US airspace may be crowded with some 7,500 commercial drones inside the next five years, it is section of the Federal Aviation Administration’s new roadmap unveiled on Thursday.
The announcement is the most recent step toward transitioning drones from military use inside the war on terrorism to collecting survey and weather data to assisting rescues and law enforcement operations.
“From advancing scientific research and responding to natural disasters to locating missing persons and helping to fight wildfires, drones can save time, economize and, most significantly, save lives,” said a press release by Michael Toscano, president and CEO of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems.
“By the tip of the year, we plan to select six test sites for civil unmanned aircraft. Congress required us to take action, and we have to ensure we use these sites to procure the most efficient data that we will,” FF Administrator Michael Huerta said.
Michael Huerta however cautioned that there may be delays for those seeking to obtain certificates to function unmanned aircraft once regulatory guidelines are in place. He said ensuring safety in increasingly congested skies was his agency’s top priority, The Washington Post reports.
“We must fulfill those obligations in a thoughtful, careful manner that ensures safety and promotes economic growth,” he said in a speech to aerospace industry executives.
The FAA plan has also set the stage for law enforcement agencies, businesses, universities and hobbyists to start flying drones by 2015.
The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems estimated that the economic drone industry will create greater than 100,000 jobs and generate greater than $82 billion over the subsequent 10 years.
The 74-page roadmap however immediately raised concerns among some privacy advocates, who say that the FAA must clarify how the govt. and personal users can use video and other data from surveillance drones, and the way long it usually is stored. The FAA is requiring future test sites to develop privacy plans and cause them to available to the general public. The policy also requires test site operators to reveal how data can be obtained and used.
“Make no mistake about it, privacy is an exceptionally important issue and it’s something that the general public has a major interest and concern over and we have to recognize, as an industry, that if we’re going to take full good thing about the advantages that we’re talking about for these technologies, we have to be conscious of the public’s concerns about privacy,” Huerta said.
Christopher Calabrese of the yank Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel told The Washington Times that, while the FAA’s requirement for public disclosure of knowledge and retention policies are needed and welcome, the safeguards don’t go far enough.
“It’s crucial that, as we move forward with drone use, those procedural protections are followed by concrete restrictions on how data from drones can be utilized and the way long it usually is stored. Congress should also weigh in on areas outside of the FAA’s authority, comparable to use by law enforcement and the dep. of Homeland Security, that have the facility to apply drones for invasive surveillance that have to be kept in check,” Calabrese said.
“People are really worried about drone use. You spot it in an enormous variety of state bills and laws, and that i think the FAA must needless to say in the event that they don’t address privacy issues then drones aren’t going to be an invaluable technology,” he added. “Privacy can’t be swept under the rug”.
The ACLU has also urged Congress to support laws, introduced to the home and Senate, that could require police to procure judicial approval before using a drone.
Under a law passed in 2012, the FAA must provide for the “safe integration” of industrial drones into domestic airspace by 2015.
If passed, this legislation will require law enforcement agencies to acquire warrants before using drones to gather surveillance data on US soil.
Twenty-four states including California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona, have already applied to host the tests.
According to the FAA, the state governments or universities that oversee the test sites must describe their policies for privacy, data use and knowledge retention. The document released on Thursday said drone operators must “comply with federal, state, and other laws on individual privacy protection”.
Until testing is complete, the FAA said, it’ll grant flight privileges to unmanned aircraft operators on a case-by-case basis.
Unmanned aircraft are available in many sizes and styles. Military drones are used for surveillance or missile strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the center East, while similar aircraft may be used domestically to watch traffic conditions, weather patterns and various other things.
“In that airspace of the long run, we’ll have new users,” Michael Huerta said. “We could have more commercial space launches, and we’ll have more unmanned aircraft systems. As , it requires significant consensus of the way we will safely integrate game-changing technologies resembling these, and I’m pleased to claim we’ve made very solid progress. We’re devoted to moving this exciting new technology along as quickly and safely as possible.”
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