At this week's Drones and Aerial Robotics conference, Joseph Hall gave a presentation that discussed some of the issues around the idea of drones needing a "license plate" (and presumably drone operators needing a "drivers license).
His slides are now available here.
Also, here's an NBC article on the same topic, also taken from the conference. Excerpt:
One way to assure a minimum level of competence could be pre-use certification, a "driver license" of sorts for pilots who fly the birds.
Operators of small military drones like Ravens are trained before they can use them, and Capt. Adam Gorrell — who trained drone pilots and flew them himself in the U.S. Air Force, before becoming a professor at the Air Force Academy — sees a similar training system working for domestic operators, too. A different, smaller craft perhaps wouldn't need the same amount of training time, but the "mark in the sand" for flight readiness could shifted accordingly, he said.
Comments
Once again the not invented here syndrome strikes, I am at a loss to understand why the same rules being applied to great effect in other countries are just not rolled there. The USA is now six years behind Canada, Australia and Europe in this regard. Its looking very likely that they will be making that a neat 10 unless there is a radical policy change.
It is a bad idea, even the slides say why. The transponder is a 1lb brick, costs in the neighborhood of 5 grand and when boiled down, this is just the Gov forcing people to buy a product of select few companies, nothing else.
And, as usual, those with nefarious interest will simply not install that thing on their "drone", so it will, as is usual, punish law-abiding citizens only.
*correction Beach= beach on the near by lake *not ocean
just from initial view thats not a half bad idea. when I used to live next to fort hood there was a case in which some apache helicopters were stopping and viewing girls sunbathing on the beach. one of the ladies got his tail number and called it in and punishment was handed down. i know right now there is little a drone can do for spying on our end, so for now it might not even be an issue, but tail numbers could be our solution I would even say it would not be to bad registering it online as long as it is NOT federally controlled as that always seems to complicate things. but on the down side I can see people again abusing this, and i can also see people mistaking rc airplanes, or simple fpv for a drone.
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