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H.R.3958 / 118th Congress

To direct the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration to publish guidance and implementation procedures for unmanned aircraft systems with respect to environmental reviews, and for other purposes.

Referred to the Subcommittee on Aviation.

Official summary

Version 00 · Introduced in House · Jun 9, 2023

This bill directs the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to publish guidance and implementation procedures for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), also known as drones, that specifically address environmental assessments and reviews.

For instance, the FAA guidance and implementation procedures must

provide guidance for nationwide programmatic approaches for large-scale distributed UAS operations to leverage environmental assessments or environmental impact statements for subsequent related actions,

Showing the opening paragraphs of the official summary.

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contain intra-agency process improvements to avoid providing conflicting safety and environmental feedback to operators, and

prioritize proposed projects or activities that can be shown to contain specific factors that benefit the environment (e.g., offsets or limits the impacts of non-zero emission activities).

The bill also directs the FAA, to the maximum extent practicable, to concurrently conduct reviews and analyses for an environmental assessment required as part of the review of a UAS's design, construction, maintenance and operational sustainability, airworthiness approval, or operational approval.

Further, the FAA must develop and establish substantive criteria and standards metrics to determine the airworthiness of an unmanned aircraft based on specific noise standards.

Read the summary on Congress.gov
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Who introduced it

Rep. D'Esposito, Anthony [R-NY-4] · R–NY

Committees

  • Transportation and Infrastructure Committee
2 cosponsorship records, including any withdrawals

Actions

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  1. Referred to the Subcommittee on Aviation.

  2. Referred to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

  3. Introduced in House

  4. Introduced in House

Bill text & related measures

Text links open the official source. We currently store references to these documents.

Related bills identified by Congress.gov

Source last updated: Nov 18, 2025. Consult Congress.gov for the current record.

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Objective

Analyze H.R.3958 as objectively as possible. Explain its main provisions, who would be affected, possible benefits and harms, implementation, exceptions, and uncertainties. Present the strongest arguments for and against it, and identify evidence needed to assess its public impact.

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Progressive lens

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Liberty lens

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