It'll cost well more then that when it falls (or crashes) on someone.
Posted on 12/07/2011 6:36:40 AM PST by Just4Him
What do you know about drones? You know drones — those robotic, unmanned planes that fire missiles for the American military across Afghanistan, Pakistan and anywhere else the United States needs to get away with murder. Well if you don’t know too much, don’t worry, that’ll change soon. The Federal Aviation Administration is looking into rules that will bring the controversial aircraft into the country, creating an United States airspace buzzing with tiny, robot planes to look over every inch of American soil — and maybe more. An article published Tuesday in the Los Angeles Times reveals that new drone planes could be coming domestically quite soon, as both law enforcement and the agricultural sector are seeing benefits in keeping an arsenal of unmanned planes ready to patrol the skies. For farmers, drones could bring a new method of pumping pesticides into fields of crops from above; for the cops, the aircraft could conduct surveillance over suspected criminals (think police chopper but remote controlled). The Times reports that utility companies see a benefit in drones as well, giving them a new set of eyes to monitor oil, gas and water pipelines.
(Excerpt) Read more at rt.com ...
This hasn't come up in my area. Wondering how local gov rationalizes such an edict?
Besides the dubious sourcing for this thread there is a lot of background here that is missing.
The FAA and DHS have been battling UAV regulations for a while. It seems the military has stopped trying to get use of their UAVs in dual use airspace and does most of their training in exclusively military restricted air space.
DHS jumped the gun and started buying Predator B for border security, but has been locked into narrow tracks, at prescribed altitudes and are escorting them back and forth with manned aircraft. They have crashed a couple of them already including one where the contractor paid to operate the thing inadvertently shut the engine off. For the same amount of money and arguably fewer people they could have bought 3 Cessna Caravans per Predator with cameras and gotten a lot more flexibility.
Predator B will be great for patrolling deep into the Caribbean and East Pacific, but it will be a while before it can do anything helpful in the U.S. Unfortunately, the former Air Force general running that agency in DHS loves his fleet of UAVs so a comparatively large portion of his budget goes to the Predator.
The other issue barely mentioned in the article was Ag spraying. I don't see this as an issue. These are large remote controlled helicopters with spraying equipment. You plug in the coordinates of your field and it sprays your crop. You take the thing to the field on the back of a truck.
Sounds like they’d make great practice targets!
To be quickly followed by the LEO rationalization/justification somewhere containing the word "scumbag."
Watch for the restriction of sales for .50 cal BMG weapons to REALLY kick into high gear.
I need to get one, any suggestions?
EVERY drone that patriots see flying outside military airspace should be SHOT DOWN with deer rifles, AR’s, 22 rifles, whatever you have (some can’t be seen from the ground when at altitude). The federal government has NO BUSINESS doing this.
Hurry?
It's attitudes like yours that have led to loss of freedom in this country. "Not doing anything wrong" is defined by this tyrannical federal government. Am I "doing anything wrong" if I am growing a certain plant that happens to look like hemp (there are many)? With a drone looking at my garden, that very well may earn me a visit from a DEA SWAT team.
Was Randy Weaver "doing anything wrong" when his rifle stock was 1/4" too short? Had they had drones then, they might have just dropped a Hellfire on his house instead of having the FBI sniper murder his pregnant wife and his son.
Saying "if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about" and just letting this government do whatever it wants will lead to people being murdered. It always has, and always will. Government will take every power they can get, and want more.
Contradict yourself much? Lol
Well, you saw that one coming, didn’t you?
0bamas Rural Pacification Program just moved up a notch.
IIRC the border patrol acknowledges one on the northern border, and a couple on the southern.
(Another Matthew Bracken prediction comes to life.)
I’ve read that the Mudj in Afghanistan had some limited success bending the rotor heads on Soviet helicopters with .303 Enfields back in the Eighties.
You may be right, although .30 caliber is plenty powerful enough to take out these drones, especially the rotor type, if they drop enough altitude.
My long-term observation is taht the people tha tmake the rules never actually expect to be held to those rules. Congress, FAA, the genius that designed the building I work in.... But I digress. FAA and the airlines operate IFR, and wish that we VFR types would just go away. We don’t fit their “controlled skies” model. Too much freedom, you know.
Yep. And I have it on good authority from those who were there that MANY US choppers were brought down in Vietnam with Mosin-Nagant (7.62x54R, .30 caliber) rifles, many in the hands of young girls.
Ladies, that was sarcasm.
Yeah, I’m outraged that our government would send up spy planes over our country too.
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