Up, up and away

ARTICLE: Boeing sees industrial base worry if programs stall, By Andrea Shalal-Esa, Reuters, Sep 15, 2008

ARTICLE: Quest is on for UAVs that stay up for years, By Jim Hodges, Air Force Times, Sep 16, 2008

If not for 9/11, it was my supposition, going back to the late 1990s, that UAVs would go commercial mainstream much faster than the Internet or GPS--just too cool and useful in so many areas. But 9/11 set everyone back on fears, so a delay. But still, you know it's coming, including high-altitude balloons, especially for virtual antenna placement.

(Thanks: Pete Johnson)

Comments

[David Emery]

The FAA needs to provide strong guidance for what they will accept for UAVs in civilian controlled airspace. This is out of their comfort zone, and the industrial base hasn't been particularly aggressive about working -with- the FAA to expand that zone. Where there's no pilot in the cockpit, a lot of the traditional safety backups that the commercial ATC community depends on are no longer there. That means more dependence on purely automated backup solutions, which raises the safety certification bar for such systems and for air-ground control.

This is also an issue for military UAVs which are likely to operate in controlled airspace. If the US FAA won't allow some UAV to operate in US airspace, why should any foreign government allow them in its airspace?

[Louis Heberlein]

Of course manned civil aviation will always be safer. We just need a regulation to keep them from text messaging on final approach. ;-)

Reality. Software automation similar to UAVs has already taken over much of the pilot functions on passenger aircraft and large cargo aircraft. Many decades ago the Sci-Fi writer predicted we would always keep a pilot on board for emergencies, but their presence would be mostly psychological and to deal with the unexpected .... until the aircraft reached a point where expert experts on the ground with even greater software available to them could intervene or take over ... sounds like some Apollo thinking.