It's A Bird. It's A Plane. It's A Drone!

The FAA is considering new rules which would allow civilian use of drones. Presently, use of drones is restricted to military activities, and even at that are somewhat limited within the borders of the United States. Now these won't be the kind of drones we picture dropping bunker-busters in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They will be much, much smaller versions, most incapable of handling the weight of a serious bomb.

Initial use of drones would be restricted to law enforcement agencies, utility companies and farmers. The police want them for surveillance and tracking of escaped criminals. The utilities want them for patrolling power lines and water, oil and gas pipelines. Farmers see them as a far more efficient way to spray their crops than helicopters and small aircraft. I have visions of a scene out of The Fifth Element, with flying objects flitting about like cars on a stacked freeway. But I'm known for a fevered imagination.

Currently the FAA has issued 266 active testing permits for civilian drone use. The drones are not allowed in busy air corridors yet out of concern for lack of adequate "detect, sense and avoid" technology. But that is in the potential plan as well. Naturally, there are many other concerns which will need to be addressed before final implementation. The potential for criminal use is obvious. UCLA professor and fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for Technolgy Innovation says: "By definition, small drones are easy to conceal and fly without getting a lot of attention. Bad guys know this."

Still, the appropriate good guys seem to outweigh the bad guys. The leader in this potential boom business is AeroVironment, located in Monrovia, California. They are already the major provider of small drones for the military. They estimate that police agencies alone give them a potential new customer base of nearly 18,000. Above my old stomping-grounds in the mountains around Simi Valley, they have also been testing helicopter-style drones called Qube that fly 100 to 200 feet above the ground, matching height to terrain.

Unlike their big brothers at war, the Qubes weigh only five and a half pounds, are three feet long, and fit nicely into the trunk of a police cruiser. The Qube was unveiled at the Chicago convention in October of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. It drew considerable excitement with its multiple surveillance capabilities which are controlled by an easily-manned tablet computer. A representative of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was particularly impressed. His department just purchased twelve new manned helicopters at a cost of $1.7 million each. Except for not carrying weapons or personnel, the Qube has superior surveillance talents, at a cost of $40,000 each.

The FAA still has to address certain important issues before test approval in regular civilian air lanes and over populated areas. First, they want to know what would happen if the tablet computer operated by a police officer lost communications with the drone. One FAA official put it quite simply: "What will we know and when will we know it when one of these things falls out of the sky, takes a nose dive into a backyard pool or crashes through some homeowner's roof?"

Even certain humanitarian and charitable organizations are interested in the drones. One company has already done studies proposing a network of drones to deliver food and medicine in remote areas which are otherwise largely inaccessible by road and difficult to service by manned aircraft. Real estate companies are interested because of the ability of a drone to quickly and easily show a potential buyer a large tract of land in real time.

Developers of the potential drone expansion into civilian life recognize there are inherent dangers. The small drones are unlikely to be very efficient at terrorist activity according to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. Says Gretchen West of AMVSI: "Small drones are not designed to carry weapons or explosive materials, and the extra weight makes the drones difficult to control." But if they can carry medical supplies, they can carry weaponized chemical and biological aerosol weapons that don't weigh as much as a conventional bomb or dirty nuke.

One critic pointed out that small drones are already being used to spray fields in England and Japan. "If they can spray fields with pesticides, they can spray cities with biochemical agents." Many experts acknowledge this, but also say that strict controls would make it extremely difficult for terrorists to get hold of a drone capable of serious damage, let alone the weaponized biochemical agent that the drone would potentially deliver. Still, the danger is not to be easily dismissed.

Finally, there's the usual concern over privacy. Even perfectly normal, non-conspiratorial folks might not like the idea of a surveillance drone casually taking pictures of them skinny-dipping in their backyard pool. But mostly, it's the abstract concern that will be raised. In fact, the ACLU already has. Catherine Crump of the ACLU says: "It's important that the FAA is scrutinizing the safety of the technology, but they should also make sure Americans' privacy is maintained."

"Having cheap, portable, flying surveillance machines may have a tremendous benefit for law enforcement, but will it respect Americans' privacy?" Somehow, I think she may be more concerned about filming of suspected criminal activity than she is about the generic right to privacy of the much larger body of ordinary law-abiding citizens. But since she has a point, I won't question her motives any farther.

One thing I am absolutely sure of. If the FAA can sort out and solve the potential problems, this is a potential boon to the economy. Without having to hire a single public employee, and without having to invest a single taxpayer dollar, this industry is truly shovel-ready and will produce both new jobs and generate legitimate tax revenue.

Therefore, I fear the FAA will not solve the problem because it is a federal agency beholden to the Obama administration's policies of business-squelching and creation of federal "ownership." Why lend money to a profitable going concern when you can lend it to pie-in-the-sky technologies which are not even close to being shovel-ready and which have a startling track record of bankruptcy?

What are your thoughts on civilian drones?