The Government Accounting Office has released a new report on the issue of introducing UAVs into the national airspace for routine operations. Nothing very new or illuminating, but I'm glad that they noted that the lack of a clear regulatory path is hindering commercial development. Words that do not appear anywhere in the report: "amateur", "non-commercial", "recreational" and "open source".
Although the report makes many good points, it also gets a bit silly at times, such as noting that although airlines have locked security doors protecting the cockpit, there are no such standard security measure protecting the doors to the trailers of UAV ground station. Although that may be true, most of the big UAVs are operated from inside secure facilities, and the ones that aren't tend to be pretty small. Certainly nothing like a jet full of fuel.
News coverage here.
" FAA officials also point out that TCAS computes collision avoidance solutions based on characteristics of manned aircraft, and does not incorporate unmanned aircraft’s slower turn and climb rates in developing conflict solutions. " (exerpt from news report) why do they think that a manned aircraft would outperform a uav ?
The link finally got copied to slashdot, a major milestone by internet standards. Everyone started focusing on the safety angle ever since the FAA memo got linked up, but the battle in real life is going to be more of what pilots have always fought for. More stuff in the air, more noise, people afraid of being spied on. How will residents react when hundreds of robots take a free ride 200ft over their $2 million condominium in San Jose?
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