CHRISTIANSBURG — U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, stood on a patch of grass along Cambria Street as Nicholas Devereux assisted him with a task on his phone.
“Am I actually going to get what I ordered?” Warner asked company Wing’s policy and governmental affairs manager, who confirmed that the senator in a few moments would in fact receive a package delivered to him by a drone.
Warner turned his attention back to the drop site minutes later after a noisy buzz from above interrupted a brief interaction with reporters. He saw the package lowered toward the ground by the small aircraft and again carefully inquired.
“Now that it’s safe, I can go and get it right?” Warner asked before proceeding to pull most of the contents out of the small box.
Holding up a can of tuna and a small bottle of water in one hand, he looked toward the cameras nearby and quipped.
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“Looks to me like I got lunch,” said Warner, who went viral over two years ago for a video in which he is shown making a tuna melt sandwich.
Warner getting the main ingredient to one of his favorite recipes flown over to him punctuated a stop the senator made to Christiansburg Friday morning, when he went on a brief tour of Wing’s drone delivery facility in town.
Wing, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc., has gained much local and national publicity over the past few years for its provision of a drone delivery service in Christiansburg.
Warner on Friday spoke about his efforts to try to grow the employment of drones in functions such as the one Wing brought to Christiansburg and about some key changes the technology could bring in the future. The senator, who repeatedly cited the support the Wing delivery service has received, also spoke on his view of the Federal Aviation Administration still not moving quickly enough to ease the expansion of drone services.
“My hope has always been that Virginia would become the national and, hopefully, the international leader in this field,” Warner said. “I remember being here when it was still in the experimental stage in 2018. I think it was burrito deliveries. Now over the last couple of years, post-Covid, this has moved from experimentation to an actual delivery service.”
Warner was joined by a handful of elected and municipal officials from Christiansburg and Montgomery County, among others.
While at the site, referred to as the “Nest,” Warner took part in a brief meeting with the local officials before Wing employees showed him around certain parts of the facility. The senator took a look at a drone model and was invited to dabble with the device used to attach the packages and prepare them for delivery.
Warner said the technology’s value is evident when looking at where the delivery was made Friday.
The senator received the tuna and water at a public delivery zone that Wing recently established just outside the Christiansburg Recreation Center. The company created the zone as part of an effort to expand the availability of the drone service.
Despite the praise the operation has received, the deliveries have been limited to certain parts of Christiansburg since they started a few years ago.
Warner pointed to the Huckleberry Trail, which passes by the recreation center. He said people can come to the delivery zone to pick up lunch after walking on the trail.
“That’s the good news,” he said.
The “bad news,” Warner said, is they still need to try to get more relief from the FAA to fill out services across Virginia and the rest of the country.
One point Warner brought up is Virginia Tech, via a poll it conducted, finding that nearly 90% of responders in the community support the service. And he said drones have also shown to be useful in functions such as the inspection of utility lines, roads and bridges.
Warner recalled the recent flooding disaster in Buchanan County.
“This is a perfect solution,” he said. “How can you get food, water and medicine to those communities who got cut off with flooding or [another natural disaster]. This has to be part of a full systemic response program. FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] ought to be all over this. FEMA ought to be one of our allies as we try to move the FAA to go ahead and move forward on the regulations.”
Warner said he thinks the idea of drones is here to stay.
“I think they’ve proven to be safe, effective and actually can provide a great service,” he said.