#109 Admiral Phil Kenul: What flying into hurricanes taught him about drone regulation

In this episode of The Vertical Space, Admiral Phil Kenul — Senior Vice President at TriVector Services and Vice Chair of ASTM Committee F38 — brings a perspective on drone regulation that most people in the industry don't have. He spent decades flying NOAA aircraft into hurricanes, managed the agency's Global Hawk unmanned weather mission, and now chairs the committee writing the standards that determine whether commercial drone operations can scale.

Phil's central argument is that technology is no longer the bottleneck for the drone industry. Operations, regulatory approvals, and integration with legacy airspace systems are. He sees FAA Part 108 as a genuine inflection point — the rule that will finally let operators fly by regulations and industry consensus standards rather than one-off waivers. But he is equally clear that getting there will take longer and cost more than most people expect, and that success will go to the best operators, not the best aircraft.

Key Topics

• Why the drone industry is not yet ready to scale and what is actually holding it back
• What FAA Part 108 will change and when it is likely to be released
• What flying P-3 Orion aircraft into hurricanes taught Phil about operational risk and standards
• The NOAA Global Hawk hurricane mission — what it proved, what it didn't, and what it got wrong
• Inside ASTM Committee F38 — how UAS standards are developed and what operators are asking for
• Why Europe is falling behind the United States on drone commercialization
• Interoperability gaps between US and European UTM frameworks
• Who will be most successful in the drone industry — and why it won't be whoever has the best aircraft

+ Read Full Transcript

Philip Kenul: All the technology is pretty impressive, but the tech is really not the bottleneck anymore. I think what's actually slowing things down is operations, regulatory approvals and integration to real world legacy systems, specifically airspace. Flying a demo is easy, but really running a reliable, repeatable, economically viable program is completely different.

Jim: Hey everyone, welcome back to The Vertical Space and our conversation with Admiral Phil Kenul. Phil is a Senior Vice President at TriVector Services and serves as Vice Chair of ASTM Committee F38 on unmanned aircraft systems developing UAS standards. He discusses why the drone industry isn't fully ready to scale — arguing technology is no longer the main bottleneck. Operations, regulatory approvals, and integration with legacy airspace systems are. He highlights the upcoming FAA Part 108 rule as an inflection point, enabling actionable ASTM standards and more predictable approvals versus waivers. As ASTM vice chair, he emphasizes interoperability and harmonization challenges, the need for faster standards, and that success will depend on safe, reliable operators and revenue-generating use cases, not hype. Admiral Phil Kenul served as a NOAA Corps officer focused on marine and aviation operations. He flew aircraft in support of aeronautical charting and trained with the Navy to become a WP-3D Orion aircraft pilot. He served as an aircraft commander with NOAA's Hurricane Hunters, as Director of the NOAA Homeland Security Program Office, Commanding Officer of the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center, and Director of NOAA Marine and Aviation Operations. He holds a bachelor's degree in biology from SUNY Cortland and a master's in Environmental and Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Jim: Is there anything that very few in the industry agree with you on?

Philip Kenul: I think nobody generally agrees with me on anything in the industry, but one thing is that there's a tendency for the industry to think that we're ready to scale right now. And I don't fully agree with that. I think we're getting there, but we're not quite there now. All the technology is pretty impressive, but the tech is really not the bottleneck anymore. I think what's actually slowing things down is operations, regulatory approvals and integration to real world legacy systems, specifically airspace. Just 10 or 15 years ago, everybody was talking about package delivery coming online — it's right around the corner. Well, it's starting to get online, but we're not fully there everywhere all the time. Flying a demo is easy, but really running a reliable, repeatable, economically viable program is completely different. All that being said, I think we're at an inflection point right now, and I think one of the biggest signals is the upcoming Part 108 rule for BVLOS operations.

Jim: What parts of the system would you say you're most optimistic about?

Philip Kenul: What I'm optimistic about is that we're going to have a rule that we can start writing actionable standards against. In the past, everybody's been flying by waivers and exemptions. They want to fly by the regulations and by standards. The Part 108 rule is going to set down industry consensus standards as one of the benchmarks to really open up the commercialization of these activities.

Luka: Do you have any sense when we might see the final 108 rule?

Philip Kenul: Right now, from what I understand — and I talked to the FAA about this recently — it is out of the FAA, out of the Department of Transportation, out of OIRA. The other agencies are looking at it. I'd like to say it's going to come out within the next couple of months. Right now we're working against the NPRM to develop our standards, but things can change when the final rule comes out.

Luka: How big of a change might the final rule reflect?

Philip Kenul: What I think is not going to change — the airworthiness and design requirements are pretty well set. We are working on those now at ASTM. What I'm not too sure about is where the conspicuity issues are going to come up, electronic conspicuity and the right of way rules. Most of the discussions over the past year have been on the right of way rules, and then recently they reopened the comment period for electronic conspicuity. So there might be some additions or changes we weren't expecting.

Peter: Did those same agencies already weigh in on the first draft before it was released?

Philip Kenul: I'm pretty sure they had some feedback. All I've heard is that most of the discussions over the past year have been on the right of way rules. Everybody's guess is it's coming out real soon — sooner rather than later.

NOAA Roots and Standards Mindset

Luka: You got into the industry through ships and photogrammetry flights and flying P-3s into hurricanes. Does that path shape how you're thinking about the industry?

Philip Kenul: I started out in operations — ships at NOAA, then aircraft. Mapping for the FAA, airport mapping, VFR mapping, a lot of photogrammetry. I was involved in aviation for close to 20 years in NOAA. Towards the end of that, started getting involved with unmanned aircraft systems in the late 1990s. Part of my job as head of operations in the flight department at NOAA was we worked a lot with standards. After I retired, I kind of just transitioned into the world of standards by accident. Standards are real important — whether you're looking at any kind of operations, marine or aviation. They're even more critical today in these emerging technologies because there's not really a roadmap of how things are going to go forward. You need good solid regulations and you need standards to build against those regulations. That's really what we're doing at ASTM.

Flying Into Hurricanes

Jim: Could you give us a quick story of what flying into hurricanes was like?

Philip Kenul: Flying into hurricanes was probably about the most exciting thing I've ever done. There was an element of danger and risk involved, but we tried to manage that risk as well as possible. Flying into a hurricane is kind of like an E-ticket ride at Disney. We had a really good airplane — a Lockheed P-3. It'll get you home under the worst circumstances. But we also had a really well-trained crew — not just a pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer. There were meteorologists on board, avionics techs, all working together to get everybody home in one piece. I've been in turbulence where we'd lose 2,000 feet in a blink of an eye, and as soon as we got to the bottom of that elevator shaft, we'd get an updraft that shot us back up 2,000 feet. As far as excitement goes, it was pretty exciting. But these days I just fly a desk.

Why Hurricane Recon Matters

Jim: What's the incremental value of the data you're getting from within the aircraft that you would not otherwise get from some other sensor?

Philip Kenul: You can have satellite imagery, but the data you collect on a P-3 — Doppler radar, C-band radar, X-band radar, and dropwindsondes that collect temperature, dew point, wind speed, and direction once every two seconds, fed back in real time to the hurricane center — that's what ingest into meteorological models to support the development of forecasts. Over the years, the research has improved models for hurricane forecasts both in intensity and in track. That's important to the people on shore where the hurricane's going to hit. Also going to tell you where the hurricane's not going to hit — where to put the evacuation areas, where to put out the alerts. It costs money to start alerting people to leave their homes and board up and evacuate. On the whole, it's a program that's well worth the bang for the buck.

The SHOUT Program

Luka: You've flown P-3s into hurricanes, and then years later you're managing a program that's trying to do the same with Global Hawks. What was that transition like?

Philip Kenul: The mission was called SHOUT — Sensing Hazards with Operational Unmanned Technology. We flew three to six tropical storms and three wind storms. We even took it up to the Arctic to collect data. The aircraft performed pretty well and improved the forecast by about 15% for the missions we accomplished. But the mission required new systems and integration in an aircraft that wasn't meant to be a flying weather station. The Global Hawk was meant for a different purpose — it wasn't purpose-built for meteorological observations. There were also limits to airspace clearances. When flying the P-3, we could go just about anywhere — we routinely flew over Cuban airspace. Flying a Global Hawk sends a different message. One of the bigger lessons: we built the mission around the aircraft instead of building the aircraft around the mission. Another misconception was that an unmanned aircraft would merely simplify the operation. We had the same manpower requirements and maybe more — the Global Hawk flew for 24 hours versus the P-3's 10 hours. The logistics footprint just didn't go away because it was an autonomous aircraft.

Luka: The complexity actually increased.

Philip Kenul: This was an experiment trying to prove a case. What it did prove was that we could take people out of harm's way — out of a dull, dirty, dangerous mission. Could it do it efficiently and economically? At the time, 10 years ago, we didn't prove that case. There was reliance on data links, and when the plane flew up to the Arctic, the data links were not that great — not a lot of SATCOM communications. There were latency issues and sensor issues. Ten years later, I think we have a better understanding of what autonomy can do.

Peter: So if not the Global Hawk, what is the future of flying in or over hurricanes?

Philip Kenul: Right now NOAA's still flying 50-year-old P-3s. The SHOUT program didn't convince the agency to change over to unmanned aircraft for their next-generation research platform. They're moving to a newer manned aircraft — probably a C-130 variant. But at the same time we were doing the Global Hawk mission, we started dropping small drones from the P-3. There's an external belly shoot you can load expendables into. Just last year, a small drone called the Black Swift flew for 119 minutes inside the storm, collecting horizontal data at the lower altitudes. That tends to be the most dangerous altitude for a manned aircraft — too many close calls at 1,500 feet. So we're transitioning — you can look at it as manned-unmanned teaming. That's one of the good things that came out of the research programs at NOAA 10 years ago.

Philip Kenul: The Air Force flies the 53rd Weather Squadron with P-3 J models now. We've flown P-3s for years — about 10 years ago we put new wings and a tail on them because they're such a good platform. The thing the P-3 gave us that the C-130 is going to be hard to engineer is the ability to put a tail Doppler radar on the back. The C-130 has landing gear on the belly — nowhere to put a radar. But they may be looking at phased array radar or other technology.

Luka: Can you expand on why the agency was not convinced about the unmanned track?

Philip Kenul: We took advanced concept technical demonstrators for the Global Hawks — the first ones built for the Department of Defense, given to NASA. We had to do a lot of reverse engineering on them. We had to build a new dropsonde dispenser — like a Coke machine spitting out mini dropsondes from the tail. We had a hard time getting that to work. We had to add additional radar sensors, which took time. We were jury-rigging an airplane to do our mission. When we added up all the costs — getting airspace clearances from Edwards Air Force Base all the way to the Atlantic, having a chase aircraft to get it out of Wallops into international airspace — it just did not seem worthwhile to the agency. Instead, they're going to a completely new aircraft.

Luka: If you were briefing a program manager about to run a similar program now, what would you tell them that's not in the official report?

Philip Kenul: When I first started flying hurricanes in 1996, nobody in that airplane thought we'd still be flying manned aircraft by 2026. I still think you could do it if you build a purpose-built aircraft for that mission and not try to jury-rig something. Any large unmanned aircraft — I don't know of one that people would take the chance of putting into the storm. I'd rather lose an unmanned aircraft than a manned aircraft, but the risk of losing a Global Hawk-sized platform at this time is too high.

Jim: How many manned aircraft have ever been lost?

Philip Kenul: Only one in the fifties that the Air Force flew. NOAA has not lost an aircraft. We had one in Hurricane Hugo that lost an engine at 1,500 feet — they were able to pull it out at about 700 feet above the deck. We had another one doing a North Atlantic Storm out of Newfoundland that lost three engines. Salt water accretion on the turbines flamed three engines out. They were able to get another engine started up at about 700 feet. That's one of the reasons why eventually you should go to unmanned aircraft for those kind of dull, dirty, dangerous missions.

Jim: Given the mission of NOAA, were there any other applications for aviation beyond storms?

Philip Kenul: We have two P-3s, a G-4, four Twin Otters, a couple of Turbo Commanders, and a fleet of drones for environmental observations. Programs like fisheries observations, Antarctic observations. Everything from marine mammal observations over the water to coastal mapping, coral reef mapping, vertical profiles for meteorological data. The biggest thing they've been putting effort into is the P-3-launched drone into hurricanes.

Jim: What's your take today on unmanned weather capabilities?

Philip Kenul: There's a lot of potential for taking vertical profiles with drones — put them up automatically, several times a day, same location. A lot of that is done with unmanned balloons — 122 stations four times a day, they launch balloons to collect meteorological data. There's potential to do that with drones. And with the low-altitude economy coming around, there's going to be a need for more low-level weather data for both eVTOL and package delivery drones. Short vertical profiles up to 400 feet, 1,000 feet, whatever it takes. The industry has long been enamored with the idea of aircraft sharing actual weather conditions — crowdsourcing weather to service suppliers. That can't be a bad thing. It's going to help.

Inside ASTM F38 Committee

Jim: Tell us about your experiences with ASTM F38.

Philip Kenul: The committee's been around since 2003. ASTM is a worldwide organization — about 600 global members now. We've got 36 published standards and we're working on 25 standards in draft. One of the key areas is the standards for Part 108, the Beyond Visual Line of Sight standards. We're hoping to get that published around the time the final rule comes out — hoping for day-one compliance. We're developing a meta-standard: a lot of the work is already done in other standards. We're going to consolidate that in one standard to kick things off so that industry has a standard they can point to that will comply with Part 108.

Jim: What drove the need for the committee in the first place?

Global Standards Adoption

Philip Kenul: Back in the early 2000s, everybody was looking at drones and UAS as the next best thing and they needed standards. The FAA wanted a standards organization to develop standards for unmanned systems. ASTM, which has standards in various industry categories, established a committee through an agreement with the FAA.

Luka: How much of the ASTM work is US-centric versus applicable in Europe?

Philip Kenul: It's very applicable. In the past, EASA has recognized more ASTM standards than the FAA has. I think that's about to change. ASTM and EUROCAE are both global organizations — everybody can adopt our standards. I was just in Europe two weeks ago and on a panel with Bobby Healy. One of the issues was that Europe seems to be falling behind. Five years ago, I thought Europe was way ahead of the United States with implementation. They had regulations in place, you could build standards, gear operations toward that. But things got bogged down. With Part 108 coming out, and also with the implementation the FAA authorized in Dallas-Fort Worth — several different companies operating in the same airspace at the same time — a lot of people in Europe are looking at the United States as the place to be right now.

Europe vs US Momentum

Luka: What are the most important means of compliance still outstanding that are preventing widespread BVLOS operations?

Philip Kenul: A big part is the airworthiness and design standards for the aircraft. One of the challenges is that the BVLOS standard goes from zero to 1,320 pounds. How do you write an airworthiness standard for a 15-pound drone at the same time as a 600-kilogram drone? The other issues are the operator requirements, training requirements, and the Declaration of Requirements — the requirements to declare compliance with the means of compliance.

Luka: With 600-plus members, what are you hearing from operators?

Philip Kenul: One of the key things I'm hearing is that interoperability is a problem. It's not just a technical problem but a problem across borders — lack of global harmonization. Different regulators have different requirements and that fragmentation tends to slow things down. The data models between US and European UTM frameworks are the same, but the data exchange models are different. In the US we're looking at a generally federated model for UTM. That's not necessarily being pushed in Europe. The operators want repeatability, fewer one-off waivers, more predictable approvals. That's really what they're waiting for in Part 108 — fly by the regulations and industry consensus standards.

Jim: What operators are most apt to attend the ASTM meetings?

Philip Kenul: Basically everybody in the delivery business — Manna shows up, Amazon, Wing. UTM providers, flight trackers, you name it. They want the standards faster. There are probably half a dozen people from Wing alone working on our committee work. Standards work is very slow — it takes at least a year to get a standard out from start to finish, sometimes longer. It's like watching sausage get made.

Who Will Be Most Successful

Jim: Where do you see the greatest success from the different constituents?

Philip Kenul: Right now I see the potential for smaller drones taking off and being successful. I keep going back to the Part 108 rule — that's going to be a real inflection point. Manna, Amazon, Wing are doing the most work to lift everybody up right now. The lessons learned from them are going to be good lessons for everybody else. But when it comes down to it, the ones who are successful — it's not going to be the best or sexiest aircraft. It's going to come down to who's the best operators, who can do it safely, reliably, at scale in the real world. Integrating into legacy air traffic management is going to be one of the big pluses in this industry.

Luka: How big is the gap between what people think the state of the industry is versus what you actually see?

Philip Kenul: People see extremes on the outside. Folks are saying this is never going to work, it's impossible. On the inside, people say we can do this now, the regulators are the problem. The reality is really somewhere in between. We're not at scale yet, but it's more real than people think. Getting to that tipping point is going to move things forward. Scaling is happening, but only in specific use cases right now, and it's going to take time and investment.

Peter: Do you see how the high-volume defense side starts to percolate over into the commercial side?

Philip Kenul: I was in Europe a couple of weeks ago at Exponential Europe. A few years ago it was very commercial — this year I'd say it was 80% military. The Ukrainians were there with some of their products. They're turning things around in less than six months. When Shaheds kept coming, they figured out a way to knock them out — getting an 80-90% success rate. Then the Russians started flying at 15,000 feet instead of low at 5,000 feet. Took them another few months to figure out how to hit them at 15,000 feet. Innovation driven by war — it's been the story since time on end. If we can move the industry as fast commercially as they do on a wartime footing, where would we be now? The commercial side can only go as fast as the regulatory side goes, and there's a different level of risk accepted in a wartime scenario than in a civil scenario. But military applications can get commercialized later — hopefully when these wars are over.

Peter: The drones built for last-mile delivery have no single points of failure and all the levels of safety framed by the regulations. Yet the volume of production of those types of drones is three or four orders of magnitude lower than what's happening on the military side. With all of that iteration and maturation in technology on the military side, I have to see the two meeting at some point in the future.

Jim: Who most impresses you in the industry today?

Philip Kenul: I think Anra Technologies is doing great with UTM — I've been following them for years. Manna Drones out of Ireland — very impressive. They've got a dynamic leader who's pushing things ahead. Another company that's really helping everybody move forward is Wing. Sometimes people look at Wing as the 800-pound gorilla on the block, but what they do now is going to help everybody. The rising tide lifts all boats, and I've seen them as being very collaborative with industry partners.

Jim: Five, ten years from now, how is the world going to be different?

Philip Kenul: I've learned to be careful with predictions — I usually get them wrong. But in five years, I can see real scale and operations, not necessarily everywhere. Infrastructure inspection, cargo, medical logistics, and a growing package delivery service. Ten years out it'll be more transformative but not universal. If it's not, a lot of the venture capital might start drying up by then. But I think there's going to be deeper integration in the airspace, more autonomy, early operations for advanced air mobility and eVTOL on some structured routes — get me to the airport use cases, maybe more cargo delivery first. Companies like Reliable Robotics who are just flying cargo — you'll see a lot of that in ten years, but still might be a bit of a novelty rather than fully integrated into the transportation ecosystem. Public acceptance is going to be a big factor.

Jim: At what point do standards become an enabler versus a necessary impediment?

Philip Kenul: Standards are definitely seen as an enabler. But we don't want to write standards where standards aren't required for the regulation. As a means of compliance, definitely yes. If it's articulated in a requirement in a regulation, or if industry brings us a requirement for a standard, we'll work on it. But we're not just going to work on standards for standards' sake.

Jim: If you wanted to send a message to the audience as a result of this discussion, what would it be?

Philip Kenul: I think people should ignore the hype of this industry. I think it's going to be real in the future. Technology is not going to solve this problem by itself. People need to look at real use cases that are going to be revenue-generating. You have to be honest about the complexity of this problem. It's not a normal startup industry. It's going to take a lot longer than people thought and cost a lot more. But doing a one-off demonstration is easy — building a business is pretty hard. And I think a lot of people in this industry have found that out. But there is good news — the last 10 years, there's been a lot of lessons learned. I do see a path forward.