'No Drone Zone' in Virginia?

As the rise of pilotless drones in U.S. airspace becomes more prevalent, some local and state governments are adopting measures to curtail their use.
As I read these headlines, I have to wonder, do these folks even know how these drones work? I think not, especially when you see comments like drones in air to air combat over our back yards, or invading privacy, or the excess noise they’ll cause. It’s so typical for the uninformed or untrained to make these comments and then stir up ill perceptions from the general public who for the most part have no idea what these drones look like. They take the bad info and run with it because that’s all they know. If they had a chance to see the proper operation of the drones, they’d be surprised to find for the most part you never know it’s working in your area unless you just happen to look up and see it. The operation proposed in the use of these drones in US air space is a natural next step in our protection of property and life. We have no reason to fear it being used to spy on anyone other than those involved in nefarious activity. I could go on but my time to interject a comment here is limited. But I would urge those people who really don’t know what drones do to do some real research and get the proper information. There is a place for this technology in our daily lives without fear of it being used improperly and against law abiding citizens.

UAVs. Drones. RPAs. What are we really talking about?

The recent PBS Nova program Rise of the Drones shows how US Predator, Reaper and other UAV's have "taken out" numerous terrorist HVTs (high value targets) in Afganistan. Recently we've learned that they've also bee used hundreds of times in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the last three in apparent violation of those nations' sovreignty. This is covert aerial ops on steroids, where after a period of surveillance a decision is made by a commander to launch laser-guided smart weapons at an unsuspecting target, presumeably anywhere on earth. More new pilots are being trained to fly UAVs than advanced fighter jets. In the future UAVs will operate sid-by-side with manned fighter aircraft. This is what we know; imagine what we don't know.

Lack of respect for national sovreignty by the US and other "developed nations" has been around since the first days of the OSS, probably before that. The CSTOL Helio Courier was designed in the 1940s and built in the mid-fifties. It was used by the CIA to covertly insert US spies into the Soviet Union undetected. Many covert actions by CIA and other US intelligence agencies took place in Africa, Iran, the Philipines, South and Central America from the late 1940s, until the unsucessful coup of Cuba during the Eisenhaower and Kennedy administrations became known in the 1970s. Everything from Sci- Ops to crop burning, propaganda to arming rebel armies, up to and including "executive action" were performed covertly. At home the truth was suppressed, or kept from the public's eyes with the help ofambitious American journalists (Known as CIA's Operation Mockingbird).

We know about the V-tailed Predator and its big brother, the Reaper, and the massive Global Hawk. A US stealth-shaped drone was undoubtedly spying along the Iraq-Iran border and somehow was hacked and influenced to land in Iran. (Now the Iranis have their own RPV program). A small drone called a Switchblade is only a couple feet long. It has retractable wings and stabilizers and an explosive warhead tha can take out a rooftop sniper. Without a trial by his peers, of course.

Quadcopter designs with multiple cameras and telemetrycan be used to fly complex patterns in the air and avoid moving obstacles like birds or airplanes. In a few years they'll be able to fly into a school, an airport or a shopping mall and search for the bad guys. The obvious advantage being that fewer cops and firemen will die as a result. Imagine mobile police radar drones, tracking your speed from above, with one officer detaining and writing tickets a few blocks ahead.

For aviators they represent unknown aerial obstacles that may. or may not be right on your flight path. How the integration of these war planes into domestic airspace shakes down is anybody's guess. Whatever you do, don't circle over a nuclear plant in your sailplane, oir get too close to Groom Lake. Hopefully your Cirrus BRA system works after you've been summarily shot out of the sky by someone you'll never getr to learn the identity of, sitting with a buch of screens around him in a trailor at Holloman AFB.

Maybe I'll just take up golf, where the worst thing that can hurt me is someone else's stray shot.

Douglas M