On May 22, 2026, Argentina's Administración Nacional de Aviación Civil (ANAC) published Resolutions 311, 312, and 313 in Boletín Oficial No. 35915. They took effect the following day, constituting the second major wave of drone liberalization under President Javier Milei — and the most operationally significant yet for Argentina's agricultural sector. Resolution 312, which amends RAAC Part 100 (the unmanned aircraft code), is the centrepiece: it eliminates the 25 kg maximum take-off weight ceiling for rotary-wing drones operating exclusively in rural zones, abolishes blanket prohibitions on night operations and flights in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), and ends the ban on launches from moving vehicles.
The 2026 resolutions built on a foundation laid by Resolution 550/2025, signed August 8, 2025, which had already removed state licensing requirements for drones under 25 kg and zeroed out oversight for sub-250 g devices nationwide. That earlier reform — part of the regulatory simplification agenda initiated by Milei's omnibus Decree 70/2023 — is estimated by industry analysts to have reduced the number of required authorization steps for standard operations by approximately 85%. The 2026 amendments push deeper into territory the 2025 reform left untouched: large-format rotorcraft operating in the agricultural interior.
What the EU Framework Actually Says
Argentina's regulatory architecture is explicitly modelled on the EASA three-tier system. The European Union codified its risk-based drone framework under Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947 for operations and Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/945 for design and manufacturing — both entering full compliance obligation across 31 EASA member states on January 1, 2023. The framework divides drone operations into Open (low-risk routine flights, no prior authorization required), Specific (medium-risk, requiring BVLOS authorization or a full SORA risk assessment), and Certified (high-risk operations comparable in complexity to manned aviation requiring full type certification). Argentina's RAAC Part 100 adopts the same three-tier naming — Categoría Abierta, Categoría Específica, and Categoría Certificada — and replicates the underlying risk logic.
Where Argentina departs from EASA is in how it operationalises Open Category access. EASA gates entry on risk-proximity criteria — distance from people and populated areas — with a 25 kg MTOW ceiling applying across all environments. Argentina's Resolution 312 uses geography as the primary axis: in rural zones, rotorcraft qualify for Open Category with no weight ceiling. This is not a deviation from risk-based logic; it is an application of it. Argentina's pampas — vast, sparsely populated agricultural plains — genuinely present a different risk profile from a flight over a suburban neighbourhood, and a rule calibrated to average European population density will always be over-restrictive when applied to the Argentine interior.
The Agricultural Imperative
The economic stakes explain the reform's design. Argentina's drone market reached an estimated USD 61.44 million in 2025, projected to grow to USD 147.19 million by 2035, with the agricultural segment growing at 12.8% annually — the fastest sub-sector. The country ranks among the world's top five exporters of soybeans, maize, and wheat; precision agriculture drones with 25–50 kg spray payloads are central to the productivity calculus for farms covering tens of thousands of hectares.
Under the previous 25 kg Open Category ceiling, large-format agricultural rotorcraft — such as the DJI Agras T50, which carries spray tanks up to 40 kg — were legally required to use the Specific Category pathway, involving authorization processes that could take two to four weeks. In an industry where pest-management and planting windows can close in days, that latency is commercially significant. Minister Federico Sturzenegger, who leads the Ministry of Deregulation and State Transformation, described the pre-reform rules as imposing "absurd prohibitions" on operations in rural corridors and natural zones that had no safety rationale in a low-density context.
The Legitimate Case for Caution
A proportionate assessment requires engaging with the strongest arguments for caution — and they are real. Transport and aerospace law expert Eduardo Pozzoli of the UNCUYO Law Faculty has flagged that Resolution 550/2025 eliminated mandatory third-party liability insurance for Open Category operations. In the event of property damage or injury from a drone incident, the resulting victim compensation gap is legally significant. EASA member states, Canada, Japan, and Australia all retain mandatory insurance requirements for commercial drone operations of this kind.
A second concern is identification: with sub-250 g drones now entirely exempt from registration, there is no registry trail for the most numerous class of devices, complicating accountability after incidents. RAAC 100 also still prohibits fully autonomous flights pending further technical regulation — a gap that industry has identified as a blocker for advanced delivery and infrastructure inspection applications that the framework has otherwise positioned Argentina to host.
These are not arguments for reversing the liberalization. They are arguments for targeted fixes that the current reform left incomplete. A mandatory liability insurance requirement for commercial Open Category operations — modelled on the EU approach, which mandates coverage without imposing certification overhead — would close the accountability gap without recreating the approval delays that made the previous regime counterproductive. Requiring remote identification for commercial operators of sub-25 kg drones, while keeping recreational sub-250 g devices genuinely deregulated, would preserve traceability proportionately.
Argentina Pulling the Regional Average Up
Argentina's reform places it ahead of regional peers. Colombia's RAC 100 Amendment 2, effective January 2025, adopted an EASA-structured three-tier framework but still requires UAEAC authorization for all commercial operations regardless of risk level — a procedural overlay EASA explicitly avoided. Brazil's RBAC E94 uses weight-class segmentation but does not track EASA's risk-proximity logic or category naming. Argentina's rural-specific Open Category expansion represents the most deliberate adaptation of EASA risk architecture for Latin American conditions to date.
Sixty-four countries participate in JARUS, the global body coordinating drone regulation harmonization using EASA's SORA methodology as its baseline. Argentina's 2026 resolutions move it meaningfully closer to that emerging international standard while adapting it for the economic geography of a major agricultural exporter. The liability gap is real and deserves a proportionate statutory fix rather than a retreat. But the reform's direction is correct, and the region is watching.