By Carl Weiss
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| From bits.blogs.nytimes.com |
Everybody these days seems to be getting into the drone craze. The military has thousands of them,
Amazon covets them and millions of civilians own them. Otherwise known as
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), not
since the dawn of manned flight more than 100 years ago, has a topic so
enthralled the public and worried the federal government. This leads us to a very real fly in the drone ointment...that of regulation, or the lack thereof. The FAA currently has its hands full trying
to manage the booming airline industry where 21st century jumbo jets
are still being vectored to all the cardinal points of the compass by 1970’s
technology. The last thing the FAA wants to
have to wrestle with are potentially tens of thousands of UAVs crisscrossing
the friendly skies. It’s one of the
things that give bureaucrats indigestion.
Could Bureaucratic Bungling Bring Down the Civilian Drone Industry?
Believe it or not, it was a bureaucrat by the name of William P. McCracken, Jr.
that received the first pilot’s license in the US on April 6, 1927. (To put this date into perspective, that was only a month and two weeks before
Charles Lindbergh made the first solo crossing of the Atlantic on May 21.) As assistant Secretary of Commerce for
Aeronautics, McCracken had initially offered the honor of the first pilot’s license to none
other than Orville Wright. Oville declined being that by the latter part of the 20's he no longer flew. McCracken, who had earned his wings flying in
the Army Air Corps during WWI, followed by a stint flying the mail,
was tasked with enforcing the Air Commerce Act of 1926. This legislation not only regulated the
training and licensing of pilots, but it helped establish and manage airports,
navigation aids, issue airworthiness certificates for aircraft and investigate
accidents. In short, it established the
framework for the agency that would start off as the CAA and eventually evolve
into the FAA we know to this day.
Fast forward nearly ninety
years and we have come to the dawn of a new age of aviation, brought about by
the same military that introduced aviation to the masses way back when. While relatively a recent innovation in the
eyes of the public, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have been around for nearly as
long as have been aircraft. The first
pilotless aircraft were constructed from surplus military aircraft fitted with radio
controls and packed with high explosives.
Kind of a poor man’s cruise missile, these flying bombs were designed to be
piloted to altitude where the pilot would engage the radio-controlled
autopilot before bailing out. Then the
plane would be flown by a pilot in a second nearby aircraft. It was this pilot's job to guide
the plane to the target. While initial
tests were carried out during the First World War, it wasn’t until WWII that the technology was
deemed flight worthy. Even then there
were a number of accidents, such as the one that famously claimed the life of Joe
Kennedy Jr. when his B-17 loaded with Torpex detonated prematurely,
killing Kennedy and his copilot, Lieutenant Wilford John Willy.
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| Courtesy en.wikipedia.com |
After the Second World War,
UAVs saw use as everything from pilotless target drones to the first fledgling
reconnaissance drones. These spies in
the sky were used extensively during the Vietnam War, with the USAF 100th
Strategic Reconnaissance wing launching nearly 3,500 Ryan Lightning Bugs for use as
aerial scouts. (554 of these were lost
during the war in Southeast Asia from a combination of enemy action and mechanical problems.) But
it wasn’t until the 1980’s that the military had an epiphany that gave them a
whole new mindset when it came to embracing the true capabilities that UAVs
represented.
It was the Israeli Air Force
that first saw the possibilities that drones represented, by using a fleet of Ryan Firebee drones they had
purchased from the US to trick Egypt into firing off all their surface-to-air
missiles at these UAVs at the outset of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. This made
routing the defenseless Egyptian Air Force child’s play. In 1982, the Israeli's soundly
defeated the Syrian Air Force by once again using UAVs in a number of tactical
roles, including being deployed as decoys, aerial jammers and surveillance
birds. Their Scout UAV was the first to
transmit live video with a 360-degree view of the terrain below.
During the first Gulf War,
the US used Pioneer UAVs developed by Israel to observe Iraqi troop
deployments. In one famous incident, a
Pioneer launched from the deck of the battleship USS Wisconsin, observed Iraqi
troops surrendering following the bombardment of their trenches by the ship. This led the US to develop a new class of
military UAV starting with the Predator.
At first used exclusively as an observation platform, it didn’t take the
military long to figure out that the Predator was a platform big enough to handle ordinance. An armed and beefed-up version of the
Predator, which can carry two Hellfire Missiles, was eventually designated the Reaper.
Take me to your leader
Suddenly all kinds of
military contractors were creating all manner of UAVs from vertical takeoff
quadcopters, to drones that could be carried onto the battlefield in a backpack
by troops, to miniature bugbots that could stealthily infiltrate buildings, to
world traveling autonomous UAVs that can stay
airborne for days or even weeks
at a time and that could be mistaken for a UFO if spotted by the public. Ever since the 1950’s, UFOs
had become common fodder in newspapers, on TV and in the movies. In more than one motion picture, alien
lifeforms descend from their spaceship only to demand, “Take me to your
leader.” While this alien invasion never happened
in real life, it was only last month when our current Commander in Chief got a
taste of what this scenario could be like when a UFO landed on the White
House lawn. That’s because on February
2, a DJI Phantom quadcopter, owned and operated by a US intelligence agency employee, crash landed in front of the White House. The employee later said that the UAV in question purportedly malfunctioned. The President, not to mention the Secret
Service, was not amused.
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| Image from nbcnews.com |
Better Late Than Never?
With everyone from
businessmen and women to kids having access to an ever growing armada of consumer
UAVs, you would think that the federal government would be rushing to legislate
the training, operation and regulation of drones. And you would be wrong. The FAA’s rules for the operation and
certification of drones are at present four years late. Originally the federal aviation authority had set a
date of March 10, 2011 as the inception date for the establishment of
regulations that among other things, would designate where, when and how high
drones could fly. But as of the date of
this publication, the FAA is still asleep at the controls.
Sad to say it, but as drones
of all shapes and sizes continue to proliferate, there is no way for a US
citizen to obtain either a private or commercial drone pilot’s license. Meanwhile the skies are quite literally abuzz
with consumer drones. Aside from
rankling the President, there are clear safety issues associated with fleets of
unregulated UAVs. While military UAVs
such as the predator are responsible for an increasing number of deaths, it is
only a matter of time before a consumer drone causes, either intentionally or
unintentionally, a fatality.
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| Image courtesy of msnbc.com |
Unregulated drones being
flown by untrained pilots can easily come into conflict with civilian and
commercial aircraft. A number of
consumer drones have the ability to fly hundreds or even more than a thousand
feet high. Everything from helicopters
to aircraft taking off and landing could be damaged or even brought down should
a drone inadvertently stray into their flight path. (Everyone remembers how US Airways Flight
1549 was forced to ditch in the Hudson River in January 2009 when it crossed
paths with a flock of geese.)
A blog from qz.com sums up
public opinion best:
“As the delays have mounted,
drone enthusiasts have grown increasingly frustrated with the FAA. In a press
conference this morning, transportation secretary Anthony Foxx and FAA
administrator Michael Huerta both refused to say when they thought the new
proposed rules might actually be implemented–probably because it could take
years. Foxx and Huerta also dodged questions about how the FAA would even be
able to know if rules are being violated. Huerta said the FAA’s first focus is
on ensuring people know what the rules are.”
In the meantime, commercial
drone operators have been flying on the edge of lawlessness. To fly a UAV legally in this country
currently requires a commercial operator to apply for and receive an exemption. Since September 2014 the FAA has issued a
grand total of two dozen exemptions to commercial operators. This is a fraction of the 342 applications
received. Even more bizarre is the
government’s current requirement that every applicant have a private pilot’s
license. Since there is a huge
difference between flying a light plane and a drone, this is just another clear
cut case of bureaucracy run amok.
Far from being stymied by the
Herculean task of studying the myriad of applications in which commercial operators
could employ UAVs, an internal FAA cost-benefit study recently leaked to the
press only considered four uses for civilian aerial drones: aerial photography,
search/rescue, bridge inspection and precision agriculture. While anything that saves lives or helps
feed the world is a good thing, this particular study only covers the tip of
the UAV iceberg. It just goes to show how ill-equipped the federal government
is when it comes to dealing with the biggest innovation in civilian aviation
since the Wright Brothers first flight.
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| From suasnews.com |
While civilian drones
continue to literally fly off the shelves, the FAA effort at regulating them seems to be all but
grounded. Two weeks ago, the agency
proposed that commercial operators pass a written test every two years. They also proposed restricting that
commercial operators always maintain eye contact with their aircraft and that
drones be restricted to an altitude of no more than 500 feet and a speed of no
more than 100 mph. On top of that, they want to restrict drones to flying only during daylight hours and they want to restrict drones from
flying over anyone not involved in their use.
This means that commercial operators would literally be precluded from
flying over any place that crowds gathered, which would mean that you can
forget about using drones as delivery vehicles.
(Sorry Amazon.)
When it comes to enforcing
the rules, that is another matter. A
recent article from the NY Times stated that, “Regardless of
what the final rule says, the F.A.A. could find it difficult to enforce the
regulation. It will have to rely on complaints from the public and local law
enforcement. Also, the agency, which is in the middle of a major upgrade to the nation’s air
traffic system to reduce congestion, may not have enough resources to monitor
the thousands of drones that could take to the sky once this rule is finalized
in the coming months. The agency has about 7,200 employees in its aviation safety
division, a number that has not increased much in recent years.”
Is anyone awake in the halls of Congress? (or the FAA?) Thousands of unregulated drones are already taking to the skies with unlicensed pilots at the controls. That there needs to be rules
and regulations is obvious. Civilian
drones are here to stay. As their prices
continue to fall and their flight capabilities continue to climb it is clear
that doing an ostrich impersonation is hardly going to make the problems
inherent in the growing fleet of civilian drones go away. All it makes you want to do is shake your
head wonder what Orville and Wilbur would have made of it.
Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win, an award-winning digital marketing agency based in Jacksonville, Florida. You can listen to Carl live every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern on BlogTalkRadio
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