GET USED TO IT: DRONES ARE HERE TO STAY
...An example of today's toy drone w/ video camera
You may have heard that the government had decided that all owners of a new toy drone must register it with the FAA. Under these new FAA guidelines, drone pilots flying for recreation are supposed to keep their aircraft below 400 feet and at least five miles away from airports. Regulators, however, have already stated that they won’t be able to enforce those guidelines.
This last Thanksgiving, a visiting family member brought his new toy drone to the family dinner and demonstrated it in the back yard. He said that he had set it for a maximum altitude of 400 ft, but it could go as high as 800 ft and the battery could last for about an hour. It was a very professional unit and its flashing red flight lamp went out of eye sight more than once before it was steered back high over the back yard.
I had not thought about it until later, but the home where the family dinner occurred was only less than 3 miles as the crow flies from the local international airport and less than 5 miles from a NASA/Navy/National Guard Airport. Many a day, from that same back yard, we have watched NASA, Air Force C5’s and C130’s flying over the house and landing at that the military airport. It is also the airport where Air Force One lands when the president visits Silicon Valley.
It was announced right after Thanksgiving that what they call Rogue Toy Drones would be one of the hottest-selling Christmas gifts this season. In addition, they are already starting to interfere with military operations at several bases across the country. With the sales of consumer drones expected to approach 700,000 this year, military officials say they are bracing for the problem to get worse and they are worried about the potential for an aviation disaster.
But this
problem has already started, as an Air Force A-29 Super Tucano aircraft has
reported a near midair collision with a small rogue drone over the Grand Bay Bombing and Gunnery Range in
Georgia.
Last June, an
Air Force KC-10 aerial refueling tanker flying over the Philadelphia suburbs at
an altitude of 3,800 feet was forced to take evasive action and barely avoided
striking a football-sized drone that passed within 10 feet of its right wing.
There have
been at least 35 cases of small drones interfering with military aircraft or
operating too close to military airfields, and that’s just just in 2015. This is according to reports filed with the
armed forces or the FAA. But that’s only
a small fraction of the estimated 1,000 reports received by the FAA this year
of small drones interfering with civilian air traffic or coming too close to
passenger airports.
The military
had once assumed that the remote locations of their airfields and restricted
airspace offered a good measure of protection from wandering drones, but today
they are no longer immune.
A Navy
spokesman at the Pentagon has said that Navy pilots or air-traffic controllers
at US bases have reported close calls or encounters with unauthorized drones 12
times in only the past three months. Prior to that, the Navy was recording an
average of less than one incident per month.
The curve of
more reports is increasing exponentially and has become of great concern.
The Marine
Corps Air Station in Yuma, Arizona has experienced multiple risky encounters
with drones. In May, a Marine Corps
Harrier jet coming in for a landing at Yuma reported a small blue drone about
100 feet off its right side. In July, a Navy T-45 Goshawk training aircraft
flew within 100 feet of another drone about five miles west of Yuma, according
to FAA records.
So far, the
Army installations have yet to report problems with rogue drones on any Army
installations. However, given the
experiences of other branches of the military, the Army anticipates “that there could be more challenges in the
future.”
The issues are
that with all the rapid advances in technology combined with falling prices,
that has led to a boom in drone sales.
Thus, a corresponding surge in reports of air-traffic chaos.
Because the
FAA has been unable to inforce their guidelines, the FAA last week began
requiring all recreational drone owners not only register online with
the agency, but they also must affix identification numbers on their
aircraft. More than 45,000 people
registered in the first two days, overwhelming the registration system and
forcing the FAA to take it offline temporarily for repairs. The FAA said it
expects that as many as 400,000 small drones would be sold, just during the
2015 holidays.
In addition to
the FAA, the Air Force last week began a new campaign to educate its pilots,
flight crews and air-traffic controllers about the hazards posed by small
drones.
The Air
Force’s director of bases, ranges and airspace has said that many consumer
drones are only two or three feet in diameter. At that size, pilots usually can’t
see them until they’re within 600 feet — giving the pilots just a second or two
to react before the military aircraft whiz by.
The Pennington
has said that the Air Force is telling its pilots: “Boys and girls, there’s a change in the world. There are small things
flying. We know some of them are flying in our terminal areas and they
shouldn’t be. We’re working on that. We know that there are some of them flying
in around our military training routes and special-use airspace. We’re working
on that. But the first thing is to tell people to be aware.”
However, the
Air Force is also considering more forceful countermeasures against these
intruders. Last week, the they posted a contract solicitation looking for
portable equipment that could be used to disrupt the flight paths of rogue
drones near military installations. I
would think that some entrepreneur will probably come up with a device that
makes them into a millionaire many times over if all the installations and
airports find that they need such protection.
According to
the contract solicitation, the Air Force
Global Strike Command wants to buy portable jammers that would interfere
with drones’ navigational signals and force them to return to where they
launched from. So far, there have been
no midair collision between a drone and a regular aircraft in the United
States, but as with today’s lasers being directed at pilot’s cockpits, it’s
just a matter of time.
Even though a
most small drones are about the size and weight of a large seagull, a drones
contains hard plastic and metal, like their lithium battery packs.
If a drone
were to get sucked into an airplane’s jet engine, per the FAA “we’re certain it would be a significant
problem.”
And let’s not
forget that both Amazon and Google want to use drones to begin delivering
packages all over the country.
Watch out, our
world is changing daily.
Copyright G.Ater 2015
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