By John Joy ’18, Contributer
Drones. They dropped radioactive waste on top of the Japanese Prime Minister’s office, they crashed into the White house and The Empire State Building, and they can be bought for under $25. These terminator-pigeons have hit a stride in development, and are capable of flying upwards of 15 miles away from their controller and back completely autonomously. I don’t think that anyone would disagree that the industry needs some regulation, but I can’t think of a single person who agrees on what those regulations should be.
The first, and most polarizing, issue with the regulations that I and many others have found is what exactly defines a UAV(Unmanned Aerial Vehicle)? The Federal Aviation Administration seem to be stumped as well, because all they really say is that all UAVs weighing more than .55LBS need to registered with them. However, classifying aircraft by weight is like classifying a house by the amount furniture it houses; some people can cram a lot more in a small space than others. For example, I could easily build a sub ½ pound plane that, God forbid, could seriously injure somebody in a crash. A multi-copter of the exact same weight would struggle to keep itself in the air, let alone hurt somebody. I for one, would be in favor of classifying UAVs by their thrust and carrying capacity as it’s the one constant between all forms of UAVs. Using power as a classification would mean that all ultralight, ultra-fast aircraft would be subjected to regulation, whereas trainer multi-rotors that would crash at the sight of a fly could be picked up without trouble.
When approached about the notion of regulating its hobby, the Multrotorus-fanus will probably blame the user, and not the hardware for all the stupid things drones have been caught doing in the past year. This leads to my second point, the government needs to start limiting who can actually buy what is essentially one to eight rapidly spinning blades connected by the thinnest plastic the designers managed to find all in the sake of getting as close to that .55 pound magic weight number.
I can’t fly my drone in public without being asked the two hows: How much did it cost, and how easy is it to fly. Even after answering “it cost way too much and it’s easier to drive a car than fly this thing,” everyone always responds with the same “I gotta get me one of these toys” or “oh, my 12 year old son would love one of these.” That second response is what’s going to get drones as we know it banned from the skies, under no circumstance should ANYONE who cannot drive, or has little experience in RC aircraft go anywhere near the control sticks of a drone. I went through two drones when I was twelve (albeit far inferior ones to what’s available today), and learned absolutely nothing from it. I can vividly recall trying to fly in formation with a pack of geese to see my drone could accepted amongst their ranks when I was 12 (spoiler: ultrasonic sensors freak them out). If you give a kid one of these things, all they’re going to do is crash it. And there is a real possibility that more than just a toy and a kid’s spirit is going to be damaged. The FAA has tried to combat this by making all new registered (so about 5% of drone owners) agree not to fly it like an idiot, but the “agreement” carries the same weight as a terms and conditions page on a piece of software. While this may seem to be overkill, buying a drone should be like buying a gun. You should have a clean criminal record and more importantly, I think that you need to prove you can fly the thing before you get your hands on it.
To be honest, there is one elephant in the room that nobody wants to touch, but needs regulation more than anything else; range. See that photo at the top of the page? I took that photo when my drone was more than 1500 feet in the air and well over a mile away from me. And no, this isn’t on some fancy government spec spy drone. I took this on something that I bought on sale for under 500 dollars. It only took one tap of my phone to turn the most popular drone sold in 2015 into something that could down a 747, or ruin the life of any celebrity who values their privacy. I’m all for the future, but the idea that someone could be flying over my house without me noticing (forgot to mention, at this altitude you cannot see or hear a DJI phantom) taking photos of my every move scares me. Even if some shoots down the drone, which is a whole other can of worms, it’s impossible to track the drone back to its pilot even in the best of circumstances. There is no reverse lookup on the FAA drone registry, and that implies that a registered pilot wrote his reg number on the drone, which happens about as often as people actually doing the speed limit on the highway. There needs to be seriously regulations around drones, not just because that can endanger somebody’s life; but they can invade it in way that blends right into George Orwell’s 1984.
