As some of you may have heard, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) is holding a press conference today to "announce a new plan requiring anyone buying a "drone" to register the device with the U.S. Department of Transportation." As you may have guessed, the title of this article is a little tongue in cheek. While I understand what the FAA is trying to do (we register manned aircraft, cars, motorcycles, etc.), this is very impractical if it designed to regulate hobbyists.A large portion of commercially available drones are sold online and are purchased by adult hobbyists or teenagers; therefore, attempting to control this market to this extent would be like herding cats. At this time, it is also unclear how a quick registration process would prevent drone hobbyist mishaps. I fail to see how this would correct behaviors and make it safer for manned aircraft to operate in the same general airspace as drone hobbyists.
However, we don't yet know if that is their intention with this plan. This plan only may apply to larger drones, For example, lets say hobbyist drones over 10 lbs would have to register. This would not include include the DJI Phantom, 3DR Solo, Yuneec, etc., which are the most popular hobbyist drones. This plan could be trying to focus on the larger hobbyist drones, which would be more of a threat to a manned aircraft if a collision did occur. We will just have to wait until 12:30pm EST to find out...
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has recently entered into a Pathfinder agreement with CACI International Inc. to evaluate how the company’s technology can help detect Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) near airports. Is this an attempt to provide a way to passively detect, identify, and track UAS – or aerial drones – and their ground-based operators, in order to protect airspace from inadvertent or unlawful misuse of drones near U.S. airports?
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