A few facts:
- Price of autonomous and radio-controlled drones continues to drop (autonomous can fly pre-set routes or be programmed to follow at specific altitudes a person wearing a gadget used for selfie-videos of action shots such as skiing or windsurfing). You can fly a drone with a camera for under $200 or pay many thousands for incredibly sophisticated models.
- Drones are becoming common in many applications including surveying, construction, agriculture, video production, real estate sales, etc.
- DHL has begun package delivery using drones to remote locations in Europe.
- Amazon is testing drone delivery of packages in Canada.
- The HumanitarianUAV Network is growing rapidly — this is a global network of drone resources focused on the use of drones for humanitarian purposes, particularly in disaster response.
The FAA is clearly doing everything it can to stop or slow the growth of drones in the U.S. The latest idea of the brainiacs in this federal agency is to require anyone who flies a drone or model airplane to get a pilot's license. Yes, you couldn't fly even a small plane without learning how to fly a real one. Having flown real ones and models, I can tell you that learning one does little for helping you learn the other. Like the other proposed regulations, this one was aptly described by The Economist as "daft." Unfortunately, as The Economist has pointed out, the impact of the FAA's attempts at regulation is to drive most of the innovation to China (DJI is becoming one of the biggest global players), Germany and other countries. The FAA's efforts to regulate — driven by the pilot's lobby according to The Economist — are the reasons why Google and Amazon are piloting their drone projects in Canada and Australia, and why DHL is already dropping packages in Europe.
I am confident that despite the FAA's best efforts, the use of drones in the U.S. will explode in the coming months and years. We will see full-size drones delivering pallets of materials; we will see an explosion in the cost- and carbon-effective use in agriculture and other important applications. I think we will also see passenger drones (no need to learn to fly, just hop aboard and take a nap) but I suspect that is a few years off. We most certainly will see it used to save lives in disasters and emergencies in both helping to locate victims (infrared cameras) and in delivering desperately needed medical or life-support supplies including food and water. We most certainly will see increasing use by law enforcement and emergency management to increase situation awareness and fulfill their missions.
Most importantly for our discussion, we will see drone footage appearing on YouTube in droves. That means this is something PIOs and communicators need to be aware of. What will do you when you declare the fire is out and a drone shows it is not? When you say that the environmental release has been contained but drone video shows it flowing? When you characterize impacts as moderate and drone video emphasizes devastation? Drone video takes rumor management to new heights, so to speak. When a drone video is posted showing impacts, how can we know where and when it was shot? We saw in Hurricane Sandy the widespread use of images and videos purported to be from the incident when in fact they were from other disasters or even concocted. Drone video is certainly subject to this kind of abuse.
The response in correcting video or image-based rumors is to publish your own, right? So, do you have a drone? Are you prepared to fly one or contract with someone who does? How do you propose to counter the false drone reports and show the public the truth? This is where the "daft" regulations from the FAA really start to hurt because the droners out flying their hobby craft, or activists, or bad guys in one form or another are not going to be paying much attention to regulations that are ridiculous and cannot be enforced. However, you, in a large corporation or government agency, don't have quite the same freedom. This puts official sources at a distinct disadvantage in countering the potentially damaging drone reports of the scofflaws.
For this reason alone I urge anyone concerned about this to contact the FAA and tell the agency it represents more than pilots' interests. On that point, safety is a big concern and understandably it is the primary reason behind the non-sensical regulations proposed. I see in The Economist's most recent article that the downing of a US Airways flight by geese is used as a basis for limiting drones. Certainly there are good reasons to have altitude restrictions as well as regulations against using drones near airports. But the safety concerns are seriously overblown, including the risks of use by terrorists. Cars are inherently dangerous and tens of thousands die every year by accident and by stupid drivers, but we do not ban them. We implement reasonable regulations and understand the overall benefit outweighs the risks. Cars are used for car bombs, and computers and the Internet are used by terrorists. Do we ban them? No, we ban their illegal use.
Canada's much more reasonable and thoughtful regulations on drones can serve as a model.
In the early years of the 20th century, the automobile was an innovation that promised to replace the horse and buggy and transform the world. It did. Drones may not have that much of an impact, but I don't think I am too far off the mark to make that comparison. Drones are here to stay and communicators and emergency managers should make their plans accordingly.
Update Dec. 11:
Just announced: FAA will not issue new regulations until at least 2017. Unbelievable. This certainly must be the most incompetent agency ever. Write your elected officials.
