an independent secure identification transmitter.

8 Aircraft Cybersecurity and Manufacturer Duties

Recommended policy Higher-risk aircraft and identification modules should use secure boot, signed software updates, encrypted command links, protected event logs, credential revocation, navigation-spoof detection, and a safe response to loss of communications. Manufacturers and importers should maintain security updates for a disclosed support period and report serious vulnerabilities.

FAA geospatial restrictions should be delivered in a signed, current format. Consumer aircraft should warn or prevent unauthorized takeoff into clearly defined airports, temporary flight restrictions, prisons, and approved critical sites, with authenticated overrides for authorized users.

Explanation Geofencing reduces accidental violations but cannot stop a determined attacker using modified or homemade equipment. It should support identification, detection, enforcement, and trained response rather than replace them. Software should never force an abrupt in-flight shutdown that creates a greater danger on the ground.

Part Two North Carolina Safety Privacy and Enforcement Policy

9 Targeted Aerial Surveillance

Recommended policy North Carolina should amend G.S. 15A-300.1 to define targeted aerial surveillance as intentionally directing, focusing, zooming, recording, livestreaming, tracking, identifying, or using enhanced sensors to obtain information about a person, dwelling, curtilage, enclosed backyard, or other protected private activity without consent or lawful authority.

The definition should cover ordinary cameras, audio capture, thermal imaging, biometric identification, and later analysis of collected information. It should exclude transitory background capture needed for lawful navigation when the information is not focused upon a person, retained, analyzed, or disclosed for another purpose.

A knowing first violation should support injunctive relief, deletion of unlawfully obtained data, actual or statutory damages, and attorney fees.
Repeated conduct, violation of a protective order, use of prohibited enhanced sensors, or surveillance intended to facilitate another offense should receive criminal penalties.
Police use should ordinarily require a particularized warrant describing the place or person, duration, sensors, data sought, and permitted use. Exigent use should require written supervisory approval and prompt review.

Explanation North Carolina already prohibits certain drone surveillance of people, occupied dwellings and curtilage, and private real property. The statute does not define surveillance and relies heavily on civil enforcement. Clear conduct and data-use elements would make the law easier to follow and enforce while avoiding a state attempt to prescribe flight altitude or routes.

10 Protection of Children and Vulnerable Persons

Recommended policy State law should prohibit intentionally making a particular minor the material focus of repeated drone observation, zooming, tracking, biometric identification, or recording without authorization or another legitimate purpose. Surveillance for sexual gratification, exploitation, intimidation, or facilitation of another offense should be a felony-level aggravating circumstance.

The law should permit ordinary overflight and incidental background imagery and include appropriate exceptions for parents, guardians, authorized schools, public safety, consensual events, and genuine news or public-interest documentation.

Explanation A blanket ban on every drone or camera near a public playground would be difficult to enforce and could prohibit lawful journalism, school events, and family photography. A behavior-based statute targets the conduct of concern: repeated focus, sexual purpose, exploitation, harassment, and harmful retention or distribution. Existing secret-peeping and stalking laws remain available when their elements are satisfied.

11 Commercial Data Protection

Recommended policy A commercial drone operator should collect only the imagery and location information reasonably necessary for the authorized operation. Incidental images should not be sold, used for facial recognition, incorporated into advertising profiles, or provided for an unrelated investigation without legal process.

Non-evidentiary incidental information should normally be deleted within 30 days. Operators must maintain access logs, secure stored data, bind contractors to the same restrictions, and notify affected parties and regulators following a material breach.

Explanation Delivery, inspection, mapping, and agricultural aircraft may record surrounding property to navigate safely. That operational necessity should not become permission to create a permanent commercial surveillance record of homes, children, vehicles, or daily activities.

12 Agricultural Dispensing Operations

Recommended policy North Carolina should supplement federal Part 137 requirements by linking every agricultural dispensing operation to a licensed or otherwise authorized applicator, a registered aircraft, a declared treatment polygon and time window, and a secure electronic application record. Restricted chemical information should be available to regulators and emergency responders but not displayed on the public flight map.

Spray systems should use tamper-evident components and automatically stop dispensing outside the authorized area, following a lost command link, or when another defined safety condition occurs. State rules should address drift monitoring, weather limits, buffer areas, equipment security, spill response, incident reporting, and liability insurance proportionate to aircraft weight and chemical risk.

Explanation Agricultural drones offer substantial benefits in precision and reduced pilot exposure, but a loaded dispensing aircraft creates risks that an ordinary camera drone does not. The policy regulates the applicator, chemical, treatment record, and resulting conduct while leaving aircraft certification and navigable-airspace rules to the FAA.

13 Weapons and Dangerous Payloads

Recommended policy North Carolina should retain its Class E felony for possessing or using a drone with an attached weapon and add explicit aggravated offenses for using an unmanned aircraft to deliver a toxic, biological, radiological, explosive, or other dangerous substance with unlawful intent. Attempt, conspiracy, material assistance, restitution, and forfeiture after conviction should be addressed.

The law should preserve defined exceptions for lawful agriculture, firefighting, military and law-enforcement activity, and authorized scientific research. Payload capacity by itself should not be a crime; the prohibited equipment, conduct, knowledge, and intent must be stated clearly.

Explanation Federal chemical, biological, mass-destruction, aircraft-interference, and airport-security crimes already cover many catastrophic outcomes. A clear state offense and federal drone-specific sentencing enhancement would improve charging and deterrence, but prevention depends primarily upon identification, payload accountability, security screening for high-risk operators, and trained detection and response.

14 Regional Counter UAS Response

Recommended policy North Carolina should establish at least six geographically distributed counter-UAS teams through the State Highway Patrol, State Bureau of Investigation, Emergency Management, or another designated structure. Teams should meet federal training, certification, equipment, FAA coordination, spectrum, privacy, and reporting requirements and should be available through statewide mutual aid.

Permanent or event-specific detection should be prioritized at airports, prisons, major public gatherings, selected school events, water and power facilities, and other locations where consequences justify the intrusion and expense. Systems should combine available identification broadcasts with site-appropriate independent sensors and human confirmation.

Response should proceed from detection and identification to operator contact, warning, aviation and ground-risk assessment, and only then to the least disruptive effective mitigation when a current credible threat exists.
Private citizens, schools, venues, airports, and ordinary security personnel should receive a clear detection-and-reporting pathway but no general authority to jam, hack, shoot, seize, or disable an aircraft.
Plans for schools and large gatherings should identify an incident commander, authorized-flight list, emergency contacts, shelter or evacuation criteria, and bomb-squad and hazardous-material support. Staff should not touch a downed aircraft carrying an unknown payload.

Explanation The SAFER SKIES framework, effective July 1, 2026, permits qualified state, local, Tribal, and territorial agencies to use approved detection and, under stricter conditions, mitigation capabilities. The state and local authority is scheduled to end December 31, 2031, unless Congress extends it. Building regional teams prevents every county, school district, or venue from purchasing expensive equipment or attempting an unsafe response. A drone that is unidentified or annoying is not automatically a credible threat.

15 Penalties Remedies and Due Process

Recommended policy Enforcement should distinguish mistakes from deliberate danger. An inadvertent first-time identification or paperwork violation should ordinarily lead to a landing direction, civil penalty, training, or correction. Deliberate identification evasion, repeated restricted-area operations, targeted surveillance, sexual exploitation, weaponization, and interference with a crewed or emergency aircraft should receive progressively stronger criminal penalties.

Forfeiture should follow conviction or another established judicial process. A victim should be able to obtain an injunction, deletion order, damages, and attorney fees. Evidence collection and access to stored flight records must comply with applicable warrant, due-process, and First Amendment protections.

Explanation Proportionate enforcement encourages ordinary owners to correct mistakes while preserving strong consequences for conduct that is intentional, repeated, invasive, or capable of causing serious injury. Clear elements also reduce arbitrary enforcement against journalists, hobbyists, political activity, or lawful agricultural and commercial operators.

16 State and Local Government Drone Use

Recommended policy State and local agencies should adopt written policies governing mission approval, warrants, emergency use, sensor selection, data minimization, retention, sharing, facial recognition, contractor access, and public reporting. Generalized monitoring of protests, worship, political meetings, or other First Amendment activity should be prohibited without a specific threat and lawful process.

Non-evidentiary information concerning innocent people and aircraft should ordinarily be deleted within 30 days. Agencies should publish annual aggregate information concerning missions, complaints, counter-UAS actions, false alarms, data requests, retention exceptions, and known collateral effects.

Explanation Government detection and drone programs can protect the public, but they can also become systems for persistent tracking. Written limits, short retention, access logs, audits, and public statistics preserve the legitimacy of the program and provide evidence needed to improve or end ineffective practices.

Part Three Passenger Aircraft and Advanced Air Mobility

17 Passenger Powered Lift Aircraft

Recommended policy Passenger-carrying powered-lift aircraft should remain within the federal aircraft certification, airworthiness, pilot qualification, air-carrier, maintenance, dispatch, air-traffic-control, and accident-investigation systems. They should never be treated as consumer drones or made subject to ordinary counter-UAS mitigation authority while carrying a person.

Autonomous passenger operations should not begin until an independent safety case demonstrates performance appropriate to the passenger operation, including redundant flight controls and power, secure communications and navigation, noncooperative detect-and-avoid, battery-fire protection, emergency landing capability, cybersecurity, maintenance assurance, and adequate insurance.

Explanation The FAA has established powered-lift pilot and operating rules and anticipates early operations using existing airports, heliports, and aviation procedures. New propulsion does not remove the need for the safety disciplines applied to other passenger aircraft. Automation should be expanded only as operating evidence supports it.

Part Four Implementation

Federal Actions

1. Congress should direct FAA rulemaking for universal authenticated identification, the public flight map, airport zones, unconditional crewed-aircraft right-of-way, BVLOS traffic management, cybersecurity, and legacy compliance.

2. Congress should prohibit unlicensed mobile fiber-optic-controlled drones and establish appropriate federal offenses and import controls.

3. The FAA should resolve the Part 108 proposal without transferring collision-avoidance risk from drones to crewed aircraft that lack electronic broadcasting equipment.

4. Congress should fund receiver infrastructure, small-owner retrofit assistance, counter-UAS training, and rural public-safety access.

North Carolina Actions

1. Enact amendments addressing targeted aerial surveillance, children, harmful data use, dangerous payloads, agricultural dispensing, protective orders, civil remedies, and graduated penalties.

2. Establish regional federally compliant counter-UAS teams and a single statewide reporting and mutual-aid process.

3. Direct state agencies to adopt privacy, retention, procurement, cybersecurity, and annual reporting standards.

4. Adopt a state model local ordinance limited to launch and recovery from local property, event administration, privacy, nuisance conduct, and referral to appropriate state or federal authorities.

5. Adopt a joint resolution requesting the federal aviation measures contained in this policy.

Implementation Schedule

Period	Primary responsibility	Action
First 6 months	North Carolina General Assembly and state agencies	Enact privacy, payload, agricultural, reporting, and regional-response provisions. Begin federal certification and procurement planning.
First 12 months	Congress FAA and North Carolina	Begin federal rulemaking and a public-map pilot at selected airports and high-risk sites. Establish the statewide reporting pathway and initial regional teams.
Within 24 months	FAA manufacturers owners and retailers	Apply secure identification to new products and complete the legacy retrofit transition, with approved hardship and model-aircraft options.
Within 36 months	FAA service providers and high-risk operators	Implement certified traffic management and noncooperative detect-and-avoid requirements for routine higher-risk BVLOS operations.
Annually	FAA DOJ DHS and North Carolina oversight bodies	Publish aggregate safety, enforcement, privacy, false-alarm, incident, and counter-UAS performance information and recommend corrections.

Funding

Federal aviation and homeland-security grants should pay for the national identification network, regional training, and major counter-UAS equipment. Federal fees may be assessed on higher-risk commercial fleets and heavy aircraft. North Carolina may supplement those funds through appropriations and reasonable fees on dispensing permits and other activities that remain within state authority. Basic recreational registration fees should remain modest, and small-owner retrofit assistance should prevent compliance costs from becoming a de facto confiscation.

Oversight Measures

Crewed-aircraft conflicts, evasive actions, collisions, and airport incursions.
Identification compliance, equipment failures, spoofing events, and enforcement outcomes.
Privacy complaints, warrants, retention exceptions, deletion compliance, and civil remedies.
Agricultural drift events, spills, lost-link events, and unauthorized dispensing.
Counter-UAS deployments, confirmed threats, false alarms, mitigation actions, collateral effects, and complaints.
Cybersecurity vulnerabilities, required corrections, recalls, and unsupported products.

Conclusion

Drone technology should be permitted to develop, but it should not create anonymous aircraft, transfer collision risk to crewed aviation, or leave families and public institutions without practical protection. This policy gives legitimate operators a clear path to comply and gives regulators and trained responders the information and authority needed to address dangerous conduct. Its central requirements are straightforward: identify the aircraft, protect crewed flight, control hazardous capabilities, prohibit targeted abuse, and reserve countermeasures for trained public agencies operating under law and oversight.