Heads up: Drones are going mainstream.
Civilian cousins of the unmanned military
aircraft that have tracked and killed terrorists in the Middle East and
Asia are in demand by police departments, border patrols, power
companies, news organizations and others wanting a bird's-eye view
that's too impractical or dangerous for conventional planes or
helicopters to get.
Along with the enthusiasm, there are qualms.
Drones overhead could invade people's
privacy. The government worries they could collide with passenger planes
or come crashing down to the ground, concerns that have slowed more
widespread adoption of the technology.
Despite that, pressure is building to give drones the same access as manned aircraft to the sky at home.
"It's going to be the next big revolution in
aviation. It's coming," says Dan Elwell, the Aerospace Industries
Association's vice president for civil aviation.
Some impetus comes from the military, which
will bring home drones from Afghanistan and wants room to test and use
them. In December, Congress gave the Federal Aviation Administration six
months to pick half a dozen sites around the country where the military
and others can fly unmanned aircraft in the vicinity of regular air
traffic, with the aim of demonstrating they're safe.
The Defense Department says the demand for
drones and their expanding missions requires routine and unfettered
access to domestic airspace, including around airports and cities. In a
report last October, the Pentagon called for flights first by small
drones both solo and in groups, day and night, expanding over several
years. Flights by large and medium-sized drones would follow in the
latter half of this decade.
Other government agencies want to fly
drones, too, but they've been hobbled by an FAA ban unless they first
receive case-by-case permission. Fewer than 300 waivers were in use at
the end of 2011, and they often include restrictions that severely limit
the usefulness of the flights. Businesses that want to put drones to
work are out of luck; waivers are only for government agencies.
But that's changing.
Congress has told the FAA that the agency
must allow civilian and military drones to fly in civilian airspace by
September 2015. This spring, the FAA is set to take a first step by
proposing rules that would allow limited commercial use of small drones
for the first time.
Until recently, agency officials were saying
there were too many unresolved safety issues to give drones greater
access. Even now FAA officials are cautious about describing their plans
and they avoid discussion of deadlines.
"The thing we care about is doing that in an
orderly and safe way and finding the appropriate ... balance of all the
users in the system," Michael Huerta, FAA's acting administrator, told a
recent industry luncheon in Washington. "Let's develop these six sites —
and we will be doing that — where we can develop further data, further
testing and more history on how these things actually operate."
Drones come in all sizes, from the
high-flying Global Hawk with its 116-foot wingspan to a hummingbird-like
drone that weighs less than an AA battery and can perch on a window
ledge to record sound and video. Lockheed Martin has developed a fake
maple leaf seed, or "whirly bird," equipped with imaging sensors, that
weighs less than an ounce.
Potential civilian users are as varied as the drones themselves.
Power companies want them to monitor
transmission lines. Farmers want to fly them over fields to detect which
crops need water. Ranchers want them to count cows.
Journalists are exploring drones'
newsgathering potential. The FAA is investigating whether The Daily, a
digital publication of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., used drones without
permission to capture aerial footage of floodwaters in North Dakota and
Mississippi last year. At the University of Nebraska, journalism
professor Matt Waite has started a lab for students to experiment with
using a small, remote-controlled helicopter.
"Can you cover news with a drone? I think the answer is yes," Waite said.
The aerospace industry forecasts a worldwide
deployment of almost 30,000 drones by 2018, with the United States
accounting for half of them.
"The potential ... civil market for these
systems could dwarf the military market in the coming years if we can
get access to the airspace," said Ben Gielow, government relations
manager for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International,
an industry trade group.
The hungriest market is the nation's 19,000 law enforcement agencies.
Customs and Border Patrol has nine Predator
drones mostly in use on the U.S.-Mexico border, and plans to expand to
24 by 2016. Officials say the unmanned aircraft have helped in the
seizure of more than 20 tons of illegal drugs and the arrest of 7,500
people since border patrols began six years ago.
Several police departments are experimenting
with smaller drones to photograph crime scenes, aid searches and scan
the ground ahead of SWAT teams. The Justice Department has four drones
it loans to police agencies.
"We look at this as a low-cost alternative
to buying a helicopter or fixed-wing plane," said Michael O'Shea, the
department's aviation technology program manager. A small drone can cost
less than $50,000, about the price of a patrol car with standard police
gear.
Like other agencies, police departments must
get FAA waivers and follow much the same rules as model airplane
hobbyists: Drones must weigh less than 55 pounds, stay below an altitude
of 400 feet, keep away from airports and always stay within sight of
the operator. The restrictions are meant to prevent collisions with
manned aircraft.
Even a small drone can be "a huge threat" to
a larger plane, said Dale Wright, head of the National Air Traffic
Controllers Association's safety and technology department. "If an
airliner sucks it up in an engine, it's probably going to take the
engine out," he said. "If it hits a small plane, it could bring it
down."
Controllers want drone operators to be
required to have instrument-rated pilot licenses — a step above a basic
private pilot license. "We don't want the Microsoft pilot who has never
really flown an airplane and doesn't know the rules of how to fly,"
Wright said.
Military drones designed for battlefields
haven't had to meet the kind of rigorous safety standards required of
commercial aircraft.
"If you are going to design these things to
operate in the (civilian) airspace you need to start upping the ante,"
said Tom Haueter, director of the National Transportation Safety Board's
aviation safety office. "It's one thing to operate down low. It's
another thing to operate where other airplanes are, especially over
populated areas."
Even with FAA restrictions, drones are proving useful in the field.
Deputies with the Mesa County Sheriff's
Office in Colorado can launch a 2-pound Draganflyer X6 helicopter from
the back of a patrol car. The drone's bird's-eye view cut the manpower
needed for a search of a creek bed for a missing person from 10 people
to two, said Ben Miller, who runs the drone program. The craft also
enabled deputies to alert fire officials to a potential roof collapse in
time for the evacuation of firefighters from the building, he said.
The drone could do more if it were not for
the FAA's line-of-sight restriction, Miller said. "I don't think (the
restriction) provides any extra safety," he said.
The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office,
north of Houston, used a Department of Homeland Security grant to buy a
$300,000, 50-pound ShadowHawk helicopter drone for its SWAT team. The
drone has a high-powered video camera and an infrared camera that can
spot a person's thermal image in the dark.
"Public-safety agencies are beginning to see
this as an invaluable tool for them, just as the car was an improvement
over the horse and the single-shot pistol was improved upon by the
six-shooter," said Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel, who runs the Montgomery
drone program.
The ShadowHawk can be equipped with a 40 mm
grenade launcher and a 12-guage shotgun, according to its maker,
Vanguard Defense Industries of Conroe, Texas. The company doesn't sell
the armed version in the United States, although "we have had interest
from law-enforcement entities for deployment of nonlethal munitions from
the aircraft," Vanguard CEO Michael Buscher said.
The possibility of armed police drones
someday patrolling the sky disturbs Terri Burke, executive director of
the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"The Constitution is taking a back seat so
that boys can play with their toys," Burke said. "It's kind of scary
that they can use a laptop computer to zap people from the air."
A recent ACLU report said allowing drones
greater access takes the country "a large step closer to a surveillance
society in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded, and
scrutinized by the authorities."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which
focuses on civil liberties threats involving new technologies, sued the
FAA recently, seeking disclosure of which agencies have been given
permission to use drones. FAA officials declined to answer questions
from The Associated Press about the lawsuit.
Industry officials said privacy concerns are overblown.
"Today anybody— the paparazzi, anybody — can
hire a helicopter or a (small plane) to circle around something that
they're interested in and shoot away with high-powered cameras all they
want," said Elwell, the aerospace industry spokesman. "I don't
understand all the comments about the Big Brother thing."
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