Fire Weather Development Act of 2024

New subsection 6(b) exempts premium pay for Incident Meteorologists performing emergency wildland fire suppression duties from the federal overtime pay cap under section 5547 of title 5, and amends section 5542(a)(5) to explicitly include the National Weather Service in the list of agencies covered by that overtime provision.

New paragraph 2(i)(5) requires NOAA, in cooperation with NASA, to utilize UAS capabilities for fire weather observations and permits use of a wildfire airspace operations system that accounts for piloted aircraft, UAS, and emerging capabilities once NASA determines it is ready for operational use.

Entirely new Section 7 requires the Director of NIST (through the Public Safety and Communications Research Division) to research public safety communication coordination standards among wildland firefighters, conduct field testing of communications technologies, publish recommendations to improve coordination, transmit them to OMB and OSTP for implementation, and submit reports to Congress. GAO must report on agency implementation within one year.

Fire weather testbed funding (Section 5(c)) changed from a one-time authorization of $15,000,000 for fiscal year 2024 (drawn from Procurement, Acquisition, and Construction) to $4,000,000 per year for each of fiscal years 2025 through 2028 (totaling $16 million over four years), with the specific appropriation source language removed.

Unmanned aircraft systems authorization (Section 2(i)) changed from $5,000,000 for fiscal year 2024 (from Procurement, Acquisition, and Construction) to $5,000,000 for fiscal year 2025, with the specific appropriation source language removed.

Short title year updated from 2023 to 2024, and the general definitions section was renumbered from Section 7 to Section 8 to accommodate the new communications research section.