Who's At Fault in UAV/Part91 MAC?

How does the military's use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle intend to
comply with the Part 91 See-And-Avoid mandate? Will there be new
Restricted Areas imposed along the border, or will the UAVs be flown
in Positive Control Airspace?



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AVflash Volume 10, Number 17b -- April 22, 2004

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...BORDER SECURITY BY DRONE
Chances are you won't have to join the military to encounter a
UAV. They've been in limited use over U.S. airspace for years but
the Department of Homeland Security wants to use them regularly to
patrol the border between Arizona and Mexico. The San Diego
Union-Tribune reports that the flights are expected to start later
this month and the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol is confident
they'll help stem the tide of illegal immigrants and drugs. "It's
deal terrain," commissioner Robert Bonner told the Union-Tribune.
"There's nothing to hide. Not a tree in sight."
http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archive...ll.html#187152


While I'm in favor of policing the nation's borders, I'm very
suspicious of ill conceived DHS measures that create hazards and
inconvenience due to the imposition of less than enlightened
practices.

The Honorable Robert Bonner
Commissioner
U.S. Customs and Border Protection
1300 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Room 3.4A
Washington, D.C. 20229 Phone: (202) 927-8727
Fax: (202) 927-1393


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http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/m...9-1n19uav.html
The military usually operates robotic surveillance aircraft in
restricted areas throughout the United States.

But efforts to broaden the use of robotic aircraft in civilian
airspace have furrowed some brows in the aviation community, and
one aviation safety group opposes it.

The propeller-driven Predator resembles a small airplane with no
cockpit. The plane is directed by a pilot sitting in a ground
control station that receives live images transmitted by cameras
in the aircraft's spoon-shaped nose. It was designed to remain
aloft for 40 hours at altitudes as high as 25,000 feet.

San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, which makes
the Predator and other unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, won't
discuss the specific work it does for government customers. But
spokeswoman Cyndi Wegerbauer said the company is getting more
requests to fly UAVs along the U.S. coast and borders today than
in the past.

"We have done work along the borders now with Predator, Predator B
and even I-GNAT, so it's not new to us," said Wegerbauer,
referring to the company's UAV models. "But the acceptability of
using these systems for border surveillance has increased
dramatically since terrorism became such a real, in-our-back yard
threat."

Such requests are driving the demand to fly UAVs in civilian
airspace, experts said.

"We're on the threshold of a new era in terms of using UAVs in
civil and commercial airspace in the United States," said Scott
Dan, who oversees UAV research and development at GA Aeronautical
Systems. He sees UAVs being used someday to fly over wildfires and
perhaps even for agricultural purposes such as crop-dusting.

Dan has been working to realize that vision by serving as
president of the UAV National Industry Team, which is developing
the regulations and technology required to make it easier to fly
UAVs in civilian airspace. Participating companies include GA
Aeronautical Systems, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman,
Aerovironment and Aurora Flight Sciences.

NASA has provided $101 million to fund Access 5, whose goal is to
ease rules for UAV flights in civilian airspace in five years.

As part of the process, the two groups also are working on
procedures for autonomous UAVs, such as the Global Hawk developed
in San Diego by Northrop Grumman. An autonomous UAV follows a
computer-programmed route.

UAVs are permitted to fly in civilian airspace under a certificate
of authorization granted by the Federal Aviation Administration.
It requires the operator to file a flight plan at least 30 days in
advance.

The goal of UAV proponents is to allow them to fly routinely into
and out of designated U.S. airports. Operators would be allowed to
file a flight plan and fly on the same day, just like any pilot.

To the National Air Disaster Alliance, a flight safety group in
Washington, D.C., the idea of routinely flying remote-controlled
airplanes in civilian airspace is folly.

"Unfortunately for the American public, this is not an issue that
has appeared on the radar," said Tom O'Mara, an alliance board
member. "We already have a problem with air traffic control. Our
skies are overcrowded as it is. So why would anyone want to put an
unmanned aircraft into that mix? It's just a bad idea."

The issue is "problematic" for pilots, said John Mazor, a
spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association.

"If it's implemented properly, you might look at it and think, 'It
looks like a good idea.' But the devil is in the details," Mazor
said. "We don't want anything flying around that would reduce the
safety and separation requirements for commercial airliners."

For Jeff Myers of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, a
general aviation group, one concern stems from the stealthy nature
of UAV operations by the military and the Department of Homeland
Security.

"As long as they're in military airspace, there's no problem
because they're operating on their own side of the fence," Myers
said. "In this case, the fence is a matter of communications."

The FAA has no authority over UAV flights in military airspace,
said William Shumann, an agency spokesman in Washington, D.C.

"Currently, there are no FAA regulations dealing with the
certification of UAV pilots, aircraft or (commercial) operators,"
he said.

But using the FAA's certificates of authorization, companies such
as GA Aeronautical Systems fly UAVs in civilian airspace.

In a Dec. 16 letter to Unmanned Systems magazine, GA Aeronautical
Systems President Thomas J. Cassidy said UAVs are treated by air
traffic controllers like any other small aircraft "because that is
what they are."

For example, Cassidy said a Predator B was flying at an altitude
of 21,000 feet last year in eastern California when "numerous
airliners in the vicinity" were calling air traffic controllers.

The pilots were asking for the best altitudes to avoid turbulence,
Cassidy said. A controller called by radio to the Predator, which
relayed the signal to the pilot in the ground control station.

"The pilot of Predator B 002, who was located hundreds of miles
from the aircraft, responded with a 'smooth ride at FL 210,' "
Cassidy wrote, referring to a flight level of 21,000 feet. "As far
as the controller was concerned, the Predator B was just another
airplane."

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http://www.azcentral.com/specials/sp...ustoms-ON.html

President Bush has requested $64 million to develop and obtain
more technology to assist with border protection. Another $10
million has been requested to develop and deploy unmanned aerial
vehicles, essentially drones, that would look out for illegal
border crossers.

By late spring or early summer, the agency hopes to deploy some of
the drones along the Arizona border, where arrests have risen
recently.

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http://appropriations.house.gov/_fil...rTestimony.pdf

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

Like ISIS, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are both an important
part of the smarter border strategy and an essential element of
the Border Patrol’s revised National Strategy. UAVs equipped with
sophisticated on-board sensors have the potential to provide
unparalleled surveillance capability. UAVs provide long-range
surveillance. As a result, they are especially effective
force-multipliers because they have the capacity to remain on
station much longer than other airborne assets, and are
particularly useful for monitoring remote land border areas where
patrols cannot easily travel and infrastructure is difficult or
impossible to build. UAVs will perform missions involving
gathering intelligence on border activities was well as conducting
surveillance over open water along the Gulf Coast, the Florida
peninsula and the Great Lakes region on the northern border. The
high endurance of the larger classes of UAVs permits
uninterrupted overnight or around-the-clock coverage, and the size
and operating altitudes can make UAVs effectively undetectable
by unaided human senses. UAVs will also contribute to enforcement
effectiveness and officer safety by providing communications links
for coordinating multiple units on the ground is important in
remote border operating areas. The $10 million in funding sought
for UAVs will enable CBP to capitalize more fully on the UAV
research that has taken place in a military context, and to apply
UAVs in support of the Homeland Security mission. The funding
would allow CBP to deploy and operate a system of unmanned aerial
vehicles in support of the Border Patrol and other components of
Customs and Border Protection. The use of UAVs will complement the
other intrusion detection and intelligence gathering components of
the border surveillance network to meet the mission of stopping
the illegal entry of terrorists, smugglers and others into the
United States.

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http://uav.navair.navy.mil/airdemo03...03/fednews.htm

“Let’s say you’re the chief of a Border Patrol sector, and it
takes six to seven agents to fly a UAV,” Thrash said. “You have to
make the choice: ‘Is the UAV providing me enough surveillance
capability to keep six or seven agents off the line?’”

...

However, obstacles remain before UAVs can fly along the borders.
First, Homeland Security has to secure permission from the Federal
Aviation Administration to fly the unmanned systems in commercial
airspace.

Another issue is a concern over citizen privacy.

The federal government is able to conduct surveillance using
unmanned systems that exceeded the imagination only a few years
ago, said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil
Liberties Union technology and liberty program. Very few laws
govern when and how such technologies can be used, Steinhardt
said.

“We’re creating this surveillance monster — the planes are just
one example of that — and we’re creating it at light speed,”
Steinhardt said.

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http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=...6-093730-1766r
In the field test, King buried two of his new sensors in the
ground so their devices' antennas stuck up a few inches. He
measured each one's precise latitude and longitude with a Global
Positioning System gadget and entered the coordinates in his
laptop.

While the Border Hawk circled a couple of hundred feet overhead,
buzzing like a large mosquito, four APB members and myself walked
past the hidden motion detectors single file. ("SBIs always walk
single file," I was told.) The two gizmos successfully reported by
radio our direction and speed, although they overestimated our
numbers, signaling that there were 11 of us instead of five.

Our GPS coordinates showed up on a map on King's
wireless-networked laptop and a volunteer, who is a model airplane
hobbyist, piloted the Border Hawk to our location to record our
presence. Somebody who happened to be logged onto ABP's Web site
at that moment could have watched live aerial pictures of me
squinting up at the drone.

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http://www.space.com/businesstechnol...vs_030813.html

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In my opinion, it is a very helpful (and in some instances quite
necessary) virtue to be able to take criticism even if it is offensive
or insulting. In fact, even the most offensive criticism might (and
hopefully does!) contain insights that are valuable, and by
disregarding the entire criticism, you are throwing away that
insight. You may not like it, but it sometimes does pay to listen to
a person that is not as friendly as you'd like her to be.
-- Tobias Dussa