Twirlip
Second Officer
Flight distance : 2461545 ft
United States
Offline
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On the contrary, I think there definitely needs to be a way to take down drones. In the wrong hands-- someone who's actively malicious, or even just being recklessly stupid-- a drone can cause serious problems, including injuring innocent people.
You can say "need to secure drones so nobody can access them illegally with the push of a button" ... but who's going to secure locations and innocent bystanders so that they can't be threatened by illegal drones?
I say this as a (new and enthusiastic) drone operator. I love flying my new drone. I'd like to continue being able to do so. And yet, there are lots and lots of places I can't fly-- even places that seem to me to be reasonable to fly-- because of the increasing restrictions on where one can go. It's getting harder and harder to find a place where one can legally fly a drone. As a drone operator, I'd love it if I could fly more confidently and freely.
So it may seem odd that I'd be in favor of anti-drone defense technology... but ask yourself: why are there all these anti-drone laws? Because people feel threatened, that's why. The vast majority of the population are not drone operators, and feel threatened by drones. And whenever some moron flies a drone somewhere they really, really shouldn't, they give all drone operators a black eye-- even though the majority of them are responsible and safe. People feel especially threatened by something over which they have no control or defense.
I'm not worried that suddenly the skies are going to be wiped clean of all drones by a proliferation of anti-drone systems. I suppose it's technically possible... but I'm much more worried that some idiot (or terrorist) is going to do something spectacularly harmful with a drone, and in the resultant media frenzy, drones are going to get blanket-banned practically everywhere.
So I welcome the advent of drone-defensive technologies. I expect that the drones that will get taken down are much more likely to be some idiot flying a drone over a crowded stadium than me, when I'm off in the wilderness away from people flying my drone safely and legally. And I'd much rather that the idiot's drone get taken away from him, before he precipitates a disaster and prompts the imposition of harsher anti-drone laws.
Y'know what I'd really like to see? Have a requirement that drones have to have transponders on them, the way aircraft do. Each drone has a little radio beacon that broadcasts its location and its ID code, continuously while in the air. Make it a public standard so that anyone can point a cheap, commercially available transponder reader at a drone and get the ID code. I think that drone operators would be a lot more responsible and careful if they knew that their drone is going to be publicly identifiable from a distance, in a way that will land them in hot water if they break the law.
Of course, there would be people who would then build rogue drones that don't have transponders... but then it would be open season on any such drone. They'd essentially be announcing themselves by visibly not following rules, like a car driving around without a license plate. |
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