The Future and UAVs

Over the past several weeks, numerous articles have been published on the topic of UAVs and their civil and government/military roles. Focusing first on civil UAVs, several large organizations have publicly announced new ventures using UAVs. Facebook recently purchased a UAV company with the intent on providing Internet to those in rural areas, and Amazon and UPS are trialing package delivery by UAVs. Other civil uses are also include crop-dusting, search and rescue and facility security. It is important to note that the FAA currently restricts the commercial, for money, use of UVAs. Civil operators of UAVs are required to obtain FAA approval, usually an experimental license, to fly UAVs for research and flight demonstrations. Use in Class B airspace is prohibited, except if granted express approval by the FAA. There are no regulations targeting recreational users of UAVs. A recent ruling by the NTSB has cast doubt the FAA’s ability to regulate the use of UAVs, as there is a small amount of expressly written regulations. The limited regulation is posing a challenge to the integration of UAVs into the NAS, which is scheduled to being in 2015 (albeit an incremental approach). The integration is planned in several phases to ensure safety and efficiency. All UAVs operating in the NAS will be required to have “sense and avoid” technologies and will require the development of command and control frequencies and ground control stations. Implementation of UAVs into the NAS poses additional problems the FAA will have to overcome.The growth in UAV traffic is expected to be immense, and may reduce the efficiency of our already congested air space. Due to the military and privacy fears, public perception of drones fairly negative. Many in the general public are not comfortable with the thought of camera-equipped robots flying above their head, even if that thought is not a correct assumption. Organizations and companies will have to fight to earn the publics trust, and prove UAVs do not infringe on privacy. As previously stated, UAV growth is expected to be immense, with the industry expected to be worth $582 billion by 2020. This growth is likely to create many new job positions; UAVJobs offers a modest list of current UAV positions available, expect the number to grow. There are a wide range of positions some of which include human factors analysts, operators, department managers, and mechanics.

As many of us know, UAVs are and have been taking a more prominent role in our military, reducing the number of inefficient planes and soldiers in harms way. A recent budget proposal by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has the military cutting costs and increasing the number of drones in order to realign with current geopolitical and spending constraints. UAVs have proven to be safer and far more efficient to use than standard military equipment, however, as with any military operation errors can be made. Ethical questions of the use of UAVs can be raised because of questionable operations and accidental deaths.  Should the United States fly UAVs into the airspace of sovereign nations? Is enough being done to ensure those being targeted by UAVs are the correct target? I’ll let you, the reader, decided.