Drone Disruptions, Close Calls, Show Current Regulations Are Way Too Lax

Can we finally say 'enough is enough'  with the millions of drones infesting the world's skies especially after what happened recently at Gatwick Airport  ('Drones Shut Down Major UK Airport', WSJ, Dec. 21, p. A8)?  Not to mention the suspected collision of a small drone with an AeroMexico plane ('Risk Of Airliner-Drone Crash In Focus After Incident', WSJ, Dec. 17, p. A6)  a week ago?  I mean,  what is it going to take? A drone ripping into a Boeing 767 engine with hundreds of lives lost before regulators get their collective act together?

As reported in the piece about the near mid=air collision (ibid.):

"Wednesday's AeroMexico incident is bound to prompt greater focus on the various ways airports, regulators and drone operators are experimenting to reduce the risk of such midair crashes, particularly in the vicinity of airports when planes are more susceptible because they are flying slowly and low."
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And in regard to the Gatwick disruption (ibid.):


"Authorities took the dramatic step Thursday of grounding flights all day at one of Europe;s busiest airports, upending plans for more than 100,000 passengers after what was said to be a deliberate attempt to use drones to disrupt travel.

The incident at Gatwick Airport, about   an hour's drive south of London, punctuates the growing threat to civil aviation by unmanned aircraft....Worries over drones have disrupted airport operations before but never for such a long time at such a large airport."

And, of course, I've been blogging about this issue since the drone menace first reared its ugly head, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/02/no-to-more-drones-in-us-skies.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/02/time-to-snuff-this-drone-bullshit-now.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-drone-pandoras-box-how-long-before.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/07/drones-gone-wild-why-moire-air.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/06/drone-makers-whats-little-risk-for.html

Look, there are many players to blame in this, from a weak-willed, bought out congress anxious to get campaign donations from the drone makers, to the manufacturers themselves - who want as few regulations as possible.  Then to the likes of the drone users, including Alphabet, Inc. and Amazon who've bet big on the drone future.

Indeed, as long ago as February, 2012 I had written:

"Yet another federal agency (FAA) is now being held hostage to the corporatist-industrial complex,  attempting to find new avenues for drone production since the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan are ending (well the first has officially ended, the second nearly so....

In the case of this new FAA bill, worth some $63 billion (and already four years in the lobbying and rewriting phases), U.S. skies would be inundated with tens of thousands of unmanned drones sharing airspace with commercial planes - and recall these are already at the beck and call of overworked air traffic controllers, as gauged by nearly 300 near misses per year. Imagine if they now had to contend with thousands of these unmanned drones flying who knows where?

Certainly the commercial pilots themselves aren't too enthused. As a WSJ article observes ('U.S. Skies Could See More Drones', Feb. 4, p. A7):

"Barely hours after the 374-page bill became public pilot union officials urged a more deliberate approach. Lee Moak, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents 53,000 pilots across North America, said his organization remains worried about safety issues such as training and certification of those unmanned aircraft."


Then, in a Feb. 27, post some weeks later I cited a Denver Post front page story noting:

"Congress has told the FAA that it must allow civilian and military drones to fly in civilian airspace by 2015"

In other words, even then congress myopically invited the potential for  a slew of near collisions! All for what? MONEY! Each drone that ended up in the skies put lobbyist money in the craven congress critters'  pockets, likely from the "Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International".This is the selfsame "industry trade group"   that has pushed this bullshit down the FAA's throat and used congress as the Trojan Horse to do it....with billions of dollars of money exchanging paws in the background.

I then quoted a PR specialist for the same AUVSI outfit, a Ben Gielow - who could barely control his drooling:

"The potential civil market for these systems could dwarf the military market in the coming years if we can get access to the airspace.."

If?....Well hell, they've now gotten that access to the civilian commercial airspace and with disastrous results.   Some may ask:  what's so wrong with companies pushing to use drones more, and lobbyists getting in on the act too? Plenty! Starting with none of these actors has clue one  - or any real experience - with the historically slow pace of crafting aviation rules. I am talking here not just about getting drones into commercial airspace, but being able to protect large transport craft with hundreds of humans using that airspace.

 

That problem has not been solved, and when stringent proposals were offered by the Obama FAA, i.e. making all drone operators get a pilot's license to conform to a certain standard - the drone makers and congress went ballistic.   True, in some nations, e.g. Germany, there is now a push for those elements manage the country's air traffic control system, to make steps toward "a harmonious and safe coexistence of manned and unmanned aviation".  (WSJ, Dec. 24, p. A9).

 

However, even the most optimistic observers including specialists in aviation and regulatory agencies admit when pushed that "even partial integration is many years away and is dependent on technical leaps still on the drawing boards."  (Ibid.)

More daunting for the drone mavens and operators:

 

"Some drone proponents worry the Gatwick incident could lead to regulatory backlash. The British Airline Pilots Association, which has long called for tighter rules for private drone use, this week called on the British government to raise to 3.1 miles (from 0.6 miles) the drone exclusion zone around airports. It also called for drone licensing and registration requirements."

These are also changes I've endorsed in previous blog posts for U.S. drone management.  The reason is simple:  despite what the drone lobbyists, users and aficionados may say,  it's much better to preemptively make the skies safer for commercial aircraft using stiffer regs, than to wait for a catastrophic drone-airline  collision that kills hundreds to change. After which many may want ALL unmanned craft banned permanently from within 100 miles of  major airports. 

All of these matters should have been thought about when the first legislation appeared nearly 7 years ago. However, the lobbyists, drone makers and a cowed congress were too much in a hurry.  They all  felt the need to dash to the finish line when more sobriety, reflection and temperance was required. The displaced passengers at Gatwick may well be the first adversely affected in mass numbers, but they won't be the last.   And as drone specialists note, it will take years - perhaps as long as a decade- before an effective integration of aviation regs is achieved. In the meantime, what to do?  Common sense screams that the FAA must implement powerful provisional regulations including licensing and registration of all would-be operators.

Cumbersome? Maybe. But preferable to having irresponsible jerks bring down a jetliner with hundreds sacrificed to political and financial expediency.  (And yes, unfortunately in the current 'Drone world', "Peter has to pay for Paul".)

 

FAA Needs to Prevent Drones Taking Over Our Skies After Disclosure of Crashes (Revised With Updated News)

As I’ve written about before, the prospect of opening American skies to drone flight is both reckless and inviting disaster. It’s bad enough we’ve had countless ‘near misses’  between ordinary aircraft in the skies the past few years and now the drone-fetishists want to risk direct collisions between these unstable, unmanned vehicles and commercial aircraft – endangering the lives of thousands.

While it's generally known that public opposition has centered on civil-liberties concerns, such as the morality and legality of using drones to spy on people in their back yards, there has been scant scrutiny of the safety record of remotely controlled aircraft. A report released June 5 by the National Academy of Sciences, however,  concluded that there were “serious unanswered questions” about how to safely integrate civilian drones into the national airspace, calling it a “critical, crosscutting challenge.

None of this would have been an issue had the drone manufacturing industry 3 yrs. ago, under the aegis of The Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, (AUVSI)  the industry’s trade group in Washington, hadn't begun a full court press on our lily-livered congress to pass legislation allowing mass drone implementation.

The take was there was nothing to fret over. Michael Toscano, president of the AUVSI wasn't bothered as he argued in a 2012 interview that:

"“Car crashes kill 35,000 people a year, but we don’t talk about banning cars. We need to be honest about the costs and the benefits.”

Oh just terrific! So, as long as the drone -aircraft collisions don't snuff out more than the number perishing in automobile crashes, Toscano is just fine with them. And what exactly are the benefits? I dismissed these so-called benefits in my first blog about the issue:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/02/no-to-more-drones-in-us-skies.html

Now, after a Washington Post investigation, we know there is much to worry about. While the air hazards of drones might have been speculation years ago, the findings by the Post shows concerns are very real and can’t be swept away by the drone fiends’ obsession with getting millions into the skies.

The findings? More than 400 large U.S. military drones have crashed in major accidents around the world since 2001, a record of calamity that exposes the potential dangers of throwing open American skies to drone traffic. This according to a year long Post investigation.  (Let me say it is refreshing to see a Neoliberal paper getting back to investigative reporting of the type that originally made its name, i.e. with the exposure of the Watergate conspiracy in 1973).

According to the Post:

"Since the outbreak of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military drones have malfunctioned in myriad ways, plummeting from the sky because of mechanical breakdowns, human error, bad weather and other reasons, according to more than 50,000 pages of accident investigation reports and other records obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act.

 Two hundred and twenty-four drones crashed in Class B accidents that, under current standards, cost between $500,000 and $2 million. Officials withheld basic details about those mishaps, such as the dates and locations, on the grounds that the lesser damage totals did not warrant a public investigation."  

 

Despite this, commercial drone flights are set to become a widespread reality but the basis for drone crashes has never been properly addressed. The inherent problems,  as noted by the Post report, include:

A limited ability to detect and avoid trouble. Cameras and high-tech sensors on a drone cannot fully replace a pilot’s eyes and ears and nose in the cockpit. Most remotely controlled planes are not equipped with radar or anti-collision systems designed to prevent midair disasters.

Pilot error. Despite popular perceptions, flying a drone is much trickier than playing a video game. The Air Force licenses its drone pilots and trains them constantly, but mistakes are still common, particularly during landings. In four cases over a three-year period, Air Force pilots committed errors so egregious that they were investigated for suspected dereliction of duty.

Persistent mechanical defects. Some common drone models were designed without backup safety features and rushed to war without the benefit of years of testing. Many accidents were triggered by basic electrical malfunctions; others were caused by bad weather. Military personnel blamed some mishaps on inexplicable problems. The crews of two doomed Predators that crashed in 2008 and 2009 told investigators that their respective planes had been “possessed” and plagued by “demons.”

Unreliable communications links. Drones are dependent on wireless transmissions to relay commands and navigational information, usually via satellite. Those connections can be fragile. Records show that links were disrupted or lost in more than a quarter of the worst crashes.

 

Among the models that crashed most often is the MQ-1 Predator, the Air Force drone manufactured by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, of San Diego. Almost half the Predators bought by the Air Force have been involved in a major accident, according to purchasing and safety data.  It is clear that the FAA must know of this, as it ought to know of incidents and defects with other drone craft. Given this it is also clear the FAA needs to be conservative in respect to mandating drone performance meet specific performance standards before turning millions loose in our skies.

 

 

The Post has noted that pent-up demand to buy and fly drones has engendered an obsession with getting them into the skies.  Law enforcement agencies, which already own a small number of camera-equipped drones, are projected to purchase thousands more; police departments covet them as an inexpensive tool to provide bird’s-eye surveillance for up to 24 hours straight. Businesses see profitable possibilities for drones, to tend crops, move cargo, inspect real estate or film Hollywood movies. Journalists have applied for drone licenses to cover the news. Amazon.com chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos wants his company to use autonomous drones to deliver small packages to customers’ doorsteps. Is there no end? Not really! Even ordinary folks want to get their own drones.

 

As I pointed out before, much of this pent up demand surfaced after our bought and sold out whore congress passed legislation giving in to the lobbyists of the drone makers. (The drone industry, which lobbied Congress to pass the new law, predicted $82 billion in economic benefits and 100,000 new jobs by 2025) . Not forecast is how many commercial air crashes are likely to occur if U.S. air space is opened up – which some estimate to be over 4 per year with hundreds of lives lost. Again, because of the inherent defects and instability of drone performance and lack of operator control - as detailed earlier.  In 2012 Medea Benjamin made reference to the spectacle of congressional corporate compliance and being bought out by the drone makers, as she said:

 

"They’ve been able to write the drone legislation and get their lackeys in Congress to push it through and get the president to sign it.”
 

In other words, the congressional rats and whores placed the bottom line of corporations over citizen welfare. But this is what we expect in a corporatocracy.   What's not a good thing is how our slimy congress critters actually think they can slide this crap right past our noses and make it stick. They all ought to be ashamed of themselves, but when laws are dictated by the corporate paymasters you know a once great Republic is already on its last legs

 

A prelude of what we’re in for if the FAA caves in is highlighted in one particular incident the Post discovered - when on Aug. 15, 2011, a C-130 Hercules weighing about 145,000 pounds was descending toward Forward Operating Base Sharana, in eastern Afghanistan. Suddenly, a quarter-mile above the ground, the huge Air Force plane collided with a 375-pound flying object.

 

“Holy shit!” yelled the Hercules’s navigator, according to a transcript of the cockpit voice recorder. “We got hit by a UAV! Hit by a UAV!”

 

(A UAV is an ‘unmanned aerial vehicle’)

Not emphasized until now are the dozens of misses of commercial aircraft with drones, near major airports - highlighted in the FAA map below:


These incidents include one in which a pilot descending into LaGuardia observed a drone with a 10 -15 foot wingspan above lower Manhattan. In another LA incident, two separate pilots reported a drone "the size of a trash can" perilously closeby.  The FAA was not able to pursue or identify the offenders because either "radar data was not available" or "the operators could not be identified." (Denver Post, 'Drone Close Calls', June 25th, p. 17A)   The Post notes that (p. 22A):

"The close calls were the latest in a rash of dangerous encounters between civilian aircraft and drones flown in contravention of FAA rules intended to safeguard U.S. airspace.."

Beyond that, the Post reports that "in 15 cases the past two years, drones flew dangerously close to airports or passenger aircraft" (including the incidents noted above in New York and LA.) The accumulating incidents so spooked one commercial pilot (Greg Cromer) that he actually wrote a letter to the FAA opposing the whole insane idea of opening U.S. airspace to these mechanical beasties, writing (ibid.):

"I can see no way to prevent a collision with something that could be as small as a bird or a plane or kitchen appliance."

In addition, "the NASA database confirms that dangerous brushes between drones and passenger aircraft are more common than the FAA acknowledges."  Is the FAA already co-opted and bought out? We hope to hell not!  According to the database, there've been 50 incidents since 2005, including potential disasters. Meanwhile, Chris Stephenson, an operations coordinator with the National Air Traffic Controllers' Association, described the pending integration of drones into national airspace as "a tsunami headed for the front porch". Other drone advocates (e.g. General Dynamics' Krista Ochs) are concerned with how the industry will be set back if and when the first major crashes with commercial airlines occur.  As she put it (ibid.):

"If we have a major catastrophe that involves some type of midair collision it could set us back years."


She has a point!

 

Since most congress critters are clearly  whores to the drone industry, the FAA is the last regulatory bulwark standing between sanity and opening our skies to a threat that will dwarf anything that terrorist acts could create. Our otherwise terror-obsessed lawmakers  could have acted with courage to prevent this but were too blinded by the immediate lure of commercial profit and responding  to the ubiquitous dog whistle of “jobs” . Is there no one who will stand his ground and say ‘No!’ Well, we had better hope the FAA does and doesn't mutate into another bought out agency - as many of us suspect.

 

If not, we the citizens need to get our game faces on, put away the smartphones, and get our congress critters to back away from this insanity! (By writing actual hard copy letters addressed to these mutts, in D.C.)   We’ve given away most of our civil liberties to feel temporarily “safe” after 9/11,  but are we also prepared to open the skies to even more sinister threats on the basis of expanding profits for drone manufacturers?

 

 

This will be a test of whether this nation is certifiably psychotic or in any way  residually rational.

I’d make a bet but I’m not confident of winning!  The power of money as "speech" obviously so far has trumped the voices (and votes) of citizens.

 

If my Revolutionary War ancestor Conrad Brumbaugh was alive he'd be aghast at how the Republic he visualized had descended into another aristocratic plutocracy - where the People can barely be heard above the media din and PR pushers.  As for the claim of money as "speech" he'd have likely taken his musket out and fired at anyone making such a whacked statement. (Conrad didn't suffer fools lightly!)

 

Let's hope we don't have to wait for dozens of mid-air collisions with drones or "UAVS" before reason finally re-asserts itself and stiff regulations keep drones limited in number and out of our skies -  until they can show all the performance defects are resolved.

Drone Makers to Public: Stop Whining Already! Drones is GOOD Guys!

The drone manufacturing industry, under the aegis of The Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, (AUVSI)  the industry’s trade group in Washington, is pissed off and they aren't going to take it anymore! This is after facing growing hostiliity to drone implementation on both the left and the right. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, for example, called for a ban on drones in U.S. airspace. Then two conservo two other commentators endorsed the idea of shooting down unmanned aircraft flown by U.S. law enforcement agencies.

Meanwhile, many on the left, have correctly pointed out the inherent dangers posed by these flying robots in U.S. airspace, since he FAA, has not yet issued rules for unmanned aviation systems - especially maneuvering in proximity to large commercial airports such as Denver's (where a near collision occurred about 2 weeks ago. Moreover, air safety experts also have raised questions about the ability of sensors aboard unmanned aircraft to properly detect a nearby plane, and to assure immediate action to avoid a midair collision.

Michael Toscano, president of the AUVSI isn't bothered as he argued in a recent interview that:

"“Car crashes kill 35,000 people a year, but we don’t talk about banning cars. We need to be honest about the costs and the benefits.”

Oh just terrific! So, as long as the drone -aircraft collisions don't snuff out more than the number perishing in autmobile crashes, Toscano is just fine with them. And what exactly are the benefits? I dismissed these so-called benefits in my first blog about the issue:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/02/no-to-more-drones-in-us-skies.html

Stated "benefits" cited including: environmental monitoring, fire protection, surveillance of suspected criminals....checking power lines and tracking equipment.  But all of these can be done at much less expense and without requiring unmanned drones. For example, multiple street video cameras mounted all over can now track criminals anywhere. Moreover, the "fusion centers" provided under the Patriot Act make this as easy as companies tracking people using 'cookies' on the web. Nor do we need to risk commercial passenger safety by putting thousands of the blasted things in our skies for the specious reasons cited. In the end this is all bullshit, and the real purpose of this law is to provide an outlet for the defense industry drone manufacturers who will no longer have U.S. occupations within which to ply.

But Mike Toscano isn't taking it on the nose.asserting that the AUVSI would go on a PR offensive against critics. Toscano made the PR strategy sound like something straight out of Edwin Bernays reality-management textbook — or George Orwell's 'Newspeak' from 1984.. The AUVSI wants to bombard the American public with positive images and messages about drones in an effort to reverse the growing perception of the aircraft as a threat to privacy and safety. Didn't ya know that small drones made up like little flying Avengers can even babysit your kids? And they can generate serenades or nursery rhymes too!

According to Toscano:

"We’re going to do a much better job of educating people about unmanned aviation, the good and the bad,”

Right and we know where the emphasis will be.  Already Toscano and his mates are preparing the main boilerplates for language change, for example seeking to replace the harsh word 'drone' (which conjurs up images of Afghani babies being incinerated by Hellfire missiles fired from predator drones) to 'remotely piloted vehicles”. Sorry, maestro! But if your vehicle has to be directed from afar it's not being "piloted"! It's a zombie, a drone!

Meanwhile, Medea Benjamin of 'Code Pink' has highlighted the same pernicious origin of this drone law that I noted in my 'Elements of the Corporatocracy': That is, as in the case of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 -letting lobbyists actually write the legislation and the congress whores merely sign on. In the same way, according to Benjamin:

"They’ve been able to write the drone legislation and get their lackeys in Congress to push it through and get the president to sign it. But they are going to have to work harder and harder as we ramp up our efforts to educate the public.”


My bet is on the anti-drone side to educate more clearly and deliberately than the drone spin meisters can.

Meanwhile, Missy Cummings, a professor of aerospace engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, insists that the recent controversies about drones mark a new phase in public thinking.
“We’ve just reached a tipping point and now people are starting to think about and talk about these issues, That’s a good thing.”
 
What's not a good thing is how our slimey congress critters actually think they can slide this crap right past our noses and make it stick. They all ought to be ashamed of themselves, but when laws are dicatated by the corporate paymasters you know a once great Republic is already on its last legs. The very fact that the billions needed to produce these damned things could have been used instead to hire back 365,000 teachers nation wide.

The drone makers barely realize how shameful they are, and the fact they need to hire PR hacks to push their crap is further proof.