Bill Authorizes Use of Unmanned Drones in U.S. Airspace

[WaltWX[_2_]]

Check out this Aviation Week item on drones in the NAS airspace within
the $63B FAA Re-authorization bill:

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/10807-bill-authorizes-use-of-unmanned-drones-in-us-airspace

"..within nine months of the bill’s passage, the FAA is required to
submit a plan on how to safely provide drones with expanded access to
the NAS"

Expanded access by UAVs to NAS is mandated by Congress by Sep 30,
2015.

There will be enormous pressure to equip all aircraft.. glider,
balloons, etc ... with ADS-B down to ground level. I'm not saying I
agree with this. Perhaps this will spur stronger interest in low cost
low power GPS tracking technology.


Walt Rogers, WX

[Marc]

On Feb 8, 9:53*pm, WaltWX > wrote:
> There will be enormous pressure to equip all aircraft.. glider,
> balloons, etc ... with ADS-B down to ground level. I'm not saying I
> agree with this. Perhaps this will spur stronger interest in low cost
> low power GPS tracking technology.

ADS-B could easily be low cost low power GPS tracking technology.
MITRE demonstrated an inexpensive battery powered UAT transmitter
using cellphone technology nearly a decade ago. The FAA has simply
been unwilling to relax certification requirements for low power VFR-
only equipment. They would probably save money overall if they
accelerated the nationwide ADS-B ground station rollout, gave all
active under 12,500 lb general aviation aircraft a free ADS-B out
setup, and pulled the plug on the radar equipment a few years after...

Marc

[Darryl Ramm]

The government cannot pull the plug on the SSR radar system if its replaced by current ADS-B technology that is insecure/spoofable/easily attacked by terrorists. I expect some to be decommissioned but grand plans to do away with SSR are a fantasy. The fundamental insecure design of ADS-B is a terrible mistake, this technology needed to have encryption built into it from day one.

A large problem with the USA ADS-B infrastructure for GA and sports aviation is the dual link layer silliness. There are likely to be many areas where say drones operating at low altitudes would be outside ADS-B GBT (ground based transceiver, the ground stations that do the ADS-R relay between UAT and 1090ES link layers) coverage so if a drone is on UAT then a GA aircraft say with a Trig ADS-B receiver won't see it, or a glider with a PowerFLARM won't see it, and so on. One possible thing would be to require all drones to transmit and receive (and relay that traffic data to the operator) on both UAT and 1090ES link layers. Seems too late to mandate dual-link receivers and/or transmitters for GA etc. within the proposed time frames. I expect the required area of carriage for at least ADS-B data-out for GA etc. to be increased, no way they can avoid that long term if you want drones to avoid aircraft. No idea if this will lead to mandatory ADS-B data-in carriage for GA.

Meanwhile you still cannot even install ADS-B data-out in a (certified) glider or GA aircraft without a STC and an expensive TSO'ed GPS. All a complete mess...

Darryl

[Ian[_2_]]

On Wed, 8 Feb 2012 23:33:29 -0800 (PST), Darryl Ramm
> wrote:
> won't see it, and so on. One possible thing would be to require all
drones =
> to transmit and receive (and relay that traffic data to the
operator) on bo=
> th UAT and 1090ES link layers. Seems too late to mandate dual-link
receiver=

Why not mandate all drones to carry Flarm? That would help full the
gaps left by all the "professional" technology.

[Martin Gregorie[_5_]]

On Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:24:42 +0200, Ian wrote:

> On Wed, 8 Feb 2012 23:33:29 -0800 (PST), Darryl Ramm
> > wrote:
>> won't see it, and so on. One possible thing would be to require all
> drones =
>> to transmit and receive (and relay that traffic data to the
> operator) on bo=
>> th UAT and 1090ES link layers. Seems too late to mandate dual-link
> receiver=
>
> Why not mandate all drones to carry Flarm? That would help full the gaps
> left by all the "professional" technology.

FWIW a longish paper just came out in the UK, written from the Army's
POV. They've looked carefully at the problems of operating UAVs in
uncontrolled airspace and decided that large scale adoption isn't on
within at least the next decade - if then. The main issues are:

- collision avoidance: they can't see any technology that could handle
that, especially for small/lightweight/very hard to see UAVs that is
even on the horizon.

- bandwidth. Control bandwidth is trivial (an 8 channel digital RC
system uses about 32Kb/sec) but the sensor download stream is very
significant. 256 MB/sec was quoted for the big surveillance UAVs
in Afghanistan and apparently the population of UAVs there are
causing frequency allocation problems when the non-UAV bandwidth
needed by modern forces in the absence of adequate comms
infrastructure is considered.

OK, we have plenty of fibre bandwidth so fixed base comms goes away,
but the UAV dowenlink remains a big problem, especially when you
consider that so many uses, e.g. traffic and fire surveillance,
police,etc. need real-time downlinking to either a computer or an
operator. Radio bandwidth is getting crowded without a few hundred
or thousand UAVs trying to use it.

Fancy giving up your mobile phone so a UAV can operate? No? Didn't
think so.

Here's a link to the piece.

http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/F9335CB2-73FC-4761-A428-
DB7DF4BEC02C/0/20110505JDN_211_UAS_v2U.pdf


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