Seven years ago, this article ran in the LA Times:
Pentagon working with FAA to open U.S. airspace to combat drones
The vast majority of the military's drones are small — similar to hobby aircraft. The FAA is working on proposed rules for integrating these drones, which are being eyed by law enforcement and private business to provide aerial surveillance. The FAA expects to release the proposal on small drones this spring.
But the Pentagon is concerned about flying hundreds of larger drones, including Global Hawks as well as MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers, both made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. in Poway.
And last week Congress approved legislation that requires the FAA to have a plan to integrate drones of all kinds into national airspace on a wide scale by 2015.
“All kinds.” Meaning, including those Predators and Reapers and Global Hawks. The day after that 2012 LA Times article was published, President Obama signed the 2012 FAA Modernization and Reform Act. This set in motion a massive collaborative research effort between the FAA, the Dept. of Defense, and various state-level drone testing agencies. The intended result is the end of the current prohibitions on these large military surveillance drones from operating freely outside restricted, military airspace. Since that day, there has been no reporting on this issue. How is that possible?
It should be noted that the 2012 FMRA was optimistic in how quickly this could be achieved:
(“Public” unmanned aircraft are those owned and operated by some unit of government — primarily the US military.) The deadline contained in Section 334 of the Act was not met. However, the research continues, coordinated by ASSURE, the FAA’s Center of Excellence on Unmanned Aircraft Systems. Founded and led by retired Air Force Generals and Colonels (including the author of DoD’s 2011 UAS Airspace Integration Plan), it’s focus is hard to miss.
The FAA is charged with ensuring the safety of the American public in all things aviation-related. And the technological hurdles of that, when it comes to unmanned aircraft, are enormous. The principal problem is “sense and avoid”. Since there is no pilot in the aircraft to apply the central FAA doctrine of “see and avoid”, they have to demonstrate that drones can automatically detect other aircraft and safely avoid colliding with them without the remote pilot having to be involved. No problem, right?
Heck, we still haven’t figured out how to keep self-driving cars from colliding with stationary objects, and that problem is at least one order of magnitude simpler. A self-driving car plowing into the back of a firetruck at 60 mph is bad enough (that happened twice last year) — but a one-ton Predator colliding with a 747 at 20,000 feet? That’s the nightmare scenario the FAA is charged with preventing. Still, the Dept. of Defense has been saying for years that the FAA are dragging their feet, blocking their “requirement” to operate military drones over our heads and alongside our airliners. This, from the conference report on the 2008 Defense budget:
A “dire warning”... “not making progress”. And then again, in the 2009 Defense budget:
Ten years ago, the Pentagon and their Congressional allies were publicly calling the FAA’s refusal to allow DoD drones free access to domestic airspace “a threat to national security”. What sort of pressure is being brought to bear today?
The safety implications aside, let’s not kid ourselves — we live in an era where we know that any capability for the federal government to spy on us that can be abused… will be abused. The surveillance weapons designed to be used in conflict zones overseas are enormously powerful. One Predator circling a medium-sized US city could provide permanent, high-resolution, real-time video of the movements of every single citizen. Frankly, I wouldn’t want a Democratic administration to have this ability to wholesale spy on innocent Americans, much less Individual 1.
Clearly, the safety and civil liberties implications are significant. That’s why you’ve seen extensive reporting on this drone topic on the same scale as say, Amazon package delivery, right? Wrong. That 2012 LA Times article at the top of the page is the last time (that I can find) that the topic of large military drones operating freely in US airspace has been reported anywhere in the mainstream press. (If I’m wrong, and I’ve missed some reporting on this, please post it in the comments.)
The integration plan is moving ahead apace. The FAA just recently granted an experimental certificate of airworthiness to the SkyGuardian, a variant of General Atomics Predator drone. It’s the first military drone developed from the ground up specifically for domestic US airspace, and it’s now being allowed to operate. The day is coming, possibly soon, when we’ll look up and say “Is that a Predator flying over my house? How did this happen?”
Seriously, how can it be that there is absolutely zero discussion about this?