I am sure that we, some what, have an idea of the current status of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the United States. The use of such concept is increasing drastically in the military as well as the civilian sectors of the operation. The advanced modern technology has played a key role in the evolvement of UAVs. Drones, also known as UAVs, are machines that are flown without a pilot on board and controlled/operated from a ground station ("pilot less"). Believe it when I tell you, that you are going to see more of them hovering above you in the coming months/years. The civilian use of UAVs extends from those hobbyists who buy drone for the sheer of joy and challenge of flying an object in the sky to the ability of some to capture a high-quality photos/videos from an aerial vantage point. The regulations imposed on the civilian use of drone, and according to New York Times, is that any vehicle weighting more than 250 grams must be registered with the Federal Aviation Administration, comply with the public laws (suggests to fly under 400 feet, clear of emergency response efforts, etc), and to notify a control tower when operating 5 miles within the radius of the airspace of the airport (Wingfield, 2015). On the other hand, the regulations for the commercial use of drone is a whole different game.
The commercial use of drones refers to the use of such machine by a person or a company as a service to generate profits. Some examples of commercial use of drones are as follows: Real Estate aerial imagery, precision crop monitoring, aerial photography/videography, storm tracking, construction projects surveillance, package delivery (coming in the future believe it or not), and the list could go on and on. The FAA has recently put in place a new set of regulations that commercial users of drones must abide by. According to the Verge.com, the regulations are as follows:
- Drones have to remain in Visual Line of Sight of the Pilot.
- Pilots must at least be 16 years old.
- Operation is only allowed during daylight hours or twilight with appropriate lighting.
- Maximum groundspeed of 100 mph.
- Maximum altitude of 400 feet.
- Pilots must hold a "Remote Pilot Airman Certificate" Issued from the FAA.
- Remain clear of controlled airspace and manned aircrafts.
The above rules do not apply to traditional model airplanes and drone delivery operations (said to be put in place by google and amazon) due to the fact that such machines would have to use autonomous technology to guide the drones rather than human pilots (Vincent, 2016). In my personal opinion, the regulations by the FAA are fair enough. At least they are not requiring drone operators to be certified pilots. Rather, by such regulation, the FAA is trying to educate drone operators on the environment in which aircrafts operate in. The UAVs had to be regulated as they can easily interfere with the traffic as well as the safety of manned aircrafts operations.
The use of UAVs expands internationally. Without doing much research, I can personally assume that United States is not the only country associating itself with the use of such machines. Drones are being used all over the world for recreational as well as commercial purposes. According to a traveler named Anil Polat, "Commercial drone use requires a permit in practically any country you can think of" (Polat, 2016). Perhaps the requirement of having a permit to fly a drone any where in the word is not a "regulation" from a federal agency like the FAA in the United States but I would not know for sure anyways. I personally can not provide information regarding how hard/easy the process of getting your drones permitted in other countries. I can tell you this though, If you are a traveler who makes use of a drone to capture imageries, make sure you familiarize yourself with the the country's laws regarding UAVs before you launch. You never want to get in trouble while on a vacation, I tell you that from an unfortunate and unrelated experience.
Now, let's get down to some real business. I, personally, do see the integration of drones into our National Air Space (NAS) but for commercial use only. After researching the topic, I came across sources that stated future plans of companies for the use of UAVs. You got Google and Amazon trying to deliver packages via drones on one hand and Uber attempting to provide a service of unmanned transportation (a drone picks you up and drops you at your destinations) on the other hand. My point here is, we are going to see the use of drones commercially increase as technology is advancing and businesses would take advantage of such developments. With this being said, we are going to come to a time where those drones will need to be operated at higher altitudes, for longer periods of time, for longer distances (forcing the operation to be completely autonomous), and thus creating a risk to the traffic system in the airspaces. The potential logistical problem of the integrating of drones into out NAS is that it might give the system more than it can handle. When workload increases, risks increase as well, and catastrophic events are more likely to happen. In terms of perception problems, I can think of two. How would pilots feel knowing that the are operating in an airspace where unmanned flying machines are flying all over it? I would feel paranoid. How would the public/passengers feel knowing that, small and harmful object that are controlled by a person that is no where near the airspace but rather some hundreds of miles away, could interfere with and probably reduce the safety of their flights. Technology and computers may malfunction at any time as they lack the decision making process human acquire. We are going to see interesting things happening in the near future my friends. I will leave it at that.
As in regards to the military use of UAVs, I am two hundred percent in support of the idea. The use of drones in the military sector has mainly been for the purpose of reconnaissance, to spy on the enemy in other terms. I think this has been very efficient as we are no longer in need of sending actual lives in danger. Reconnaissance provide military with all the real time intel they need to carry out missions, and drones have played a magnificent rule in the aide of that. Economically speaking, drones are cheaper than an actual aircraft. In case of a drone being shut down, no problem ... launch another one. Ethically speaking, well, wait, there are no ethics in the military. We go to war for a reason, to defeat the enemy. Our military units have every right to use any technological development to reduce spendings and casualties to as little as possible. In war applications, a nation uses all of its sources to gain an advantage over the enemy. For example, the drone played a key role in the capturing of Usama Bin Laden. It was a key in providing the american seal team with his location as well as s proof of his actual presence in his secret hideout.
If you, my fellow classmate, interested in a drone job ... please google "Drone Jobs in My area" and I am sure you will be able to find something that fits what you are looking for. I tried it, You should too. "They can't say yes if you don't ask."
References
Vincent, J. (2016, August 30). FAA regulations for commercial drones are now in effect. Retrieved February 06, 2018 from https://theverge.com/2016/8/30/12707502/drone-regulations-legality-us-faa
Wingfield, N. (2015, November 23). A Field Guide to Civilian Drones. Retrieved February 06, 2018 from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/technology/guide-to-civilian-drones.html
Ehab –
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, great post by the way, very similar beliefs as yours. UAVs are only are going to expand rapidly as the technology advances. Ironically many countries on board with utilizing drones, it might not be for the same reason as how the U.S. are using them, which is mostly for military uses. The FAA would have to revise their current rules and certifications on UAVs to accommodate the increase uses, there are simple categories, public, commercially and recreational. I feel that more categories within those three will be broken down further, causing an already complex regulation in the future.
Ehab,
ReplyDeleteI believe that the ever growing success of UAVs is only going to get better as time goes on. Its really weird how most of the world has been using UAVs for commercial use while we are still in the testing phases of it becoming a reality. I also do agree with you on the military using UAVs instead of sending a person in an airplane to do the same job. In my opinion, why send a person up with an airplane to do the same recon mission or strike operation with the cost of fuel and expenditures? UAVs are definitely the way to go and its only a matter of time until we see them up in the sky delivering packages.
I liked how you stated that the current regulations are sufficient. If the regulations were any more strict, I'd have complaints, but as they stand, they're not so bad. However, flying under the Part 107 by the FAA is quite restrictive. People who fly under Part 107 and have a remote pilot certificate, have MORE restrictions than a general hobbyist, even though the hobbyist does not need any training. For example, 400 feet is RECOMMENDED for flying recreationally under public law, but NOT REQUIRED (not a lot of people understand this because of the general drone regulation confusion). In addition, hobbyists can fly at night, but these Part 107 certificated remote pilots cannot. Seems unfair in that respect for Part 107 operators and I'd like to see some of their regulations reduced to at least the public law regulations.
ReplyDelete