The skies overhead to be filled with drones (CONUS)

S

sublight

Guest
Congress passed the FAA bill. http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=82075

"The FAA is also required under the bill to provide military, commercial and privately-owned drones with expanded access to U.S. airspace currently reserved for manned aircraft by Sept. 30, 2015. That means permitting unmanned drones controlled by remote Relevant Products/Services operators on the ground to fly in the same airspace as airliners, cargo planes, business Relevant Products/Services jets and private aircraft."

Which all seems pretty harmless until a drone smacks into a Delta flight.....
 
sublight said:
Congress passed the FAA bill. http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=82075

"The FAA is also required under the bill to provide military, commercial and privately-owned drones with expanded access to U.S. airspace currently reserved for manned aircraft by Sept. 30, 2015. That means permitting unmanned drones controlled by remote Relevant Products/Services operators on the ground to fly in the same airspace as airliners, cargo planes, business Relevant Products/Services jets and private aircraft."

Which all seems pretty harmless until a drone smacks into a Delta flight.....

In 2010 33,000 people were killed in auto accidents in the US alone. That's down from 43,000 in 2005, 34,000 in 2009. Drones are here to stay.
 
sferrin said:
sublight said:
Congress passed the FAA bill. http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=82075

"The FAA is also required under the bill to provide military, commercial and privately-owned drones with expanded access to U.S. airspace currently reserved for manned aircraft by Sept. 30, 2015. That means permitting unmanned drones controlled by remote Relevant Products/Services operators on the ground to fly in the same airspace as airliners, cargo planes, business Relevant Products/Services jets and private aircraft."

Which all seems pretty harmless until a drone smacks into a Delta flight.....

In 2010 33,000 people were killed in auto accidents in the US alone. That's down from 43,000 in 2005, 34,000 in 2009. Drones are here to stay.
I'm not concerned with auto accidents as much as I'm concerned with the four short years the FAA has to come up with a system of getting drones to play nice with commercial air traffic....
 
sublight said:
I'm not concerned with auto accidents as much as I'm concerned with the four short years the FAA has to come up with a system of getting drones to play nice with commercial air traffic....

Simple solution: equip all airliners with a CIWS-system, one Phalanx in the nose, one in the tail. Any aircraft that comes within a half mile without identifying itself as human-piloted gets KAPOW right in the kisser.

fffuucaptcha.jpg
 
I'm thinking of all the Metro area's that are going to rush out and get a UAV because the city council has decided its cheaper than a police chopper. And lets not forget all the local news stations that have dumped choppers over the last 5 years. They may jump onto the UAV bandwagon too. Its not that UAV's are inherently bad, but the sudden removal of a barrier to entry opens the flood gates to a lot of dumbasses filling the sky.
 
sublight said:
Which all seems pretty harmless until a drone smacks into a Delta flight.....

Actually, I'd be far more concerned with the opposite happening (i.e. the Delta flight smacking into the drone)....

The real question is not if drones will cause mid-air collisions. They will! The question is whether drones will cause mid-air collisions more or less often than manned aircraft.

Regards & all,

Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg
 
sublight said:
sferrin said:
sublight said:
Congress passed the FAA bill. http://www.mobile-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=82075

"The FAA is also required under the bill to provide military, commercial and privately-owned drones with expanded access to U.S. airspace currently reserved for manned aircraft by Sept. 30, 2015. That means permitting unmanned drones controlled by remote Relevant Products/Services operators on the ground to fly in the same airspace as airliners, cargo planes, business Relevant Products/Services jets and private aircraft."

Which all seems pretty harmless until a drone smacks into a Delta flight.....

In 2010 33,000 people were killed in auto accidents in the US alone. That's down from 43,000 in 2005, 34,000 in 2009. Drones are here to stay.
I'm not concerned with auto accidents as much as I'm concerned with the four short years the FAA has to come up with a system of getting drones to play nice with commercial air traffic....
The FAA has already been "working" on this for years :)

"Detect, See, Avoid" as it's known has been an ongoing program it looks like since around the late '90s according to what I'm seeing on Google:
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=detect%2C+see+and+avoid+UAV+testing&psj=1&oq=detect%2C+see+and+avoid+UAV+testing&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=2220l8380l0l8900l13l13l0l0l0l0l330l3540l2-9.4l13l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=935a0bef009a2890&biw=1280&bih=829

Scaled's "Proteus" was used in a full-up test program for a proposed DSA radar and programing system in 2003:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=11141

There is an FAA "Literature Review" from 2009 for the DSA concept here:
http://www.tc.faa.gov/its/worldpac/techrpt/ar0841.pdf

A good overview of the work-done-to-date is here:
http://www.uavm.com/uavregulatory/collisionavoidance.html

Randy
 
But there is no system in place that ties in with the current ATC system. They still have to standardize on one, get it connected to the current ATC system, and make sure its safe in this short amount of time. I've talked to air traffic controllers, none of them have been briefed on any upcoming systems or development in this area. Are they going to train all the controllers at the last second?
 
sublight said:
But there is no system in place that ties in with the current ATC system. They still have to standardize on one, get it connected to the current ATC system, and make sure its safe in this short amount of time. I've talked to air traffic controllers, none of them have been briefed on any upcoming systems or development in this area. Are they going to train all the controllers at the last second?
Actually that's pretty much the entire focus of DSA system. The ability to tie into the current and any future system with a minimum of effort, not to add any "burden" to air traffic controllers or pilots jobs, and to place most of the "responsibility" for avoidance on the drones and their controllers. As you'll see in the articles cited the system is designed to require almost no input or training from your "standard" flight controllers. I'm not surprised the majority don't "know" about it, since it's based on "VFR" regulations they wouldn't normally have a great deal of interaction with drones anyway.

The idea is to use the data already being streamed through the traffic control system to allow the drones (and their controllers) a higher degree of "viability" than would normally be availabe with just on-board sensors. With the expanded data available software and human guidance keeps the drones out of the majority of flight paths and away from possible interaction with normal aircraft.

Supposedly, (we'll see :) ) my city is going to be deploying a set of "Hyperblimps":
http://hyperblimp.com/

this summer for air surveillance purposes and it is supposed to tap into the local airport and military air ATC system with a DSA system. Guess we'll "see" if the ATC controllers have issues with the system or not.

RAndy
 
Via the Drudge Report:
http://thetandd.com/animal-rights-group-says-drone-shot-down/article_017a720a-56ce-11e1-afc4-001871e3ce6c.html
 
Most people don't shoot at police helicopters (East LA being the exception). It will be interesting to see if they show the same restraint against municipal unmanned surveillance platforms. I think the bigger surprise will be once the public figures out how easy it is to blow out CMOS and CCD imagers with a laser, municipalities will run back to manned choppers in droves....
 
http://www.infowars.com/spy-drone-almost-causes-mid-air-collision-with-jet-over-denver/


EDIT: And in other news: http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/05/17/169242/dreamhammer-wants-to-corner-the-drone-os-market

Maybe this scenario is not so far off after all. (h/t to piko1 for original link).
 
Somewhat off topic, but I thought ye might like it. Via PCGamer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le2AeTub3mo&feature=player_embedded

And while we are off on this detour:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTtsn2Srm3E&feature=player_embedded


Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
 
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/faa-documents-raise-questions-about-safety-of-drones-in-u-s-airspace/
 
To integrate a TCAS into a UAV shouldn't be a problem, I think, if it isn't already.
And even smaller UAV could probably be fitted with something like a PCAS, used
for light aircraft. Still yet there probably just wasn't the pressure from the lawmakers.
 
The current working solution that's gone furthest in testing is called Ground Based Sense and Avoid, using an adaption of the army lightweight counter mortar radar to track the UAVs, while a normal ATC radar tracks the big planes. Computer notes conflicts and tells the drone operators to steer away, as well as providing the operators with a constant radar screen showing other aircraft around them. Much easier to implement then attempting to give every single drone its own detection system, but of course, geographically limited to the areas the new radars are deployed in. Should work fine for the urban areas and military training ranges which are most likely to see operations of significant sized drones in CONUS and leave ample time to work out a better long term solution.
 
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/01/anti-drone-camouflage-apparel/
 
http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/29/16726198-anticipating-domestic-boom-colleges-rev-up-drone-piloting-programs?lite
 
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/drone-farm/

Hmmm.

EDIT: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/02/legal-basis-killing-americans/

Panic is in the air, methinks.
 
[Raises eyebrow]

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Seattle-police-to-return-drone-aircraft-4261234.php
 
http://xbradtc.com/2013/02/09/proposal-to-give-federal-judges-a-role-in-drone-strikes-faces-hurdles-the-washington-post/
 
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/340225/problems-white-paper-andrew-c-mccarthy
 
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/13/faa-official-no-armed-drones-us/

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/13/senate-republicans-shoot-down-new-court-oversee-dr/
 
Sea Skimmer said:
The current working solution that's gone furthest in testing is called Ground Based Sense and Avoid, using an adaption of the army lightweight counter mortar radar to track the UAVs, while a normal ATC radar tracks the big planes. Computer notes conflicts and tells the drone operators to steer away, as well as providing the operators with a constant radar screen showing other aircraft around them. Much easier to implement then attempting to give every single drone its own detection system, but of course, geographically limited to the areas the new radars are deployed in. Should work fine for the urban areas and military training ranges which are most likely to see operations of significant sized drones in CONUS and leave ample time to work out a better long term solution.

At last year's DEFCON conference there were two talks which touched on some of the problems with the current ATC and TCAS solutions. This is especially relevant for remotely piloted or autonomous aerial vehicles.

Slides:
https://media.defcon.org/dc-20/presentations/Renderman/DEFCON-20-RenderMan-Hackers-plus-Airplanes.pdf
Slides+Video:
https://media.defcon.org/dc-20/video/DEF%20CON%2020%20Hacking%20Conference%20Presentation%20By%20RenderMan%20-%20Hacker%20and%20Airplanes%20No%20Good%20Can%20Come%20Of%20This%20-%20Slides.m4v

Some of the discussions after the presentation were especially.... enlightening.
 
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/02/17/1710255/amazon-sells-out-predator-drone-toy-after-mocking-reviews
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/9886637/Revealed-al-Qaedas-22-tips-for-dodging-drones.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/9886673/Al-Qaedas-22-tips-for-dodging-drone-attacks-the-list-in-full.html

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/diy-droneproofing/

In the Malian case, fighters were using mats made of woven grass that seemed to let the car blend into the landscape. Or they were smearing their cars in layers of mud so as to actually appear like part of the road. An earlier version of the online anti-drone tips urged followers to tint their vehicle roofs with glass, so the eye in the sky would be tricked.

This ain’t always going to work. Lots of Predators and Reapers have infrared cameras, so when a car below passes by, it’s going to register the heat signature of the vehicle. For those, something that moves — and would appear on a screen for a ground-control station as a white streak indicating an elevated heat level — but doesn’t look on a regular camera like a vehicle is probably going to attract unwelcome U.S. attention, not divert it.

But remember: Drones are built to hover, and their cameras are often taking fixed-viewpoint shots for long periods of time, or switching angles at particular intervals. A car traveling across the drone camera’s field of vision will do so for a brief period of time before disappearing, so a crude disguise has merit. After all, drone vision isn’t automated, so a human being watching on a screen from thousands of miles away needs to perceive that he or she is looking at a vehicle. Call it an irony of persistent surveillance.

Of course, if the CIA or the U.S. military is already on the trail of your particular car, your best bet with camouflage is to hope that the makeshift canopy can make the drone lose your trail. If not, it’s going to follow you and fire on you, no matter how dirty you can get your vehicle. Still, painting your car with mud or getting it under a canopied area might have some utility for cooling the car down after turning it off, thereby making the drone sensor think you haven’t been out driving.

Orbit, not hover. The editor was half-asleep there.
 
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57572207-38/dhs-built-domestic-surveillance-tech-into-predator-drones/
 
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0502/Flight-of-the-RoboBee-Tiny-hovering-robot-creates-buzz

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/05/01/tiny-device-will-detect-domestic-drones
 
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/7/faa-chief-announces-progress-drone-regs/
 
Probably correct in so far, as there already may be even more "commercial drones" around in the US, than just 7.500 !
This number may already have been reached here in Germany, not always known for using such technologies in the first
place. Some weeks ago, I witnessed a roofer (one of the bigger companies around here), checking a roof and guttering
actually using a drone ! Couldn't resist chatting up the "operator", of course and looking over his shoulder. He used a
standard RC-Quadrocopter, realtime imagery and a stabilised camera mounting, all components available for less than
2.500 €. And yes, of course he was an RC-modeller, able now to offset his hobby against taxes !
But with or without camera, all those flying objects are"drones" and the modl shops are full of them ! And the border
between commercially usable ones and "just toys" isn't clearly defined, I think.
 
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/30/drone-test-sites/4248771/
 
Grey Havoc said:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/30/drone-test-sites/4248771/
This is a crazy schedule. The first thing they need to do is make sure every single thing in the air has a mode S transponder and make sure everything earlier is pulled out of service. They aren't even talking about doing that yet....
 
http://www.blacklistednews.com/$18_million_'Homeland_Security'_drone_crashes_into_ocean/32419/0/38/38/Y/M.html

http://m.utsandiego.com/news/2014/jan/29/tp-drone-used-for-patrolling-border-downed-off/
 
http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2014/02/13/faa-grounds-valentines-flower-delivery-express-drone/
 
An interesting article about the use of drones, especially civil ones was published in
the March issue of the German magazine "Spektrum der Wissenschaft" (Spectrum of Sciences).
Written by Todd Humphreys, leader of the Radionavigation Laboratory of the University of
Texas/Austin, and Kyle Wesson, a doctorand there, it sums up legal and technical problems.
Main problem still is, that most intended uses are aimed at the often already congested
airspace in and around cities and that every drone used there would have to be equipped
with some kind of collision avoidance system. Radar systems quite often will be no option
for a great part of the drones, which will be too small to carry such additional loads.
The solution may be the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), expected to
be mandatory for every aircraft, no matter of its size, in the US from 2020 onwards.
The mentioned problem with all existing systems, and even with those currently under
development is, that they aren't resistant against spoofing and not even against
accidentally received signals not meant for them.Whereas a pilot may still be capable
of identifying manipulated signals, the flight control system of a drone has no chance.
Faulty software could be another risk, as was shown on August, the 2nd 2010, when during
a test flight a MQ-8B Fire Scout was flying out of controlin the airspace over Washington
for more than half an hour, not even following the pre-programmed emergency routine,
before the controller regained control. GPS still is a mainstay for controlling drones,
but is known to be relatively easy to jam or spoof, as was demonstrated by the Radio-
navigation Laboratory of the University of Texas/Austin during a staged test over the
White Sands Missile range in June 2012, when a drone was hi-jacked using manipulated
GPS signals. To impeded flight security of drones not even the manipulation of signals
is always necessary, white noise in the frequency spectrum of the GPS emissions may be
enough, as a report about the loss of a South Korean recce drone revealed. The reason
for that drone crashing into its ground station, killing one and wounding two soldiers,
could be traced back to a North Korean jamming transmitter. The proposed uses of small
civil drones for either delivering goods in urban areas, or for surveying of such areas
places them in an enviroment, that may be as dangerous for them, as the airspace over
some Afghan areas for military helicopters ! Just follow the cases mentioned in the
media of pilots blinded by laser pointers, or deliberate attempts to disturb air traffic
with kites and balloons. And in the case of the delivery of your pizza or your Amazon
shipment, the "hunter" actually can expect a worthwhile prey, but even if just shot
down using a kind of childrens wooden catapult maybe inflicting severe damage not only
to the drone, but to persons and properties it crashes on ! The legal problems of civil/
commercial drones flying over private ground and pehaps taking photos or videos are less
dangerous, but nevertheless jsut as difficult to solve. In the sum, we'll probably see
quite a lot of years passing by, before "the sky above is filled with drones" !

(Who is interested can get a scan of the original article (in German language), just send
a PM)
 
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/10/29/nypd-threat-of-terrorists-with-drones-is-a-growing-concern/
 
Via the Drudge Report:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-flying-of-unauthorized-drones-at-stadiums-prompts-safety-concerns/2014/11/09/20f3ae50-65d3-11e4-9fdc-d43b053ecb4d_story.html

http://news.yahoo.com/flying-drones-near-stadiums-could-end-jail-time-231658975--finance.html
 

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