As journalists, weknow the power of words.The phrase th.docx

As journalists, we
know the power of words.
The phrase "the pen is mightier
than the sword" was coined for
a reason - and when the words we
employ are backed up by facts and evidence
gathered with all the tools at our disposal, they
can have a significant impact. How then, ethically,
will we use the new technology of unmanned aerial
vehicles - a.k.a. drones - to wield the power of the pen
to tell our stories?
Page 12 • Gateway Jouri
Drones
To answer that question, we first must try
to define what the word "drone" encompasses.
In the spring 2013 issue of News Media & The
Law, Lilly Chapa provided this description:
"Technically, any aircraft that is controlled re-
motely is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV),
ot drone. Most modern drones are controlled
by Global Positioning System-based commands
programmed through a computer. Dtones can

cost anywhere from $300 to $5 million and
can be as small as a dinner plate ot as large as a
Cessna. They can be equipped with a variety of
tools, including cameras, GPS trackers, infrared
sensors and weapons."
A group with a focus on the future of drone
journalism has made it its mission to keep the
attention on ethics. The Professional Society of
Drone Journalists, which formed in 2011, bills
itself on its website as "the fitst international
organization dedicated to establishing the ethi-
cal, educational and technological framework
for the emerging field of drone journalism." The
organization's founder is Matthew Schtoyet, a
drone expert who works for a National Science
Foundation grant at the University of Illinois. In
a July 2013 interview posted on the website of
International Human Press (http://www.ithp.
org/atticles/droneexpert.html), Schroyet said he
has developed a preliminary code of conduct for
drone journalism. His hope is that the code will
be interactive at some point, so members of the
society can alter the code to keep up with devel-
opments in the dtone journalism field.
The code lays out the additional respon-
sibilities that dtone journalists take on when
controlling these unmanned vehicles, and it also
emphasizes the potential risks of operating UAVs
in populated urban ateas as the speed, tange and
size of these machines undergo ftitther devel-
opment. Being able to take aerial photographs
when reporting on a story makes a drone a valu-
able resource, but in this regard the code also
warns that the chance for abuse - especially

when it comes to matters of privacy and safety
- is also increased.
New technology
for an old idea
whenever the subject of drones comes up
in American society, ethical conflicts and con-
troversies follow. Consider the uproar regarding
Americans' privacy when Amazon's Jeff Bezos
announced Dec. 2 to CBS's "60 Minutes" cor-
respondent Charlie Rose that his company
aims to someday use "octocoptets" to deliver
packages to customers.
In the United States, the conflict over drone use involves First
Amendment and
Fourth Amendment freedoms and state and municipal legislation
to rein in what
can be done with these machines. It's a complicated issue with
no immediately
obvious answer as to what is "right."
The drones do not have pilots sitting in front
of a screen to fiy them to their destination, Bezos
said. Unlike a remotely piloted aircraft, these de-
vices use GPS coordinates to zero in on theit land-
ing sites. His announcement prompted members
of Congress to introduce legislation to deal with
this potential invasion of privacy. U.S. Rep. Ted
Poe, R-Texas, had this to say not long after Bezos'
interview: "Think how many dtones cotild soon
be flying around the sky. Here a drone, there a

dtone, evetywhete a drone in the United States.
... The issue of concern, Mt. Speaker, is surveil-
lance, not the delivery of packages. That includes
surveillance of someone's backyard, snooping
around with a drone, checking out a person's pa-
tio to see if that individual needs new patio fiirni-
ture from the company."
At present,
there's a future
Whethet Americans ate ready for them ot
not, drones are already being deployed within
the borders of the United States. They've been in
use by the Customs & Border Protection agency
along the U.S.-Mexico border and by law enforce-
ment personnel as well, prompting the American
Civil Liberties Union to post on its website that
"rules must be put in place to ensure that we can
enjoy the benefits of this new technology with-
out bringing us closet to a 'surveillance society'
in which otur every move is monitored, tracked,
recorded, and scrutinized by the government."
Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration,
under the aegis of the 2012 FAA Modernization
and Reform Act passed by Congress, has been
tasked with integrating commercial dtones into
U.S. airspace by 2015. The FAA estimates that
7,500 commercial drones cotild be flying in na-
tional airspace in just a few years, and that num-
ber cotild rise to 30,000 by the year 2030, agency
officials reported. FAA officials said the agency
does not have the authority to make ot enforce
any rules related to privacy concerns.
All these attempts by municipalities and

states to regtilate how drones are operated by me-
dia organizations could eventually involve issues of
prior restraint. The First Amendment Handbook
of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the
Press says "a ptiot restraint is an official govetn-
ment restriction of speech prior to publication."
The Fitst Amendment protects dtones equipped
with cameras that are engaged in communicative
photography. But the dtones could face obstacles
posed by considerations of property law, public
safety and trespass, to name a few. The tight of
free expression using dtones fot filming events
cutrendy is constrained by reasonable time, man-
ner and place restrictions that may be imposed on
their use.
Follow the money
Patt of the drive behind the expanded use
of UAVs in the United States seems to be driven
by capitalistic ambition. A Bloombctg.com story
written by David Mildenberg and posted online
Dec. 16 examines the competition among two
dozen U.S. states to win the tight to open testing
facilities that will determine whethet drones can
operate in the same aitspace as passenger jets. In
his story, Mildenbetg teveals just how much is
at stake, financially, for companies such as Ama-
zon that enter into the drone arena. Almost a
quarter-million UAVs are forecast to be in use by
the year 2035, accotding to a study by the U.S.
Ttanspottation Department, and less-stringent
regulations could lead to the creation of 70,000
jobs over the next few years. Mildenbetg also re-
vealed details from a tepott drawn up by the Teal

Group Cotp. - a Fairfax, Va.-based aerospace re-
search company - that predicts expenditutes on
civilian and militaty drones worldwide will total
$89 billion duting the next decade.
Drones also have the potential to save news
organizations cash. Matthew Waite, director of
the dtone joutnalism program at the University
of Nebtaska-Lincoln, told Chapa that die heli-
copters used by morning television programs to
tepott on the tush-hout traffic jams ate a huge
waste of money. The money spent on the main-
tenance of the aircraft, plus fuel and insurance,
in addition to the pilot's salary, can make the
yearly cost hover in the millions. But, fot much
less money, these same news programs could buy
and fly a dtone with a camera that could do the
exact same job.
Continued on next page
Spring 2014 • Gateway Journalism Review • Page 13
Drones
Continued from previous page
As these UAVs have begun to show their
potential as useful tools that can be wielded
by journalists and non-journalists alike, there
has been an attempt to ease Americans' fear of
drones. One such effort involved the Association
for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International's
three-day trade fair at the Washington Con-

vention Center Aug. 12-15. The event, which
took place less than a mile away from the White
House, featured more than 500 exhibits whose
main intent was to show how these pilotless
machines and other robotic inventions can par-
ticipate in law enforcement maneuvers, search-
and-rescue operations, traffic control, the sale of
houses and real estate, checking remote and in-
accessible areas for pipeline problems and forest
fires, and much more.
A d(r)one deal
Overseas reporters already have revealed
glimpses of the fliture of drone-enhanced jour-
nalism. For example, a video on CNN's web-
site, shot from a drone and narrated by reporter
Karl Penhaul 10 days after Typhoon Haiyan
ravaged the Philippines in early November,
showed what the people of the community of
Tacloban, Philippines, had to deal with in the
storm's aftermath. The video in which Penhaul
appears, titled "A bird's eye view of Haiyan dev-
astation," could be considered a glimpse of the
future of journalism.
In the United States, journalism students
are experimenting with how to use UAVs to
gather information for stories. At the Universi-
ty of Missouri's School of Journalism, students
are taking courses that are designed to teach
them how to operate drones for news reports.
In February 2013, GJR's St. Louis editor, Terry
Ganey, spoke to professor Bill Allen, a former
St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, who said
the university has a class in which journalism

students are cutting their teeth on the use of
"J-bots," which is the term he uses to describe
these "journalism robots," or drones. The stu-
dents are using the J-bots to take drone-based
photography and video, all in an attempt to see
if the machines will be useful to their chosen
profession.
Schroyer, in a story posted Nov. 19 on the
SPDJ website, used a drone to capture aerial
footage of the devastation in GifFord, III., af-
ter an outbreak of severe weather swept across
the nation's midsection. His article noted that
the video was shot with remote-controlled heli-
copter that has four motors and can be bought
online. A camera capable of shooting 720p
video was attached to the drone, and the video
footage was transmitted to an Apple iPad on
the ground. (He noted, too, that the iPad also
was used to control the drone.) Schroyer said
he believes that his story represents what drone
journalists are capable of doing through the use
of these low-cost systems.
Schroyer added a disclaimer at the end of
his story that said the drone's flight followed the
protocols laid out in FAA advisory circular (AC)
91-57. The FAA document, dating from June
9, 1981, addresses the subject of "model aircraft
operating standards." The full text can be found
online at http://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/
media/advisory_circular/91 -57.pdf
Waite, who worked for the St. Petersburg
Times (which changed its name to the Tampa

Bay Times on Jan. 1, 2012) and Politifact, told
Chapa he envisions a time in the not-too-dis-
tant future when news organizations have sev-
eral of these UAVs at the ready to use during
breaking news, such as a traffic accident or a
house fire. The device could be sent out and
flown over the news scene where it could take a
photograph or video and let the workers in the
newsroom evaluate whether the story warrants
further involvement.
Privacy concerns
In the United States, the conflict over
drone use involves First Amendment and
Fourth Amendment freedoms, possible issues
of prior restraint by the federal government,
privacy issues with regard to new technology,
and state and municipal legislation to rein in
what can be done with these machines. It's a
complicated issue, with no immediately obvi-
ous answer as to what is "right."
The use of drones as a surveillance tool by
journalists and law enforcement officials also
has stirred up privacy concerns at the state level,
drawing efforts by legislators to limit their use
in 43 of the 50 states as of Jan. 22, according
to information posted on the American Civil
Liberty Union's website by advocacy and pol-
icy strategist Allie Böhm. Of those 43 states,
nine have enacted drone legislation, and bills
were still active in five more. But because these
drones are being operated in public, there's
little in the way of U.S. privacy laws that pre-
vent their use. The Fourth Amendment, which

only applies to the government, not news or-
ganizations, provides the "right of the people
to be secure in their persons, houses, papers.
and effects, against unreasonable searches and
seizures." But is that enough in the face of this
technological advancement?
For some, including the Intercept's Glenn
Greenwald, it isn't. In an article written for the
Guardian and posted online March 29 of last
year under the headline "Domestic drones and
their unique dangers," he wrote that the in-
creasing use of domestic drones for surveillance
purposes has not engendered concern among
civilians because their use can be equated to the
same type of work that police helicopters and
satellites perform. Greenwald said "such claims
are completely misinformed," and added, "as
the ACLU's 2011 comprehensive report on
domestic drones explained: 'Unmanned air-
craft carrying cameras raise the prospect of a
significant new avenue for the surveillance of
American life.' "
Legal considerations
The prospect of a federal law governing the
use of UAVs in the United States is a bridge too
far for some. Margot E. Kaminski, in an article
published in the May 2013 issue of the Cali-
fornia Law Review Circuit, wrote that the use
of drones by non-public entities constitutes the
most difficult pieces of the privacy puzzle. Ka-
minski, executive director of the Information
Society Project, a research scholar and a lecturer

in law at Yale Law School, said laws governing
the use of civilian drones could restrict the abil-
ity of private citizens to conduct legal informa-
tion gathering. Laws that restrict how drones
can be used will offer up privacy concerns as the
stated purpose behind them, but she contended
that the laws still will constitute restrictions on
free speech.
Kaminski added that courts have not de-
termined yet whether privacy rights or free-
speech rights will ultimately win out in this de-
bate, and it also remains to be seen how privacy
and speech interests interact. She advocates a
"drone federalism" approach to legislation,
where states take the lead in enacting privacy
regulations for UAVs. This will allow for what
she terms "necessary experimentation" on how
to balance privacy concerns with First Amend-
ment rights.
The issue of invasion of privacy is at least
a century old in American society. As an ex-
ample, M. Ryan Calo, director for privacy and
robotics at the Center for Internet & Society,
wrote an article for the Stanford Law Review
that considered the role of drones in the pri-
vacy debate surrounding these machines. In
P a g e 1 4 • G a t e w a y J o u r n a l i s m R e v i e w • S p r i
n g 2 0 1 4
Drones

his article, posted online Dec. 12, 2011, Calo
noted that Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis
had a good idea of what a violation of privacy
looked like when they wrote their 1890 article
"The Right to Privacy." The "yellow journalism"
that employed the use of "instantaneous photo-
graphs splashing pictures of a respectable wed-
ding on the pages of every newspaper" was their
way to represent a world where technology ran
rampant. It was the reason they gave to advance
the cause of privacy law in the United States.
In his article. Calo said drones could
provide the impetus to refine privacy law to
fit modern-day realities, since it's not too far-
fetched to imagine a time when everyone from
hobbyists to policemen could be using UAVs.
It will be up to privacy advocates to ensure that
privacy rights are not further eroded.
Entrenched
resistance
Public radio reporter Scott Pham, in an
article posted online July 28 at the website
Mashable.com, wrote down what he thinks is
the most obvious use for drones in journalism:
covering events that pose the most difficulty for
photojournalists on land, including public pro-
tests and natural disasters. Pham, who noted that
he played a role in getting the Missouri Drone
Journalism Program (a collaboration that in-
volves the University of Missouri's Information
Technology Program, the Missouri School of
Journalism and National Public Radio member
station KBIA in Columbia, Mo.) off the ground

in 2012, said Americans' resistance to drone use
within their country's borders could be worn
down by showing how UAVs could be used for
good instead of evil. But Pham reported that he
misread the situation regarding drones. He said
he deeply underestimated the drone skeptics,
including members of the Missouri General As-
sembly who introduced legislation to ban the use
of UAVs in the Show-Me State. The Missouri
bill says that no person, group or organization,
including journalists and news organizations,
will be permitted to use an unmanned aircraft to
conduct surveillance of any individual or prop-
erty without consent.
In a separate article, Pham called the bill
"anti-free speech, anti-journalism and altogeth-
er backward."
Pham acknowledged that the use of drones
in American is a very controversial topic, but
he said he had hoped people would not be
threatened by the use of a drone by a public
Part of the resistance
to the widespread
deployment of UAVs
appears to stem from
the surreptitious nature
in which they can be
deployed.
radio station, which he regards as one the least-

threatening entities that could deploy one of
these unmanned machines in civilian airspace.
The FAA sent a letter to the drone jour-
nalism programs of both the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Mis-
souri, spelling out different standards that the
schools would have to follow to fly their UAVs.
This standard, designed for public entities, re-
quires a "Certificate of Authorization" for any
outdoor flight of a drone — a process that can
take a minimum of two months to complete,
reported Yahoo News' Rob Walker in a story
posted online Aug. 28. Walker's story noted
that the new FAA hurdle makes turning out
even a timely feature story much more difficult
than it should be, especially in the context of
an academic semester. Walker, who described
the process as a "blunt regulatory instrument,"
said the FAA missed out on a chance to advance
the use of drones in a responsible fashion. To
bolster his argument, he pointed to the abun-
dance of unauthorized drone experimentation
taking place with increasing frequency, which
is completely the opposite of what these news
programs are attempting to do.
An abundance of
caution
Part of the resistance to the widespread
deployment of UAVs appears to stem from
the surreptitious nature in which they can be
deployed. After all, people sunbathing in their
own backyards can be filmed by a camera-
man flying aloft in a helicopter just as easily

as by a drone - and with the exception that
the aircraft cannot be less than 500 feet off
the ground, where private property protec-
tion ends, there is nothing illegal about that
cameraman being up in the sky. (The U.S. Su-
preme Court, in the 1946 case United States
V. Causby, ruled 5-2 that the ancient common
law doctrine that land ownership extended to
the space above the earth "has no place in the
modern world." Justice William O. Douglas'
opinion noted that, if the doctrine were valid,
"every transcontinental flight would subject
the operator to countless trespass suits. Com-
mon sense revolts at the idea.")
Schroyer, in his International Human
Press interview, said people have every right to
be cautious about drone use, but the rules and
regulations being formulated in the state legis-
latures - and even down at the municipal level
- sometimes don't grasp the reality of the situ-
ation. He added, though, that states are pass-
ing good laws that allow for the use of drones
by law-enforcement personnel only when those
agencies obtain a warrant.
Could these UAVs operated by law en-
forcement agencies be weaponized for certain
uses in the United States? Information obtained
by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in re-
sponse to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit
against the federal Customs & Border Protec-
tion agency shows that idea is not as far-fetched
as it sounds. In a 2010 "Concept of Operations"
report for its drone program, obtained through

the EFF's FOIA lawsuit, the CBP noted that it
has considered equipping its drones with non-
lethal weapons designed to neutralize "targets
of interest," according to information posted in
a Weblog by EFF senior staff attorney Jennifer
Lynch. Lynch noted in her post that this is the
first that anyone has heard of a federal agency
proposing to use weapons in a domestic setting.
In a May 6 article for Slate, Rothenberg
wrote that the debate over drone use by jour-
nalists in the United States encompasses much
more than the potential privacy threats that
some experts foresee in the United States. It
also includes how the UAVs have become sym-
bols of the disorder, uncertainty and threats
that surround us in a rapidly changing world.
To Rothenberg, the greatest challenge we face
in our society is how to conduct the debate
over this emerging technology in a way that
acknowledges the very real fears some people
have about these machines. From this learning
experience, he said, will come a better, more
educated way to regulate drones.
The recent controversy about drones -
and the ultimate impact they will have on
journalists and American society as a whole
- will continue to raise legal and ethics is-
sues for journalists to consider for some time
to come. The debate over these issues is only
now just beginning. •
Spring 2014 • Gateway Journalism Review • Page 15

Copyright of Gateway Journalism Review is the property of
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, School of Journalism and its content may not be
copied or emailed to multiple
sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's
express written permission.
However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.
Article four
Unmanned aircraft have proved their prowess against al Qaeda.
Now they're poised to take off on the home front. Possible
missions: patrolling borders, tracking perps, dusting crops. And
maybe watching us all?
at the edge of a stubbly, dried-out alfalfa field outside Grand
Junction, Colorado, Deputy Sheriff Derek Johnson, a stocky
young man with a buzz cut, squints at a speck crawling across
the brilliant, hazy sky. It's not a vulture or crow but a Falcon --
a new brand of unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, and Johnson
is flying it. The sheriff s office here in Mesa County, a plateau
of farms and ranches corralled by bone-hued mountains, is
weighing the Falcons potential for spotting lost hikers and
criminals on the lam. A laptop on a table in front of Johnson
shows the drones flickering images of a nearby highway.
Standing behind Johnson, watching him watch the Falcon, is its
designer, Chris Miser. Rock-jawed, arms crossed, sunglasses
pushed atop his shaved head, Miser is a former Air Force
captain who worked on military drones before quitting in 2007
to found his own company in Aurora, Colorado. The Falcon has
an eight-foot wingspan but weighs just 9.5 pounds. Powered by
an electric motor, it carries two swiveling cameras, visible and
infrared, and a GPS-guided autopilot. Sophisticated enough that
it can't be exported without a U.S. government license, the

Falcon is roughly comparable, Miser says, to the Raven, a hand-
launched military drone -- but much cheaper. He plans to sell
two drones and support equipment for about the price of a squad
car.
A law signed by President Barack Obama in February 2012
directs the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to throw
American airspace wide open to drones by September 30, 2015.
But for now Mesa County, with its empty skies, is one of only a
few jurisdictions with an FAA permit to fly one. The sheriff's
office has a three-foot-wide helicopter drone called a
Draganflyer, which stays aloft for just 20 minutes.
The Falcon can fly for an hour, and it's easy to operate. "You
just put in the coordinates, and it flies itself," says Benjamin
Miller, who manages the unmanned aircraft program for the
sheriff s office. To navigate, Johnson types the desired altitude
and airspeed into the laptop and clicks targets on a digital map;
the autopilot does the rest. To launch the Falcon, you simply
hurl it into the air. An accelerometer switches on the propeller
only after the bird has taken flight, so it won't slice the hand
that launches it.
The stench from a nearby chicken-processing plant wafts over
the alfalfa field. "Let's go ahead and tell it to land," Miser says
to Johnson. After the deputy sheriff clicks on the laptop, the
Falcon swoops lower, releases a neon orange parachute, and
drifts gently to the ground, just yards from the spot Johnson
clicked on. "The Raven can't do that," Miser says proudly.
Offspring of 9/11
A dozen years ago only two communities cared much about
drones. One was hobbyists who flew radio-controlled planes and
choppers for fun. The other was the military, which carried out
surveillance missions with unmanned aircraft like the General
Atomics Predator.
Then came 9/11, followed by the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq, and drones rapidly became an essential tool of the
U.S. armed forces. The Pentagon armed the Predator and a
larger unmanned surveillance plane, the Reaper, with missiles,

so that their operators -- sitting in offices in places like Nevada
or New York -- could destroy as well as spy on targets
thousands of miles away. Aerospace firms churned out a host of
smaller drones with increasingly clever computer chips and
keen sensors -- cameras but also instruments that measure
airborne chemicals, pathogens, radioactive materials.
The U.S. has deployed more than 11,000 military drones, up
from fewer than 200 in 2002. They carry out a wide variety of
missions while saving money and American lives. Within a
generation they could replace most manned military aircraft,
says John Pike, a defense expert at the think tank
GlobalSecurity.org. Pike suspects that the F-35 Lightning II,
now under development by Lockheed Martin, might be "the last
fighter with an ejector seat, and might get converted into a
drone itself."
At least 50 other countries have drones, and some, notably
China, Israel, and Iran, have their own manufacturers. Aviation
firms -- as well as university and government researchers -- are
designing a flock of next-generation aircraft, ranging in size
from robotic moths and hummingbirds to Boeings Phantom Eye,
a hydrogen-fueled behemoth with a 150-foot wingspan that can
cruise at 65,000 feet for up to four days.
More than a thousand companies, from tiny start-ups like Misers
to major defense contractors, are now in the drone business --
and some are trying to steer drones into the civilian world.
Predators already help Customs and Border Protection agents
spot smugglers and illegal immigrants sneaking into the U.S.
NASA-operated Global Hawks record atmospheric data and peer
into hurricanes. Drones have helped scientists gather data on
volcanoes in Costa Rica, archaeological sites in Russia and
Peru, and flooding in North Dakota.
So far only a dozen police departments, including ones in
Miami and Seattle, have applied to the FAA for permits to fly
drones. But drone advocates -- who generally prefer the term
UAV, for unmanned aerial vehicle -- say all 18,000 law
enforcement agencies in the U.S. are potential customers. They

hope UAVs will soon become essential too for agriculture
(checking and spraying crops, finding lost cattle), journalism
(scoping out public events or celebrity backyards), weather
forecasting, traffic control. "The sky's the limit, pun intended,"
says Bill Borgia, an engineer at Lockheed Martin. "Once we get
UAVs in the hands of potential users, they'll think of lots of
cool applications."
The biggest obstacle, advocates say, is current FAA rules,
which tightly restrict drone flights by private companies and
government agencies (though not by individual hobbyists). Even
with an FAA permit, operators can't fly UAVs above 400 feet or
near airports or other zones with heavy air traffic, and they
must maintain visual contact with the drones. All that may
change, though, under the new law, which requires the FAA to
allow the "safe integration" of UAVs into U.S. airspace.
If the FAA relaxes its rules, says Mark Brown, the civilian
market for drones -- and especially small, low-cost, tactical
drones -- could soon dwarf military sales, which in 2011 totaled
more than three billion dollars. Brown, a former astronaut who
is now an aerospace consultant in Dayton, Ohio, helps bring
drone manufacturers and potential customers together. The
success of military UAVs, he contends, has created "an appetite
for more, more, more!" Browns PowerPoint presentation is
called "On the Threshold of a Dream."
Dreaming in Dayton
Drone fever is especially palpable in Dayton, cradle of
American aviation, home of the Wright brothers and of Wright-
Patterson Air Force Base. Even before the recent recession,
Dayton was struggling. Over the past decade several large
companies, including General Motors, have shut down
operations here. But Dayton's airport is lined with
advertisements for aerospace companies; an ad for the Predator
Mission Aircrew Training System shows two men in flight suits
staring stoically at a battery of computer monitors. The city is
dotted with drone entrepreneurs. "This is one of the few new
industries with a chance to grow rapidly," Brown says.

One of those entrepreneurs is Donald Smith, a bearish former
Navy aircraft technician with ginger hair and a goatee. His firm,
UA Vision, manufactures a delta-wing drone called the Spear.
Made of polystyrene foam wrapped in woven carbon fiber or
other fabrics, the Spear comes in several sizes; the smallest has
a four-foot wingspan and weighs less than four pounds. It
resembles a toy B-l bomber. Smith sees it being used to keep
track of pets, livestock, wildlife, even Alzheimer's patients --
anything or anyone equipped with radio-frequency identification
tags that can be read remotely.
In the street outside the UA Vision factory a co-worker tosses
the drone into the air, and Smith takes control of it with a
handheld device. The drone swoops up and almost out of sight,
plummets, corkscrews, loops the loop, skims a deserted lot
across the street, arcs back up, and then slows down until it
seems to hover, motionless, above us. Smith grins at me. "This
plane is fully aerobatic," he says.
A few miles away at Wright-Patterson stands the Air Force
Institute of Technology, a center of military drone research. A
bronze statue of a bedraggled winged man, Icarus, adorns the
entrance -- a symbol both of aviation daring and of catastrophic
navigation error. In one of the labs John Raquet, a balding,
bespectacled civilian, is designing new navigation systems for
drones.
GPS is vulnerable, he explains. Its signals can be blocked by
buildings or deliberately jammed. In December 2011, when a
CIA drone crashed in Iran, authorities there claimed they had
diverted it by hacking its GPS. Raquet's team is working on a
system that would allow a drone to also navigate visually, like a
human pilot, using a camera paired with pattern-recognition
software. The lab's goal, Raquet repeatedly emphasizes, is
"systems that you can trust."
A drone equipped with his visual navigation system, Racquet
says, might even recognize power lines and drain electricity
from them with a "bat hook," recharging its batteries on the fly.
(This would be stealing, so Raquet would not recommend it for

civilians.) He demonstrates the stunt for me with a square drone
powered by rotors at each corner. On the first try the drone,
buzzing like a nest of enraged hornets, flips over. On the second
it crashes into a wall. "This demonstrates the need for trust,"
Raquet says with a strained smile. Finally the quad-rotor
wobbles into the air and drapes a hook over a cable slung across
the room.
Down the hall from Raquet's lab, Richard Cobb is trying to
make drones that "hide in plain sight." DARPA, the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency, has challenged researchers
to build drones that mimic the size and behavior of bugs and
birds. Cobb's answer is a robotic hawk moth, with wings made
of carbon fiber and Mylar. Piezoelectric motors flap the wings
30 times a second, so rapidly they vanish in a blur. Fashioning
bug-size drones that can stay aloft for more than a few minutes,
though, will require enormous advances in battery technology.
Cobb expects it to take more than a decade.
The Air Force has nonetheless already constructed a "micro-
aviary" at Wright-Patterson for flight-testing small drones. It's a
cavernous chamber -- 35 feet high and covering almost 4,000
square feet -- with padded walls. Micro-aviary researchers,
much of whose work is classified, decline to let me witness a
flight test. But they do show me an animated video starring
micro-UAVs that resemble winged, multi-legged bugs. The
drones swarm through alleys, crawl across windowsills, and
perch on power lines. One of them sneaks up on a scowling man
holding a gun and shoots him in the head. The video concludes,
"Unobtrusive, pervasive, lethal: micro air vehicles."
What, one might ask, will prevent terrorists and criminals from
getting their hands on some kind of lethal drone? Although
American officials rarely discuss the threat in public, they take
it seriously. The militant Islamic group Hezbollah, based in
Lebanon, says it has obtained drones from Iran. Last November
a federal court sentenced a Massachusetts man to 17 years in
prison for plotting to attack Washington, D.C., with drones
loaded with C-4 explosives.

Exercises carried out by security agencies suggest that
defending against small drones would be difficult. Under a
program called Black Dart, a mini-drone two feet long tested
defenses at a military range. A video from its onboard camera
shows a puff of smoke in the distance, from which emerges a
tiny dot that rapidly grows larger before whizzing harmlessly
past: That was a surface-to-air missile missing its mark. In a
second video an F-16 fighter plane races past the drone without
spotting it.
The answer to the threat of drone attacks, some engineers say, is
more drones. "The new field is counter-UAVs," says Stephen
Griffiths, an engineer for the Utah-based avionics firm Procerus
Technologies. Artificial-vision systems designed by Procerus
would enable one UAV to spot and destroy another, either by
ramming it or shooting it down. "If you can dream it," Griffiths
says, "you can do it." Eventually drones may become smart
enough to operate autonomously, with minimal human
supervision. But Griffiths believes the ultimate decision to
attack will remain with humans.
Another Man's Nightmare
Even when controlled by skilled, well-intentioned operators,
drones can pose a hazard -- that's what the FAA is concerned
about. The safety record of military drones is not reassuring.
Since 2001, according to the Air Force, its three main UAVs --
the Predator, Global Hawk, and Reaper -- have been involved in
at least 120 "mishaps," 76 of which destroyed the drone. The
statistics don't include drones operated by the other branches of
the military or the CIA. Nor do they include drone attacks that
accidentally killed civilians or U.S. or allied troops.
Even some proponents insist that drones must become much
more reliable before they're ready for widespread deployment in
U.S. airspace. "No one should begrudge the FAA its mission of
assuring safety, even if it adds significant costs to UAVs," says
Richard Scudder, who runs a University of Dayton laboratory
that tests prototypes. One serious accident, Scudder points out,
such as a drone striking a child playing in her backyard, could

set the industry back years. "If we screw the pooch with this
technology now," he says, "it's going to be a real mess."
A drone crashing into a backyard would be messy; a drone
crashing into a commercial airliner could be much worse. In
Dayton the firm Defense Research Associates (DRA) is working
on a "sense and avoid" system that would be cheaper and more
compact than radar, says DRA project manager Andrew White.
The principle is simple: A camera detects an object that's
rapidly growing larger and sends a signal to the autopilot, which
swerves the UAV out of harm's way. The DRA device, White
suggests, could prevent collisions like the one that occurred in
2011 in Afghanistan, when a 400-pound Shadow drone smashed
into a C-130 Hercules transport plane. The C-130 managed to
land safely with the drone poking out of its wing.
The prospect of American skies swarming with drones raises
more than just safety concerns. It alarms privacy advocates as
well. Infrared and radio-band sensors used by the military can
peer through clouds and foliage and can even -- more than one
source tells me -- detect people inside buildings. Commercially
available sensors too are extraordinarily sensitive. In Colorado,
Chris Miser detaches the infrared camera from the Falcon,
points it at me, and asks me to place my hand on my chest for
just a moment. Several seconds later the live image from the
camera still registers the heat of my handprint on my T-shirt.
During the last few years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq,
unmanned aircraft monitored Baghdad 24/7, turning the entire
city into the equivalent of a convenience store crammed with
security cameras. After a roadside bombing U.S. officials could
run videos in reverse to track bombers back to their hideouts.
This practice is called persistent surveillance. The American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) worries that as drones become
cheaper and more reliable, law enforcement agencies may be
tempted to carry out persistent surveillance of U.S. citizens.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protects Americans
from "unreasonable searches and seizures," but it's not clear
how courts will apply that to drones.

What Jay Stanley of the ACLU calls his "nightmare scenario"
begins with drones supporting "mostly unobjectionable" police
raids and chases. Soon, however, networks of linked drones and
computers "gain the ability to automatically track multiple
vehicles and bodies as they move around a city," much as the
cell phone network hands calls from one tower to the next. The
nightmare climaxes with authorities combining drone video and
cell phone tracking to build up databases of people's routine
comings and goings -- databases they can then mine for
suspicious behavior. Stanley's nightmare doesn't even include
the possibility that police drones might be armed.
Who's Driving?
The invention that escapes our control, proliferating whether or
not it benefits humanity, has been a persistent fear of the
industrial age -- with good reason. Nuclear weapons are too
easy an example; consider what cars have done to our landscape
over the past century, and it's fair to wonder who's in the
driver's seat, them or us. Most people would say cars have, on
the whole, benefited humanity. A century from now there may
be the same agreement about drones, if we take steps early on to
control the risks.
At the Mesa County sheriff's office Benjamin Miller says he has
no interest in armed drones. "I want to save lives, not take
lives," he says. Chris Miser expresses the same sentiment. When
he was in the Air Force, he helped maintain and design lethal
drones, including the Switchblade, which fits in a backpack and
carries a grenade-size explosive. For the Falcon, Miser
envisions lifesaving missions. He pictures it finding, say, a
child who has wandered away from a campground. Successes
like that, he says, would prove the Falcon's value. They would
help him "feel a lot better about what I'm doing."
NANO HUMMINGBIRD
Width: 6.5 inches
Length: 4.5 inches
Weight: 0.66 ounce
Maximum altitude: trade secret

Maximum time aloft: 11 minutes
Maximum speed: 11 mph
ALL ILLUSTRATIONS
MATTHEW TWOMBLY. NGM STAFF
SOURCE AEROVIRONMENT
The Military's Bleeding Edge
Northrop Grumman's X-47B, an unmanned aircraft being tested
for the U.S. Navy, is designed to take off from an aircraft
carrier, unleash two tons of weapons, and land again -- on its
own, with a preset mission, but without even a remote pilot. By
sparing human war fighters "dull, dirty, or dangerous duty" (an
industry buzz phrase), drones make some acts of war easier.
DRAGANFLYER X6
Width: 36 inches
Length: 33 inches
Weight: 35 ounces
Maximum altitude: 8,000 feet*
*ABOVE SEA LEVEL SOURCE DRAGANFLY
AURORA SKATE
Width: 24 inches
Length: 19 inches
Weight: 35 ounces
Maximum altitude: 14,300 feet*
DIAGRAM: A time exposure traces the hover and swoop of a
Nano Hummingbird, invented by Matthew Keennon and his
team at AeroVironment in California. If it's ever deployed as a
spy, the bird would fly without lights.
DIAGRAM: The U.S. Department of Defense currently
maintains a roster of some 11,000 unmanned aircraft, ranging
from lightweight surveillance drones to heavyweight tactical
aircraft.
PHOTO (COLOR): With eight arms spanning less than a yard, a

German MikroKopter provides a stable camera platform for
under $5,000.
PHOTO (COLOR): They flap fast, but can they take the torque?
Two robo-moth wings, each three inches long, submit to a test
at an Air Force lab in Ohio.
PHOTO (COLOR): Deputy Sheriff Derek Johnson remotely
pilots a Draganflyer X6 on a highway outside Grand Junction,
Colorado. Mesa County has used drones since 2009 for search
and rescue and to reconstruct crime scenes.
PHOTO (COLOR): This "micro air vehicle" with four rotors,
made by KMel Robotics in Pennsylvania, can fly in swarms
with its mates. The drones navigate autonomously, without a
pilot.
PHOTO (COLOR): Nimble enough to fly inside an abandoned
factory, the Skate is made for reconnoitering urban landscapes -
- such as a 16th-century city in Peru (inset) surveyed by
Vanderbilt University archaeologists.
HTML Work cited:
Horgan, John. "The Drones Come Home." National
Geographic 223.3 (2013): 122. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 9
Apr. 2015.
Integration of Drones into Domestic Airspace: Selected Legal
Issues
Congressional Research Service 4
years, since the FAA has been instructed to issue a rulemaking
that will lead to the phased-in

integration of civilian unmanned aircraft into national
airspace.29
Recreational Users
The FAA encourages recreational users of model aircraft, which
certain types of drones could fall
under, to follow a 1981 advisory circular. Under the circular,
users are instructed to fly a
sufficient distance from populated areas and away from noise-
sensitive areas like parks, schools,
hospitals, or churches. Additionally, users should avoid flying
in the vicinity of full-scale aircraft
and not fly more than 400 feet above the surface. When flying
within three miles of an airport,
users should notify the air traffic control tower, airport
operator, or flight service station.
Compliance with these guidelines is voluntary. In the FAA
Modernization and Reform Act of
2012, the FAA was prohibited from promulgating rules
regarding certain kinds of model aircraft
flown for hobby or recreational use. This prohibition applies if
the model aircraft is less than 55
pounds, does not interfere with any manned aircraft, and is
flown in accordance with a
community-based set of safety guidelines. If flown within five
miles of an airport, the operator of
the model aircraft must notify both the airport operator and air
traffic control tower.30
Safe Minimum Flying Altitude
The FAA does not currently regulate safe minimum operating
altitudes for drones as it does for
other kinds of aircraft. This may be one way that the FAA
responds to Congress’s instruction to

write rules allowing for civil operation of small unmanned
aircraft systems in the national
airspace.31 One possibility is for the FAA to create different
classes of drones based on their size
and capabilities. Larger drones that physically resemble fixed-
wing aircraft could be subject to
similar safe minimum operating altitude requirements whereas
smaller drones could be regulated
similar to helicopters.
Airspace and Property Rights
Since the popularization of aviation, courts have had to balance
the need for unobstructed air
travel and commerce with the rights of private property owners.
The foundational case in
explaining airspace ownership rights is United States v.
Causby.32
United States v. Causby
In United States v. Causby, the Supreme Court directly
confronted the question of who owns the
airspace above private property.33 The plaintiffs filed suit
against the U.S. government arguing a
violation of the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause, which states
that private property shall not “be
taken for public use, without just compensation.” Generally,
takings suits can only be filed
29 P.L. 112-95, § 332(2).
30 P.L. 112-95 § 336.
31 See id. at § 332(b).
32 United States v. Causby, 328 U.S. 256 (1946).
33 Id.

Issues
against the government when a government actor, as opposed to
a private part, causes the alleged
harm.34
Causby owned a chicken farm outside of Greensboro, North
Carolina that was located near an
airport regularly used by the military. The proximity of the
airport and the configuration of the
farm’s structures led the military planes to pass over the
property at 83 feet above the surface,
which was only 67 feet above the house, 63 feet above the barn,
and 18 feet above the tallest
tree.35 While this take-off and landing pattern was conducted
according to the Civil Aeronautics
Authority guidelines, the planes caused “startling” noises and
bright glare at night.
As the Court explained, “as a result of the noise, respondents
had to give up their chicken
business. As many as six to ten of their chickens were killed in
one day by flying into the walls
from fright. The total chickens lost in this manner was about
150.... The result was the destruction
of the use of the property as a commercial chicken farm.”36 The
Court had to determine whether
this loss of property constituted a taking without just
compensation.
At the outset, the Court directly rejected the common law
conception of airspace ownership: “It is

ancient doctrine that at common law ownership of the land
extended to the periphery of the
universe—Cujus solum ejus est usque ad coelum. But that
doctrine has no place in the modern
world.”37 The Court noted that Congress had previously
declared a public right of transit in air
commerce in navigable airspace and national sovereignty in the
airspace.38 These statutes could
not be reconciled with the common law doctrine without
subjecting aircraft operators to countless
trespass suits. In the Court’s words, “common sense revolts at
the idea.”39
Even though it rejected the idea that the Causbys held complete
ownership of the air up to the
heavens, the Court still had to determine if they owned any
portion of the space in which the
planes flew such that a takings could occur. The government
argued that flights within navigable
airspace that do not physically invade the surface cannot lead to
a taking. It also argued that the
landowner does not own any airspace adjacent to the surface
“which he has not subjected to
possession by the erection of structures or other occupancy.”40
The Court did not adopt this reasoning, finding instead that “the
landowner owns at least as much
space above the ground as he can occupy or use in connection
with the land. The fact that he does
not occupy it in a physical sense—by the erection of building
and the like—is not material.”41
Therefore, it found that the landowner owns the airspace in the
immediate reaches of the surface
necessary to use and enjoy the land and invasions of this space
“are in the same category as
invasions of the surface.”42 Above these immediate reaches, the

airspace is part of the public
34 Takings claims filed against state government actors would
not be filed under the Fifth Amendment. Rather, they
would arise as state constitutional claims. For more information
on takings, see CRS Report RS20741, The
Constitutional Law of Property Rights “Takings”: An
Introduction, by Robert Meltz.
35 Id. at 258.
36 Id. at 259.
37 Id. at 260-61.
38 Id. at 260 (citing statutes then codified at 49 U.S.C. §§
176(a), 403).
39 Id.
40 Id.
41 Id. at 264 (citing Hinman v. Pacific Air Transport, 84 F.2d
755 (1936)).
42 Id. at 265.
Issues
domain, but the Court declined to draw a clear line. The Court
also noted that the government’s
argument regarding the impossibility of a taking based on
flights in navigable airspace was
inapplicable in this case because the flights over Causby’s land
were not within navigable
airspace.43 At the time, federal law defined navigable airspace
as space above the minimum safe

flying altitudes for specific areas, but did not include the space
needed to take off and land. Even
though these flights were not within navigable airspace, the
Court seemed to suggest that if they
were, the inquiry would not immediately end. Instead, the Court
would then have to determine
when the regulation itself, defining the navigable airspace, was
valid.44
Ultimately, in the context of a taking claim, the Court
concluded that “flights over private land are
not a taking, unless they are so low and so frequent to be a
direct and immediate interference with
the enjoyment and use of the land.”45 With regard to the
Causbys’ chicken farm, the Court
concluded that the military flights had imposed a servitude upon
the land, similar to an easement,
based on the interference with the use and enjoyment of their
property. Although the land did not
lose all its economic value, the lower court’s finding clearly
established the flights led directly to
a diminution in the value of the property, since it could no
longer be used for its primary purpose
as a chicken farm.
Post-Causby Theories of Airspace Ownership
Causby clearly abandoned the ancient idea that private
landowners each owned their vertical slice
of the airspace above the surface in perpetuity as incompatible
with modern life. The case set up
three factors to examine in a taking claim that courts still utilize
today: (1) whether the planes
flew directly over the plaintiff’s land; (2) the altitude and
frequency of the flights; and (3)
whether the flights directly and immediately interfered with the
plaintiff’s use and enjoyment of

the surface land.46
However, it left many questions unanswered. Where is the
dividing line between the “immediate
reaches” of the surface and public domain airspace? Can
navigable airspace intersect with the
“immediate reaches” belonging to the private property? Can
aircraft flying wholly within
navigable airspace, as defined by federal law, ever lead to a
successful takings claim? How does
one assess claims based on lawfully operated aircraft, such as
helicopters, flying below navigable
airspace?
Subsequent cases have been brought using many different legal
claims, including trespass and
nuisance, as discussed below, and various ways of describing
the resulting injury. Claims could
include an “inverse condemnation,” another way of describing a
taking, or the establishment of an
avigation, air, or flying easement. While these legal claims may
have different names, it appears
that courts use Causby as the starting point for analyzing all
property-based challenges to
43 Id. at 264.
44 Id. at 263.
45 Id. at 266.
46 See e.g., Andrews v. United States, 2012 U.S. Claims LEXIS
1644, *10 (explaining that the “The United States
Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Federal Circuit) has
derived from Causby three factors for consideration ‘in
determining whether noise and other effects from overflights ...
constitute a taking.... ’”). But see Argent v. United
States, 124 F.3d 1277, 1284 (1997) (finding a taking claim may

be based on “a peculiarly burdensome pattern of
activity, including both intrusive and non-intrusive flights”).
Issues
intrusions upon airspace. Several different interpretations of
Causby have emerged in the attempt
to articulate an airspace ownership standard, a few of which are
described here.
Following Causby, several lower courts employed a fixed-height
theory and interpreted the
decision as creating two distinct categories of airspace. On the
one hand, the stratum of airspace
that was defined in federal law as “navigable airspace” was
always a part of the public domain.
Therefore, flights in this navigable airspace could not lead to a
successful property-right based
action like a takings or trespass claim because the property
owner never owned the airspace in the
public domain. On the other hand, the airspace below what is
defined as navigable airspace could
be “owned” by the surface owner and, therefore, intrusions upon
it could lead to a successful
takings or property tort claim. Since this fixed-height theory of
airspace ownership relies heavily
on the definition of navigable airspace, the expansion of the
federal definition of “navigable
airspace” to include the airspace needed to take-off and land47
greatly impacts what airspace a

property owner could claim.
This strict separation between navigable airspace and the
airspace a landowner can claim seems
to have been disavowed by the Supreme Court. First, in dicta in
Braniff Airways v. Nebraska State
Bd. of Equalization & Assessment,48 a case primarily dealing
with the question of federal
preemption of state airline regulations, the Court left open the
possibility of a taking based on
flights occurring in navigable airspace. It summarized Causby
as holding “that the owner of land
might recover for a taking by national use of navigable air space
resulting in destruction in whole
or in part of the usefulness of the land property.”49 Next, in
Griggs v. Allegheny County the
Supreme Court found that the low flight of planes over the
plaintiff’s property, taking off from
and landing at a nearby airport’s newly constructed runway,
constituted a taking that had to be
compensated under the Fifth Amendment.50 The noise and fear
of a plane crash caused by the low
overhead flights made the property “‘undesirable and
unbearable’” for residential use, making it
impossible for people in the house to converse or sleep.51 The
Court reached this conclusion that a
taking occurred based on this injury, despite the fact that the
flights were operated properly under
federal regulations and never flew outside of navigable
airspace.52 Despite this holding, some
lower courts have continued to lend credence to a fixed-height
ownership theory as a reasonable
interpretation of Causby.53
Another interpretation of Causby essentially creates a
presumption of a non-taking when

overhead flights occur in navigable airspace. This presumption
would recognize the importance
of unimpeded travel of air commerce and that Congress placed
navigable airspace in the public
domain. However, the presumption could be rebutted by
evidence that the flights, while in
navigable airspace, interfered with the owner’s use and
enjoyment of the surface enough to justify
compensation. As one court reasoned, “as the height of the
overflight increases... the
Government’s interest in maintaining sovereignty becomes
weightier while the landowner’s
47 49 U.S.C. § 40102(32) (2012).
48 347 U.S. 590 (1954).
49 Id. at 596.
50 Griggs v. Allegheny County, 369 U.S. 84, 90 (1962).
51 Id. at 87.
52 Id. at 86-89.
53 See, e.g., Aaron v. United States, 311 F.2d 798 (Ct. Cl.
1963); Powell v. United States, 1 Cl. Ct. 669 (1983).
Issues
interest diminishes, so that the damage showing required
increases in a continuum toward
showing absolute destruction of all uses of the property.”54
Finally, some courts have concluded that the altitude of the

overhead flight has no determinative
impact on whether a taking has occurred. One federal court
noted that the government’s liability
for a taking is not impacted “merely because the flights of
Government aircraft are in what
Congress has declared to be navigable airspace and subject to
its regulation.”55 Under this
approach, “although the navigable airspace has been declared to
be in the public domain,
‘regardless of any congressional limitations, the land owner, as
an incident to his ownership, has a
claim to the superjacent airspace to the extent that a reasonable
use of his land involves such
space.’”56 Under this theory, the court would only need to
examine the effect of the overhead
flights on the use and enjoyment of the land, and would not
need to determine if the flight
occurred in navigable airspace.
While the definition of navigable airspace impacts each theory
differently, it is clear that under
the current interpretation a showing of interference with the use
and enjoyment of property is
required. Cases have clearly established that overhead flights
leading to impairment of the
owner’s livelihood or cause physical damage qualify as an
interference with use and enjoyment of
property.57 Additionally, flights that cause the surface to
become impractical for its intended use
by the current owner also satisfy the use and enjoyment
requirement.58 For example, in Griggs,
the noise, vibration, and fear of damage caused by overhead
flights made it impossible for the
plaintiffs to converse with others or sleep within their house,
leading to their retreat from the
property, which had become “undesirable and unbearable for

their residential use.”59 Some courts
have recognized a reduction in the potential resale value of the
property as an interference with its
use and enjoyment, even if the property continues to be suitable
for the purposes for which it is
currently used.60 One court explained: “Enjoyment of property
at common law contemplated the
entire bundle of rights and privileges that attached to the
ownership of land ... Owners of fee
simple estates ... clearly enjoy not only the right to put their
land to a particular present use, but
also to hold the land for investment and appreciation.... ”61
However, other courts have rejected
the idea that restrictions on uses by future inhabitants, without
showing loss of property value, are
relevant to a determination of the owner’s own use and
enjoyment of the property.62
Trespass and Nuisance Claims Against Private Actors
Although Causby arose from a Fifth Amendment takings claim,
its articulation of airspace
ownership standards is also often used in determining state law
tort claims such as trespass and
nuisance. These state law tort claims could be used to establish
liability for overhead flights
54 Stephens v. United States, 11 Cl. Ct. 352, 362 (1986).
55 Branning v. United States, 654 F.2d 88, 99 (1981).
56 Id. at 98-99 (citing Palisades Citizens Association, Inc. v.
C.A.B, 420 F.2d 188, 192 (D.C. Cir. 1969)).
57 See, e.g., Causby, 328 U.S. 256.
58 See, e.g., Griggs, 369 U.S. 84; Pueblo of Sandia v. Smith,
497 F.2d 1043 (10th Cir. 1974) (“appellant failed to show
interference with actual, as distinguished from potential, use of
its land.”).

59 Griggs, 369 U.S. at 87.
60 See, e.g., Brown v. United States, 73 F.3d 1100 (1996);
Branning, 654 F.2d 88.
61 Brown, 73 F.3d 1100.
62 Stephens v. United States, 11 Cl. Ct. 352 (1986).
Issues
operated by private actors, where a lack of government
involvement precludes a takings claim.
Generally, trespass is any physical intrusion upon property
owned by another. However, unlike
with surface trespass claims, simply proving that an object or
person was physically present in the
airspace vertically above the landowner’s property is generally
not enough to establish a trespass
in airspace. Since Causby struck down the common law idea of
ad coelum, landowners generally
do not have an absolute possessory right to the airspace above
the surface into perpetuity. Instead,
airspace trespass claims are often assessed using the same
requirements laid out in the Causby
takings claim. Arguably, these standards are used in property
tort claims because there can be no
trespass in airspace unless the property owner has some
possessory right to the airspace, which
was the same question at issue in Causby.
To allege an actionable trespass to airspace, the property owner
must not only prove that the

interference occurred within the immediate reaches of the land,
or the airspace that the owner can
possess under Causby, but also that its presence interferes with
the actual use of his land. As one
court explained, “a property owner owns only as much air space
above his property as he can
practicable use. And to constitute an actionable trespass, an
intrusion has to be such as to subtract
from the owner’s use of the property.”63 This standard for
airspace trespass was also adopted by
the Restatement (Second) of Torts.64
Nuisance is a state law tort claim that is not based on
possessory rights to property, like trespass,
but is rooted in the right to use and enjoy land.65 Trespass and
nuisance claims arising from
airspace use are quite similar, since trespass to airspace claims
generally require a showing that
the object in airspace interfered with use and enjoyment of land.
However, unlike trespass,
nuisance claims do not require a showing that the interference
actually occupied the owner’s
airspace. Instead, a nuisance claim can succeed even if the
interference flew over adjoining lands
and never directly over the plaintiff’s land, as long as the flight
constitutes a substantial and
unreasonable interference with the use and enjoyment of the
land.
Potential Liability Arising from Civilian Drone Use
The integration of drones into domestic airspace will raise novel
questions of how to apply
existing airspace ownership law to this new technology. How
courts may apply the various
interpretations of Causby, discussed above, to drones will likely
be greatly impacted by the FAA’s

definition of navigable airspace for drones.
The potential for successful takings, trespass, or nuisance
claims from drone use will also be
impacted by the physical characteristics of the drone, especially
given that current case law
heavily emphasizes the impact of the flight on use and
enjoyment of the surface property. Several
characteristics of drones may make their operation in airspace
less likely to lead to liability for
drone operators than for aircraft operators. First, the noise
attributed to drone use may be
significantly less than noise created by helicopters or planes
powered by jet engines. Second,
drones commonly used for civilian purposes could be much
smaller than common aircraft used
today. This decreased size is likely to lead to fewer physical
impacts upon surface land such as
63 Geller v. Brownstone Condominium, 82 Ill. App. 3d 334,
336-37 (1980).
64 RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 159(2) (1965)
(stating that “Flights by aircraft in the airspace above the land
of
another is a trespass if, but only if, (a) it enters into the
immediate reaches of the airspace next to the land, and (b) it
interferes substantially with the other’s use and enjoyment of
the land.”).
65 RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 821D (1979); 2
DAN B DOBBS, ET AL. THE LAW OF TORTS § 398 (2d ed.
2011).
Issues

vibration and dust, which are common complaints arising from
overhead aircraft and helicopter
flights. Finally, it is unknown at this time how most drones will
be deployed into flight. Will
drone “airports” be used to launch the aircraft or will they take
off and land primarily from
individual property? If drone use remains decentralized and is
not organized around an “airport,”
then drones are less likely to repeatedly fly over the same piece
of property, creating fewer
potential takings, trespass, or nuisance claims. Additionally, the
majority of drones are more
likely to operate like helicopters, taking off and landing
vertically, than like traditional fixed-wing
aircraft. This method of takeoff reduces the amount of surface
the aircraft would have to fly over
before reaching its desired flying altitude, minimizing the
potential number of property owners
alleging physical invasion of the immediate reaches of their
surface property.
Alternatively, the potential ability for drones to fly safely at
much lower altitudes than fixed-wing
aircraft or helicopters could lead to a larger number of property-
based claims. Low-flying drones
are more likely to invade the immediate reaches of the surface
property, thus satisfying part of the
requirement for a takings or trespass claim.
Privacy
Perhaps the most contentious issue concerning the introduction
of drones into U.S. airspace is the

threat that this technology will be used to spy on American
citizens. With the ability to house
high-powered cameras, infrared sensors, facial recognition
technology, and license plate readers,
some argue that drones present a substantial privacy risk.66
Undoubtedly, the government’s use of
drones for domestic surveillance operations implicates the
Fourth Amendment and other
applicable laws.67 In like manner, privacy advocates have
warned that private actors might use
drones in a way that could infringe upon fundamental privacy
rights.68 This section will focus on
the privacy issues associated with the use of drones by private,
non-governmental actors. It will
provide a general history of privacy law in the United States
and survey the various privacy torts,
including intrusion upon seclusion, the privacy tort most
applicable to drone surveillance. It will
then explore the First Amendment right to gather news.
Application of these theories to drone
surveillance will be discussed in the section titled
“Congressional Response.”
66 See Jennifer Lynch, Are Drones Watching You?,
ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION (Jan. 10, 2012),
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/drones-are-watching-
you; M. Ryan Calo, The Drone as Privacy Catalyst, 64
STAN. L. REV. ONLINE 29 (Dec. 12, 2011),
http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/sites/default/files/online/arti
cles/64-
SLRO-29_1.pdf.
67 For an analysis of the Fourth Amendment implications of
government drone surveillance, see CRS Report R42701,
Drones in Domestic Surveillance Operations: Fourth
Amendment Implications and Legislative Responses, by Richard

M. Thompson II.
68 See Press Release, Rep. Ed Markey, Markey Releases
Discussion Draft of Drone Privacy and Transparency
Legislation (Aug. 1, 2012), available at
http://markey.house.gov/press-release/markey-releases-
discussion-draft-drone-
privacy-and-transparency-legislation.
Drones are already flying in U.S. airspace – with thousands
more to come – but with no privacy
protections or transparency measures in place. We are entering
a brave new world, and just because
a company soon will be able to register a drone license
shouldn’t mean that company can turn it
into a cash register by selling consumer information. Currently,
there are no privacy protections or
guidelines and no way for the public to know who is flying
drones, where, and why. The time to
implement privacy protections is now.
Id.
Copyright of Congressional Research Service: Report is the
property of US Congressional Research Service and
its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or
posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's
express written permission. However, users may print,
download, or email articles for individual use.
Article 2:

On the same day last month, airline pilots trying to land at two
of the nation's busiest airports got on their radios to report the
unnerving sight of small rogue drones buzzing at high altitudes.
In the first incident on May 29, the pilot of a commercial
airliner descending toward LaGuardia Airport saw what
appeared to be a black drone with a 10-to-15-foot wingspan
about 5,500 feet above Lower Manhattan, according to a
previously undisclosed report filed with the Federal Aviation
Administration.
In the second, two airliners separately approaching Los Angeles
International Airport soared past what they described as a drone
or remote-controlled aircraft the size of a trash can at an
altitude of 6,500 feet, FAA records show.
The records do not name the airlines involved or say how close
the aircraft came to the drones when they flew past. FAA
officials said their inspectors could not track down the
unregistered drones or determine who was flying them. "In
many cases, radar data is not available and the operators cannot
be identified," the agency said in a statement.
The close calls were the latest in a rash of dangerous encounters
between civilian airplanes and drones flown in contravention of
FAA rules intended to safeguard U.S. airspace. Hazardous
occurrences are becoming more frequent as more drones - legal
and illegal - take to the skies, according to a year-long
investigation by The Washington Post:
l In 15 cases over the past two years, drones flew dangerously
close to airports or passenger aircraft, including the incidents in
New York and Los Angeles, according to reports submitted to
the FAA. On May 3, the pilot of a commercial airliner preparing
to land in Atlanta reported a small drone with four legs and
bright lights "in close proximity" to his plane, according to the
FAA records. The agency recently disclosed that the pilot of a
US Airways plane reported a near-collision with a drone or
remotely controlled model aircraft over Tallahassee Regional
Airport on March 22 in Florida.

l A different set of records suggests that risky midair encounters
are even more common. A NASA database of confidential
complaints filed by pilots and air-traffic controllers has
recorded 50 other reports of close calls or improper flight
operations involving drones over the past decade.
l Civilian drones flown with the FAA's permission and under its
scrutiny are also susceptible to crashes. Since November 2009,
law enforcement agencies, universities and other registered
drone users have reported 23 accidents and 236 unsafe
incidents, according to FAA records.
The problem is worsening just as the federal government is
preparing to lift barriers that could flood the country's already
congested skies with thousands of remotely controlled aircraft.
Under a law passed two years ago, Congress ordered the FAA to
issue rules legalizing drones for commercial purposes by
September 2015 - the first step in a new era of aviation that will
eventually allow drones of all sizes to fly freely in the national
airspace, sharing the same airports as regular planes.
Congress imposed dual mandates on the FAA that the agency
has struggled to reconcile. Under the law, the agency must draft
rules for drones as soon as possible so businesses can exploit
their economic potential. The FAA must also ensure that safety
standards are not compromised and passenger aircraft are not
imperiled.
The FAA is facing pressure to move faster from drone
manufacturers, the military, members of Congress and many
companies that see remotely controlled airplanes as a
breakthrough technology. The drone industry complains that it
is losing $27 million in economic benefits a day while the FAA
prepares regulations for certifying drones and licensing pilots.
The FAA says it is moving as quickly as it can.
"I completely understand that there is significant potential,
there's significant benefit, there's great things that unmanned
aircraft can do. We need to be convinced that they can do so
safely," Michael P. Huerta, the FAA's administrator, said in an
interview.

"Every day in America people are getting on airplanes. Every
day people are seeing airplanes in the sky," Huerta added. "But
they're not really worried a lot about whether it's safe. It's their
expectation that these things, that unmanned aircraft flying
around in our airspace, will meet that same level of safety. And
we owe that to them."
The longer the FAA takes to finalize its rules, the more rogue
drones are taking to the skies.
Thanks to rapid advances in technology, small satellite-guided
drones with powerful miniature cameras can be bought online
for less than $500. Flying drones as a hobby is permitted as
long as operators keep them below 400 feet, away from
populated areas and at least three miles from an airport,
according to the FAA. But those restrictions are being flouted
and ignored.
On May 5, a quad-copter - a drone with four rotors - crashed
into the 30th floor of St. Louis's Metropolitan Square building,
the city's tallest. In March, the FAA fined a Brooklyn man
$2,200 for striking two Midtown Manhattan skyscrapers with
his quad-copter before it nearly hit a pedestrian. In August, a
small drone with multiple rotors crashed into the grandstand at
Virginia Motorsports Park in Dinwiddie County, injuring three
spectators.
Even drone advocates worry that the skies are becoming a free-
for-all.
"We have to understand that the industry is at risk because of
illegal drone usage," Krista M. Ochs, a General Dynamics
executive, said last month at a drone-industry conference in
Orlando. "If we have a major catastrophe that involves some
type of midair collision, it could set us back
years."Overwhelmed regulators?
In 2012, Congress passed the FAA Modernization and Reform
Act, legislation that ordered the federal government to "safely
accelerate" the integration of civilian drones into the busiest
airspace in the world.
At the time, the military had been flying drones overseas for

more than a decade, revolutionizing warfare by keeping pilots
on the ground and out of harm's way. Defense contractors who
invented the technology saw even bigger potential to sell drones
to private businesses and other government agencies. Industry
groups projected a market with $8 billion in annual revenue.
Until then, the FAA had been moving slowly and cautiously,
issuing a handful of permits for the military, law enforcement
agencies and universities to fly drones under restrictive
conditions. The new law ordered the FAA to hurry it up.
Lawmakers set a deadline of Sept. 30, 2015, for the FAA to
develop a comprehensive plan and allow civilian drones to
begin flying on a more regular basis.
The FAA has approved six sites across the country to test
drones and produce data that will shape safety standards.
Officials said they will first propose rules for drones weighing
55 pounds or less. Regulations for larger aircraft will take
significantly longer. Both sets of rules could take years to
finalize. In an interim step, FAA officials say they may grant
permits to filmmakers, farmers, and the oil and gas industry to
use small drones under limited circumstances.
Manufacturers of drones and businesses that want to buy them
are losing patience. They warn that foreign companies will steal
the market if the FAA does not act swiftly. "We have got to be
able to understand what the standards must be, and we have got
to start fielding this technology," Michael Toscano, president
and chief executive of the drone industry's trade association,
said in a May 30 speech to the Aero Club in Washington.
Pro-drone lawmakers are also frustrated. "I am desperate to see
this potential unleashed," Rep. Frank A. LoBiondo (R-N.J.),
chairman of the House Transportation Committee's aviation
panel, said at the drone-industry conference in Orlando.
"Sometimes I think government bureaucrats are too cautious in
holding people back."
The FAA is feeling the heat from other corners. Civil
libertarians are predicting a surveillance state run amok if the
FAA does not issue privacy guidelines for government drone

operators - an issue that Congress did not address in the 2012
law.
Many small-aircraft pilots and air-traffic controllers argue that
allowing drones to fly alongside regular planes makes no sense.
Greg Cromer, a private pilot from Stephens City, Va., submitted
a letter to the FAA saying that he was "vehemently opposed" to
the whole idea.
"I can see no way to prevent a collision with something that
could be as small as a bird or kitchen appliance," he
wrote.Close calls
Posing the most immediate threat to air traffic is the
proliferation of small, unauthorized drones that can reach
previously unimaginable heights.
On Sept. 22, while at an altitude of 2,300 feet over Phoenix, a
pilot reported a near-collision with a black-and-white drone the
size of a basketball, according to records the FAA released with
many details redacted. The pilot reported that the drone was 200
feet ahead and closing in. The pilot swerved left, and the two
aircraft missed each other by 50 feet.
Small drones usually do not show up on air controllers' radar
screens and often go undetected by traffic collision avoidance
systems installed on other planes. Pilots, in incidents to date,
were caught unaware until they peered out their windows and
spotted the unidentified flying objects at uncomfortably close
range.
On March 25, 2012, a pilot was flying 11 miles northwest of
Houston at 2,000 feet when he saw what he described as a drone
just 100 feet below his plane. The mysterious aircraft
disappeared in a blur before the pilot could get a better look. He
notified the control tower, but it could not find the drone on
radar.
The elusiveness of small drones and the absence of a
registration or licensing system make it extremely difficult for
the FAA to hold culprits accountable.
The agency has imposed fines against two drone operators. In
addition to the Brooklyn man, in 2011 the FAA penalized a

videographer $10,000 for using a drone to produce a
promotional film about the University of Virginia Medical
Center.
The FAA accused the videographer, Raphael Pirker, of flying a
56-inch-long foam drone recklessly, swooping close to people
on the ground. In March, after Pirker challenged the fine and
said he was operating in a safe manner, a federal administrative-
law judge overturned the penalty, finding that the FAA had
exceeded its regulatory authority.
The agency has appealed, but the ruling cast further doubt on
the agency's ability to police drone flights until it can finalize
the new rules mandated by Congress. Last month, The Post and
other news organizations filed a legal brief in support of Pirker,
arguing that the FAA's de facto ban on commercial drones was
overly restrictive and threatened journalists' First Amendment
rights to use drones to gather the news. 'Looked like a hawk'
The NASA database suggests that dangerous brushes between
drones and passenger aircraft are more common than the FAA
acknowledges.
In July 2013, a commercial air carrier was approaching
LaGuardia Airport at 7,000 feet when the crew spotted a small,
black object zipping toward the larger aircraft, just 500 feet
below it. The crew thought it was a drone but "couldn't really
make out much more than that because it happened so fast."
The first officer reported the incident anonymously to the
Aviation Safety Reporting System, a database project run by
NASA. The system encourages pilots, air-traffic controllers and
others in the world of aviation to submit confidential reports
about unsafe incidents without fear of getting entangled in
enforcement actions by the FAA. Precise dates and other
identifying details are stripped out of the reports before they are
posted in the publicly accessible database.
Since 2005, the system has received 50 reports of unsafe
incidents involving drones. Some were minor infractions or
deviations from airspace regulations. Others were near-
disasters.

Many of the incidents involved military drones flying outside
restricted airspace. In March 2013, the pilot of a Bombardier
CRJ-200 regional airliner was descending toward the Newport
News/Williamsburg International Airport in Virginia when the
captain saw something that looked like a hawk circling in the
distance.
It wasn't.
"A few seconds later, what we thought looked like a hawk took
the shape of an aircraft with wings," the captain reported. As
the distance between the two aircraft narrowed, the Bombardier
turned right to avoid a collision. The drone turned, too. "For
about five seconds it seemed to chase us," the captain said in
his report.
The drone flew "extremely erratically," performing rolls and
loops before passing to the left of the passenger aircraft. Three
military helicopters also flew by at a safer distance. The angry
jetliner captain called the airport to complain about the
"careless and reckless" maneuvering of the drone pilot and
demanded to know who was responsible. Airport officials
responded that "they could not officially tell us what it was,"
the pilot reported.
One month earlier, at another Virginia airport, controllers were
similarly evasive after the pilot of a corporate jet reported a
near miss with what he suspected was a drone. The pilot was
descending toward Leesburg Executive Airport, about 35 miles
from Washington, when his traffic collision avoidance system
rang an alarm - another aircraft had suddenly closed within 200
feet.
The jet's first officer looked out and saw a gray aircraft with a
twin boom and a long wing, "different from any normal light
aircraft I have ever seen." The captain asked air-traffic
controllers whether it was a drone, "given our proximity to
Washington." A supervisor came on the line to acknowledge
that controllers were tracking the aircraft but would not say
what it was. "If, in fact, this was a UAV," the first officer wrote
in his report, using the acronym for unmanned aerial vehicle,

"then the obvious solution is to keep UAVs out of civilian
airspace."
Chris Stephenson, an operations coordinator with the National
Air Traffic Controllers Association, described the pending
integration of drones into the national airspace as "a tsunami
headed for the front porch." He predicted that it would take
several years to devise reliable technology that would allow
large drones to take off and land from the same airports as
passenger planes.
In the short term, however, small rogue drones are presenting a
bigger challenge. Stephenson said it was his personal opinion
that the FAA may need to regulate the sale of cheap, remotely
controlled aircraft to further discourage unlicensed operators
from flying in risky areas.
"The FAA's got a big load to take care of because these things
are running away from them," he said.Border-surveillance
crashes
Even FAA-approved drones that fly under carefully monitored
conditions are susceptible to breakdowns and accidents.
On Jan. 27, the generator failed on a drone operated by U.S.
Customs and Border Protection on a surveillance mission over
the Pacific Ocean. The Predator B drone - a civilian version of
the Air Force's advanced Reaper aircraft, with a 66-foot
wingspan - lacked enough battery power to return to its base in
Sierra Vista, Ariz. The pilots decided to ditch the $12 million
aircraft into international waters, about 20 miles southwest of
San Diego, according to FAA and Customs and Border
Protection officials.
The aircraft was one of 23 FAA-approved drones operated by
civilian agencies and universities that have crashed since
November 2009, according to previously undisclosed FAA
records.
The FAA has granted certificates to dozens of federal
departments, law enforcement agencies and universities to fly
civilian drones, subject to restrictions on where and when they
can operate.

Civilian agencies have reported 236 unsafe or abnormal
incidents to the FAA since 2009, the records show. The vast
majority of incidents involved drones flown by Customs and
Border Protection, which has accounted for more than three-
quarters of all flight hours by FAA-certified drones.
After the loss of the aircraft that crashed in January, Customs
and Border Protection now operates a fleet of nine unarmed
Predator B's from bases in Arizona, Texas, Florida and North
Dakota. The agency's drone surveillance program began in 2005
but got off to a ragged start. One drone crashed 100 yards from
a house in Nogales, Ariz., in April 2006, prompting the
National Transportation Safety Board to chide the agency for
"providing a minimal amount of operational oversight."
NTSB records show that three Predator B's belonging to
Customs and Border Protection have been involved in
previously unpublicized hard landings that damaged the aircraft.
A spokesman for the border agency declined to comment.
Hacking and spoofing
Civilian drones are vulnerable to another safety threat: hacking.
Drones rely on GPS signals to navigate and are controlled by
pilots or operators on the ground via a two-way radio
transmission link.
The military protects the communications and navigation links
it uses to control drones with highly advanced encryption
technology. Civilian drones, however, generally rely on
unencrypted satellite links and radio transmissions that can be
hacked, jammed or spoofed.
In June 2012, a University of Texas at Austin professor of
aerospace engineering and a team of students gathered at the
White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico to perform a
demonstration. Before the eyes of officials from the Department
of Homeland Security, the team of academics used a hand-built
device to stealthily seize control of, or spoof, an $80,000
Hornet rotorcraft drone flying about a kilometer in the distance.
The team transmitted false signals that fooled the drone into
thinking it was flying high when it fact it was plummeting

toward the ground. The spoofers from Texas changed course at
the last minute and averted a crash.
Todd E. Humphreys, the professor who led the team, said
spoofing a drone is not simple. It took him and his students
about three years to perfect their technique. But he said rapid
improvements in technology are making the task progressively
easier.
In an interview, Humphreys said it would not be cheap or easy
to build defenses against hackers. If the FAA permits
widespread commercial drone traffic before effective solutions
are in place, he predicted, "the hackers will come out of the
woodwork."
The most pressing concern, he said, are the large Predator B
drones that federal Border Patrol agents fly along the long
borders with Canada and Mexico. Humphreys said he is
skeptical that Homeland Security officials have secured the
navigation links well enough to thwart hackers.
"They've never offered any evidence of that, and I don't know
how that can be true," he said. "It's a huge vulnerability."
Work cited
Craig, Whitlock. "Close encounters: As small civilian drones
get more popular, the near misses stack up." Washington Post,
The 6: Newspaper Source. Web. 9 Apr. 2015
over a ski resort in
Colorado, but that
day will soon come.
The six drone test
sites, announced at
the end of 2013, have

until September
2015 to fi nd solu-
tions that will allow
drones to weave
seamlessly into the
national airspace.
Like a crack team
of bank robbers planning a heist, each test
site brings diff erent resources to the project.
Nevada was a shoo-in with its clear skies,
huge amount of restricted airspace and
history of military research. The Univer-
sity of North Dakota has one of the largest
civilian fl ight training schools in the world
and is the only continental test site located
in a temperate climate zone. Researchers
in Alaska have been involved with drone
By Colin Wood / Contributing Writer
Drone research has been ramping up in workshops and
universities around the country for more than
a decade, but it’s the scientists at six test
sites (see sidebar) designated by the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) who will
pave the way for a new future in fl ying. Just
as the Wright brothers changed the world
with the invention of manned fl ight, these
pioneers will propel unmanned aircraft into
the skies and alter the course of history.
In November 2013, the FAA released
a road map report that recognized the

untapped value of drones and also outlined
the obstacles to integrating them into the
National Airspace System. Unmanned
aircraft were never designed or intended
to meet the same rigorous standards as
traditional aircraft, so there are many tech-
nical and logistical barriers that prevent
the FAA from permitting their use in the
national airspace if its leaders want to
sleep well at night. There’s much work to
be done before a Boeing 747 full of passen-
gers eastbound for Chicago crosses paths
with an unmanned airplane seeding clouds
Sharing the Skies
FAA drone test sites in North Dakota, Nevada and Alaska
off er unique resources and expertise to help unmanned
aircraft safely integrate into the national airspace.
INNOVATION
32 April 2014 // www.govtech.com
P
H
O
T
O
S
P
R
O

V
ID
E
D
B
Y
T
H
E
U
N
IV
E
R
S
IT
Y
O
F
N
O
R
T
H

D
A
K
O
T
A
The possibilities for drones are seemingly
limitless, from aiding emergency response
to scouting the locations of polar bears.
Drone Test Sites
• University of Alaska
• State of Nevada
• Griffi ss International
Airport, New York
• North Dakota Depart-
ment of Commerce
• Texas A&M University,
Corpus Christi
• Virginia Tech
GT04_32.indd 32 3/18/14 3:53 PM
100 Blue Ravine Road
Folsom, CA 95630
916-932-1300
Page #
__________Designer __________Creative Dir.

__________Editorial __________Prepress
__________Other ____________OK to go
5 25 50 75 95 100 5 25 50 75 95 100 5
25 50 75 95 100 5 25 50 75 95 100
BLACK
YELLOW
MAGENTA
CYAN
®
research for 13 years, and their partnerships
with institutions in Oregon and Hawaii
offer a geographically diverse testing area.
Applications for Drones
Ro Bailey is the deputy director of the
Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft
Systems Integration at the University of
Alaska Fairbanks and a retired Air Force
brigadier general. Her test site will help
develop safety standards for drone systems
and run test flights in extremely high
altitudes and at high speeds over water.
But the public should first understand
why they’re doing all this, Bailey said —
this technology will change the world.

“There are so very many benefi-
cial uses of unmanned aircraft systems
that have nothing to do with people
looking in windows,” she said.
A big piece of the FAA’s push to integrate
drones into the national airspace is to put
an end to the battle between legislators,
advocacy groups and drone proponents.
Drones can help save lives, put out fires and
rescue lost people, but the red tape limiting
their use by first responders has made such
stories rare. The 19 firefighters who died
in a blaze outside Phoenix in June “prob-
ably” would have been spared with the
help of drone intelligence, Bailey said.
“We have mapped the borders of wild-
fires, which provides better information to
the incident commander for deployment of
firefighters the next day,” Bailey said. “We
could use [unmanned systems] to assist
with monitoring rivers that are at risk of
flooding and provide better information to
emergency managers in real time. We’ve
used them for infrastructure assessment, in
cases where putting manned aircraft in that
place was too dangerous,” she said, refer-
ring to a case where drones were used to
survey an oil company’s active flare stack.
“We can do volumetric measurements
far more accurately and more quickly for
potential avalanches or how much material

has been taken out of a gravel pit. We can
do precision mapping for archaeological
digs, and in many cases be able to give them
such detailed instructions that they can
go straight to more promising locations to
begin the digs,” Bailey said. “We can locate
polar bear dens so you can keep people away
from those dens.”
When the imagery comes back for
Steller sea lion counts, she said, the team
can always tell whether the images were
captured by a drone or by a manned heli-
copter — when it’s a manned helicopter, the
animals are either staring at the
camera or diving into the water,
but they don’t notice the drones.
Drone research allows
scientists to be less inva-
sive. Researchers in Alaska,
for example, are developing
a Breathalyzer drone that
flies through a whale’s spout
and analyzes the bacteria collected
to determine the animal’s health.
Drones are also used to study volca-
noes to learn more about how their
ash interacts with aircraft and where
it’s safe for manned aircraft to fly.
Bailey also described how drones are
used in research to help ships navigate

dangerous, icy waters. In one instance,
250 miles north of Alaska’s northern
shore, drones were flown at 1,800 feet,
dropping small buoys into the water that
collected temperature data from 9 meters
underwater and then wirelessly trans-
mitted that data back to the drones.
“There’s not a manned aircraft in
the world that would do that for safety
reasons,” she said. There’s no replace-
ment for unmanned aircraft when
it comes to that kind of work, Bailey
added, and that kind of work could
prevent a ship from sinking someday.
Safety Focus
While the FAA wants drones in the air,
it has also made it clear that compromising
existing aviation safety standards is not an
option. One of the ways Alaska will facili-
tate the harmonious integration of drones
into the airspace is by helping to develop the
drone type certificate process. Type certifi-
cates for traditional aircraft are the proof that
its design has been approved by an authority
like the FAA, so when someone buys an
aircraft, there’s no question as to whether it
is safe, assuming it’s current on maintenance.
Drones don’t have FAA-approved designs,
and most people probably wouldn’t feel
www.govtech.com // April 2014 33

There are so very many beneficial
uses of unmanned aircraft systems
that have nothing to do with people
looking in windows.
The six test sites have until September
2015 to work on technical and logistical
issues that currently prevent drones
from entering the national airspace.
Folsom, CA 95630
916-932-1300
Page #
__________Other ____________OK to go
5 25 50 75 95 100 5 25 50 75 95 100 5
25 50 75 95 100 5 25 50 75 95 100
BLACK
YELLOW
MAGENTA
CYAN
®
comfortable fl ying if they knew they were

sharing the air with a drone someone built
in their garage. It would be the air equiva-
lent of a pedestrian wandering around on
the freeway.
All three test sites that Government
Technology interviewed named “sense
and avoid” functionality as one of the
most pressing areas of research. One of
the biggest problems with putting drones
in the air is there’s no consistent way for
an aircraft without a person on it to obey
the rules of the sky as currently written.
But the FAA has stated that it will not
change existing “sense and avoid” rules
to accommodate drones, so researchers
will need to get inventive so unmanned
aircraft can follow the regulations.
Linking and sense-and-avoid systems
are two areas of research North Dakota
will help develop. The Northern Plains
Unmanned Aircraft Systems Test Site is
led by Bob Becklund, a colonel with the
North Dakota National Guard and former
commander of the 119th Fighter Wing.
“Links have got to be assured and reli-
able, which means they have to be secure
from hacking, encrypted, redundant, reliable
— all that kind of stuff ,” Becklund explained.
“That’s quite a challenge. Or in the event a
link gets unreliable or there’s a component
failure, which of course can happen and the
airplane loses its link, then it has to have
onboard systems that it can recover itself

safely and without hurting anybody on the
ground, autonomously in this example.”
Air traffi c control needs to be aware
of what a drone is doing at all times, just
as with any aircraft, so if something goes
wrong such as losing the link with the
ground, it can then direct other aircraft
away from that area, Becklund said.
Safety research is a huge priority for
the North Dakota site, but the staff hope
that drone research won’t just minimize
safety impacts in 2015 when drones begin
launching, but also that their discoveries
will contribute to making all of aviation
safer. “As far as what we proposed for the
test site, that covers the whole spectrum,
everything from pilot training standards,
which is what the University of North
Dakota specializes in, certifi cation in pilot
training and evaluation standards for air
crew, the aircraft and ground station and
air worthiness [type] certifi cation.”
The university off ers undergraduate
degrees in unmanned aircraft systems
operations, and it’s that industry and
culture of aviation and drones that likely
led the FAA to select it as one of the test
sites, he said. The university’s engineering
school also leads research on nanoscale
electronics, which is connected to many
of the size-weight-power engineering
problems faced by drone researchers.

“This region can really off er the FAA
and this nation and the world, for that
matter, an expertise pool and airspace that’s
unencumbered by other aircraft density,
and a ground population that’s nice and
low,” said Becklund. “It’s a perfect place
to do fl ying with new technologies.”
There are a few potential drone appli-
cations that Becklund likes: The movie
industry will be able to save money renting
helicopters if it wants aerial shots, real
estate developers can easily and cheaply
get aerial photos of properties, energy
companies will have a cost-eff ective solu-
tion to look for breaks in their pipelines
or power lines, and auto racing events
could be enhanced for fans by assigning
each car a drone with a camera.
In Nevada, the Desert Research
Institute has already begun promoting
its own brand of drone innovation, as it
looks for new ways to increase snowpack
in Lake Tahoe ski resorts. Lake Tahoe
today relies on cloud seeding towers
that introduce silver iodide crystals into
34 April 2014 // www.govtech.com
Researchers in North Dakota hope
to improve not just drone safety but
aircraft safety in general.
INNOVATION

GT04_32.indd 34 3/18/14 3:54 PM
Folsom, CA 95630
916-932-1300
Page #
__________Other ____________OK to go
5 25 50 75 95 100 5 25 50 75 95 100 5
25 50 75 95 100 5 25 50 75 95 100
BLACK
YELLOW
MAGENTA
CYAN
®
WW
www.info.icity.us/gt
inintrtrododucuciningg
[email protected]
/iCity.us
@iCityUS iCity®

As journalists, weknow the power of words.The phrase th.docx

As journalists, weknow the power of words.The phrase th.docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to As journalists, weknow the power of words.The phrase th.docx

Similar to As journalists, weknow the power of words.The phrase th.docx (13)

More from fredharris32

More from fredharris32 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

As journalists, weknow the power of words.The phrase th.docx