This week’s Question: In January, the Federal Aviation Administration plans to outline new rules for the use of small drones, a first step in allowing police departments, farmers, and other agencies to employ the technology. The drones could be used for air support to spot criminals, monitor pipelines, or even spray crops, for example. The FAA has issued 266 active testing permits for civilian drone applications, but hasn’t permitted wide-scale drone use in national airspace out of concern that the pilotless craft lack adequate “detect, sense and avoid” technology to prevent midair collisions. Other concerns include privacy and the ways that criminals and terrorists could use the devices.
What do you think? Will a wider integration of robotic drone aircraft do more harm than good?
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The only things drones should be used for is national security. If you allow them for the states or private use, they will be used to write speeding tickets and other unamerican uses. They’ll write more tickets in a day than in three months.
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It doesn’t matter whether police and other agencies use drones, the criminals and terrorists will use their own anyway. It is not difficult to rig up model aircraft controls, even if amateur drones might not have the same range or carrying capacity.
Since South American gangs have made their own fibreglass submarines to smuggle drugs, drones will be easier.
Security usually inconveniences the good guys, and fails to keep the bad guys out.
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My initial reaction is to limit their application to primarily military purposes. There are perhaps some law enforcement applications that would make sense, but those should be limited to specific circumstances. Of course, you have to have policies in place to enable effective application and use of the technology and the data obtained.
As we’ve seen with other technology and/or information, the internet makes proliferation a certainty, and terrorism or other illegal uses will undoubtedly come to pass.
As a aside, I cannot believe that drone lost to Iran did not have a self-destruct component; or it didn’t work, which is just as bad.-
Can u say …..mister prez
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If there is an “unintended consequence” to anything, the government WILL find and exploit it. Cops have become revenue collectors and drones would just be a cheaper and far more efficient version. (Don’t buy my cynical opinion of cops? When was the last time you saw “to protect and serve” on the side of a cop car? Their new motto is, “Everybody is guilty of something; my job is to make you PAY for it.”)
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I agree 100%. Traffic enforcement can be as dangerous to motorists as the people they are chasing.
Gravity always wins. Is the danger of putting it up over my neighborhood worth the potential payoff? Will this payoff be saving more lives and property than it risks or will it be just for getting a few thousand more traffic tickets issued?
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This is almost as bad as trying to decide whether there should be more robots around us. Lets face it. We get lazier and lazier as the years go by. I honestly think that in the future we will probably end up in a society like the one from the Pixar movie titled Wall-E. Eventually we will all look like Jabba the Hutt, but will be consoled by the fact that we at some point were able to create things ourselves instead of having things create other things for us.
Paranoid people will always complain about privacy even though they gave that up the moment cameras and cell phones were pieced together, which, by the way, they can’t live without. Where would we be now if the first person that used a hammer decided never to impart the knowledge for fear that someone, someday, might hit their own finger.
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Paranoid people are the ones who didn’t want their privacy taken away. They will always complain about it because nanny state folks will always find a reason to take privacy away.
We didn’t get to where we are today by controlling every aspect of everyone’s lives either. People experimented in private until their inventions were ready for demonstration and sale. Do you think Tesla would have accomplished what he did in today’s environment? Solo inventors of significance are more rare today than they were 100 years ago. It isn’t because we already invented everything that could be invented.
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There should only be human control of drones only.
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It looks like model rocketry and radio-controlled model airplanes will be the next victims of the ever-expanding nanny state.
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Anyone can purchase a small RC kite, attach a camera, and fly it over something interesting. Most people don’t have access to a live streaming long range RF camera and would have to retrieve the camera to view the footage taken. The main benefit of purpose-built craft verses low end consumer possibilities would be instant viewing, more control over flight path, and better footage taken. Controlled or automated drones will compete with harmless toys, real aircraft, and birds for airspace. Power lines and other low lying aerial obstacles will also get in the way. The more complicated these get, the more expensive they will be.
Small 4 bladed craft are all over internet. There is a lot of ground footage of these things hovering over protesting crowds. If recording footage is the only thing these will be used for, lets not divert attention to the “payload” emphasis capable by larger craft.
Lets implant a camera, microphone, gps sensor, accelerometer, speaker, and a wireless transmitter into every person when they are born. Then we could track everyone. One might think this would deter crime. If anything, it would keep some people honest. It wont stop true criminals. It certainly wont stop crime. It may help with tracking down criminals after the crime is committed but it cant stop the crime. By the way, no implants needed since almost everyone already voluntarily pays for this type of surveillance. The problem with collecting all that information would be storing it and harvesting usable data from it. I guess the answer to that problem would be supercomputers and cloud storage…
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As a private pilot, I abhor the idea of more stuff in the air that I won’t be able to see and avoid.
It’s hard enough to see another aircraft against a cluttered background over a city. Certainly, criminals and terroists will have access to drones. They are available in toy catalogs all over. Until ADS-B comes in general use (ought to be mandatory and much cheaper) air traffic controllers will be our only protection. They have too big a load already. -
Fast and furious, car racing in the sky. Kids stealing dads keys, avionics tampering, sensor failure. Channel crosstalk. Untrained users and garage mechanics. Weapons,cash and drug runners. Mud and dirt in feuul or air spead sensore. It takes a whole air force to fly one plane. Private use is desaster. Excuse big fingers on cellphone. This would be a flying accident or fire bomb waiting to happen.
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P.s. as a kid, i grew up in dads auto repair shop. Was electrician on lockheed L.1011, then avionics tech on F5 e Northrop, R&D navy radar@ ITT. Then 3 yr EAFB with CSC. I have great insights here. As a kid, I built high power amps for radio transmitters before I know the consequenses. Kids do not think ahead, only of self.
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I don’t have the credentials or experience you do. I do know that most vehicles on the road today are overdue for maintenance. I played with many radio controlled toys as a kid. My budget limitations caused me to cobble repairs together and run them knowing they were already broken. Civilian departments already strained for operating funds wont maintain these as well as our armed forces.
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