Today, Chris Cole at the UK’s
Drone Wars released a report on military drone crashes across the globe. He did it “as the UK considers allowing large military drone flights in its airspace.”
The Guardian picked up on it right away:
It is well worth the time to
give the report a read. Along with understanding the history of expanding drone use by many countries, there are some nuggets we need to read here at home in the US, as
WE consider allowing large military drone flights in our airspace. Here’s one:
“What will surprise many is that more than a fifth (38) of the US drone crashes
in our database have taken place within the United States itself.”
What’s really interesting is how the issue of drone integration in the UK is linked to integration here in the US. I’ve talked some about this in an earlier blog post.
Last year, the Brits had already committed to buying the SkyGuardian, but were balking at buying General Atomics "detect-and-avoid" technology, which would supposedly allow them to operate safely in unrestricted airspace. FOIA’d emails by Drone Wars painted a picture:
"The papers show the MoD struggling to convince civil regulators that the new drone can safely be flown across all UK airspace. While discussions appear to be on-going ... , it seems likely that the drone will be restricted in where it can fly until regulators are convinced that technology and procedures are sufficiently developed to make it safe for unmanned and manned systems to fly together."
Revealed: Internal Discussions Between Ministry of Defence and Regulators on Flying Predator Drones in UK
So last November, lo and behold, the FAA abruptly certified the "SkyGuardian" to operate in US domestic airspace on an "experimental" basis. This gives it an imprint of presumptive safety. General Atomics bragged about it in a press release.
“The certification helps us towards our goal of full integration of RPA into the National Airspace System [NAS],” said David R. Alexander, president, Aircraft Systems, GA-ASI.“It will also help us in continuing the development of MQ-9B for our customers, the Royal Air Force and Belgian Defense.”
GA-ASI Receives Experimental Certification on Newest MQ-9B SkyGuardian
Ten days earlier, Belgium had just announced they were also going to purchase the SkyGuardian.
GA-ASI Unmanned Aircraft Selected by Belgium
Two months after that, the UK agrees to buy General Atomics new detect-and-avoid technology after all.
General Atomics to arm UK’s future drones with detect-and-avoid capability to prevent collisions
Isn't that all interesting timing? And again, not a single mention of this anywhere in the US media, OR of the broader issue of allowing Predators, Reapers, SkyGuardians, Grey Eagles, etc. to operate freely over our heads here in the US. When will it be a story worth covering — when the first one comes down & takes out a kindergarten? Maybe let’s have the debate before then...