Drones

Friday I talked about two ways the Trump administration is trying to take the sky away from civilian drone pilots. The third avenue of Trump’s attack on civilian drones has been the Trump administration’s obsessive efforts to shut down the U.S. market to the world’s leading consumer/professional drone manufacturer, the Chinese company DJI. DJI dominates the small “consumer” class of quadcopter drones (weighing under under 250 grams, or about 9 oz) that are widely used not only by real estate photographers, building building inspectors, aerial surveyors, and many more everyday jobs. This is what mine looks like.

DJI’s somewhat larger quadcopter drones—which are not remotely the same size as military drones—are widely used by not only Hollywood, but also by power companies to do power line/gas line inspections, and all sorts of public safety agencies. In fact DJI drones are 90 percent of the drones registered with the FAA (which you’re required to do if you’re a licensed drone pilot). There’s a reason for that: When it comes to drone makers, there’s DJI, and everyone else is a distant second.

But because DJI is a scarrry oogie-boogie Chinese company, the Trump administration has long been trying to drive it out of the U.S. market under a number of pretexts, including seizing shipments of drones that are legal to buy here. That in particular caused a fed up DJI to stop selling its latest models here, although they’re easily bought from gray market sellers overseas—don’t ask me how I know. (As an aside, DJI has also decided to stop selling the latest versions of their microphones, action cameras, camera stabilizing gimbals and vlogging cameras, widely used by numerous content creators and amateur to professional videographers. Trump take filmmaking.)

The most serious blow came last December, when the FCC banned foreign-made drones (and other wireless products) that hadn’t already been cleared for sale—and still could retroactively ban them if those drones are deemed a national security risk. This was especially scummy because the FCC was supposed to do a study about whether DJI drones posed a security risk—which of course never got done—and the lack of proof was the pretense for banning the sale of DJI’s latest drones. DJI has been fighting in court to be removed from the banned list, but last week the Defense of Defense officially filed a memo with the FCC, stating their national security decision wasn’t based just on supply concerns, but also classified and unclassified intelligence—which of course DJI isn’t allowed to see. How do you defend yourself when you can’t see the evidence?

The Trump administration claimed they’d help boost the domestic drone manufacturing industry—but of course offered no subsidiary to U.S. drone makers, although Trump’s large adult sons have a new side-gig as a drone supplier to the military. The FAA did just give conditional approval to four non-Chinese drone systems—but these are all “enterprise” (i.e. big, expensive) drones. Likewise, all  of the U.S. drone makers have pivoted to the enterprise category, and none now focus on the consumer market. Which means there’s absolutely no domestic replacements for the $300-$1,000 range drones, like the DJI Mini or DJI Air models. Needless to say, the civilian drone industry, as well as numerous local public safety and other government agencies, are completely freaking out.

On that cheery note, open thread!

Trump Take DronePost + Comments (29)

I’m a FAA-licensed drone pilot,* so I’ve had a front-row seat to the Trump administration’s domestic war on drones, seemingly intent on making it damn near impossible for civilians to fly them. They’ve been whipping up anti-drone hysteria, making it harder for legit pilots to fly for legit purposes—real estate photography, building and power line inspections, aerial surveys, search and rescue missions—without someone harassing them and/or calling the cops and/or even shooting at their drones. (Remember bubbas, don’t do that, it’s a federal offense.)

But far more seriously the administration has been taking repeated steps making harder and harder for civilians to own and operate drones. One of the most egregious was the “ICE NOTAM” regulation implemented in January, which made it an automatic federal criminal offense to fly your drone within 3,000 feet laterally and 1,000 vertically of any federal mobile asset. Setting aside the merits of the regulation itself, it was literally impossible to comply with because pilots aren’t being told where those federal mobile assets ICE/CBP goons were.

The FAA uses NOTAMs (Notice to Airmen, yes the term was re-gendered under Trump) to alert pilots to many things that could affect a flight, e.g. hazards like air shows or rocket launches, closed runways or airport systems, and most significantly, changes to restricted air spaces, especially temporary restrictions. E.g. major sports events typically have a TFR (temporary flight restriction) “no fly zone” around them. Pilots are expected to check NOTAMs, especially TFRs, before they fly, and if you’re caught violating a no fly zone, ignorance isn’t an excuse.

But the ICE/BCP raid-related “no fly zones” haven’t been publicly disclosed, meaning drone pilots—as well as all other types of pilots—didn’t even know they existed. But these pilots still faced Catch-22 automatic prosecution for federal criminal charges, their license revoked and their drone seized for accidentally violating one of these invisible boundaries. Fortunately, a just-updated version of the ICE NOTAM has softened things a bit, and while it still leaves much to be desired, it’s a change for the better. It removes the hard distance limits and no longer treats accidentally getting too close as a federal offense, although it still allows the feds to seize or destroy drones deemed a credible threat.

The latter is especially relevant because FAA also just gave the U.S. military the green light to use high-energy anti-drone lasers. If you recall, back in February the FAA twice shut down airspaces near the southern border—for only not commercial flights, but all flights—because first the CBP used a Pentagon-owned last to shoot down what turned out to be a metallic balloon near the El Paso airport, and then soldiers accidentally shot down a $30 million CBP drone in a friendly fire incident. In the aftermath the FAA and Pentagon ran a live test at the White Sands Missile Range—where this testing should have been done in the first place. During the test a commercial aircraft drifted into the laser’s sights, and the laser’s automatic safety shutoff immediately powered down the laser. Because of that safety feature, the FAA decided these lasers don’t pose a risk to the flying public so that there was no chance of it firing. Now, historically the FAA DOES. NOT. FUCK. AROUND. WITH. AIR. SAFETY. So I’m inclined to believe them, although I’m less confident about today because while the desire is still mostly there, the ability to do so has been chain-sawed. But we’ll undoubtedly see more deployments of these anti-drone lasers, and I’m more than a bit skeptical of ICE/CBP chucklefucks being competent enough to use them properly and safely.

I can only hope the FAA isn’t proven wrong.

Relatedly, the Trump administration is also trying to drive DJI—the Chinese maker of 90 percent of the drones used by FAA-licensed drone pilots—out of the U.S. market, but’s a whole other posts.

—

*Nerdy details: There’s two broad categories of drone pilots in the U.S. “Hobbyist” drone pilots only need to take an hour-long online safety course to be “legal”—although obviously lots of folks never do this—and hobbyists can only fly for “fun.” Which the FAA takes an extremely narrow view of. Essentially with a very few exceptions, you can’t use your drone for anything that benefits you financially. Even things like getting free tickets in return for filming an event, or posting a drone video to YouTube, even if you’re not actively trying to monetize it. So because I use my drone as a “camera that flies” for photography and videos, I got the FAA’s “professional” license—technically referred to as the “Part 107 certification” named after the relevant FAA rule—that both allows more latitude where I’m allowed to fly, and means I can legally use drone-shot photos and videos commercially. It’s a slimmed down version of a regular pilots license, covering most of the same fundamentals such as (the all important) air space regulations, principles of flight, safety, etc. but with some drone-specific topics. You have to renew it every two years, and also means all your drones have to be registered with the FAA. Being caught doing something with an unregistered is a penalty in itself.

Trump take (drone friendly) skyPost + Comments (51)