Drones , drones , drones , and more drones . It seems like they are everywhere . These days it ’ s hard to go near a news medium , be it paper , TV , radio or e-anything to be bombarded with yet another article on how drones are going to take over the world , do mundane , boring , ugly and dangerous jobs and generally save us from ourselves .
At the risk of being a bit cynical I see much of this as moneyfocused raving by astonishingly ignorant and non-thinking media wonks . Drones have been around a long long long time . The first recorded system seems to be in 1849 when the Austrians attacked Italy ( well , Venice ) with unmanned balloons loaded with explosives . This was only partially successful as some of them got blown back into Austrian territory !
Then over the period 1910-1912 , a Major Raymond Phillips made many demo flights in the London Hippodrome with wireless controlled balloons and airships ( and model trains and boats ) He also did quite a few trials with light-guided airships using a small searchlight and selenium cells . Then during WW1 and a little later , there were many drone developments , with “ Automatic airplanes ” “ Aerial torpedoes ” and Automatic aerial targets ” being developed and built .
In keeping with a lot of other areas , WW2 spawned a whole raft of these . Reginald Denny ’ s company produced around 15,000 DennyPlane drones for training AA gunners . The RAF developed the “ Queen Bee ” a RC Tiger Moth , again for gunnery practice , and the USAF used old converted B-17 and B-24s as large remote unmanned “ one-way ” bombers . Both US and German forces had TV-guided flying bombs from around 1941 onwards , some were spectacularly successful , others less so .
If the birthplace of “ modern ” UASs in decent quantities was WW2 , they really came of age during the Vietnam era . There were many thousands of very successful designs fielded . The most produced was the AQM-34 and variants with about 9,000 made , the production ended in 2002 and some are still operational .
Probably one of the most successful modern UASs and one that gets a lot of media coverage is the Predator . This was developed in the early 90 ’ s and was initially built quite economically from pretty much off the shelf engines , components , consumer video equipment and light aircraft avionics .
What is quite amusing is that in 1996 , the US DoD and General Atomics ( the manufacturer ) gave a brief in Wellington on Predator to every man and his dog , including Defence , CAA , Airways , Customs , Immigration , Police , etc , etc . A Press release on this was circulated afterwards , and got ignored by the media fools . Now of course , try to find something without UAS ravings !
Amongst all the dross and trivia , there is the odd good article , |
and one that was balanced and sensible was the “ Rise of the |
Drones ” in the Feb 11 , 2013 |
issue of Time magazine . |
I |
commend it as good reading . |
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They make a number of important observations . One is that consumer grade “ drones ” are a little like PCs in the 1980-ish period , almost a toy for enthusiasts and geeks . But that is very rapidly changing and they soon become as ubiquitous as cellphones . ( or two as most teenage girls seem to require !)
If used sensibly , they have a considerable number of useful applications , that we are only starting to scratch the surface of , and in fact , new uses are starting to dawn on us every week , it seems . However as Carl Sagan dryly noted : - almost every advance we have ever made , can be used for good or bad .
They correctly point out that societal changes will be as important to us as the regulatory and technological ones . Imagine walking down a mall , with about 200 “ drones ” flitting about . The reaction of many will be “ get that thing outa my face !” especially if they are suspected of carrying a camera , and they virtually all will . They are essentially “ flying smartphones ” now . And that will force a national debate and discussion on several issues .
They mention the well-known 2012 case in South Carolina , where an animal-rights group used a drone to watch hunters during a pigeon shoot on private property . The hunters promptly shot it down , and Time observes that it might be America ’ s first case of human-on-drone violence , but it certainly won ’ t be the last .
As I write this an NZ Navy rating has been court-martialed for taking pictures in women ’ s toilets . So imagine a mall with all these tiny drones flitting about , in and out of toilets , changing cubicles , etc . A real pervert ’ s delight ! Of course finding the offender will be impossible , as they could be anywhere in the mall , or even kilometers away . It seems to me that the antidrone weapon of choice will be something like a squash racquet with a 2-3 metre handle extension , to do a little “ aerial sweeping ”
The legal system has yet to catch up with all this , but it will . Right now the main airspace regulators ’ ( NZ CAA ) rules are fuzzy but under development . However , I think it ’ s fair to say they will never cover this sort of micro-drone . So I ’ d expect to see council by-laws trying to , i . e . just like the rather common “ no skateboards on the footpath ” by-law . That might work , but will only ever stop the law-abiding section of our society . See the point is this ; it ’ s illegal to speed on the roads , but in NZ during 2010 , 919,639 speeding tickets were handed out thus raising about $ 86M in fines ! Bit of a compliance and / or comprehension problem there , you might agree ?
Just to set the scene , there are a few States in the USA that are in the process of passing bills that will make illegal , or very severely restrict drones , and that generally includes model