Unmanned Aircraft Pose US Airspace Problems

coondoggie writes to tell us that congressional watchdogs have called on Congress to create a body within the FAA to oversee unmanned aircraft development and integration. The group cited the rapidly growing unmanned aircraft community and is worried about the possible repercussions. "The GAO also called on the FAA to work with the Department of Defense, which has extensive unmanned aircraft experience, to issue its program plan. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assesses the security implications of routine unmanned aircraft access to commercial airspace, the GAO said. Even if all issues are addressed, and there are a number of critical problems, unmanned aircraft may not receive routine access to the national airspace system until 2020, the GAO concluded."

Comments

Re:Security Implications? What Security Implicatio

[zappepcs]

Yeah... what he said.
For fuck's sake. We are so worried that some radical muslim will take over a plane and fly it into the whitehouse that we are destroying the constitution. Now we want to put remote control airplanes in the sky ... just daring them to use one? What could possibly go wrong?

Oh wait, that's right, government pilots were flying the plane that hit the pentagon the first time. So, sure, nothing will go wrong.

Or perhaps we can just get insurance companies to cough up the dosh to pay for all the accidents? How much is the lives of 30 people worth? 50? 300?

On the other hand, there is no terrorist threat anymore, so this shouldn't work out so bad. Planning the date when it will be ok doesn't seem right... just work on it till you have the safety figured out. I'm certain that war games in the middle east have helped grow the knowledge for this.