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California Legislation May Allow First Responders To Take Out Drones
Required Snark writes: During the recent North Fire that burned vehicles on I-15 in California, firefighters had to suspend aerial operations because of the presence of drone aircraft, according to CNN. Quoting: "Five such 'unmanned aircraft systems' prevented California firefighters from dispatching helicopters with water buckets for up to 20 minutes over a wildfire that roared Friday onto a Los Angeles area freeway that leads to Las Vegas. Helicopters couldn't drop water because five drones hovered over the blaze, creating hazards in smoky winds for a deadly midair disaster, officials said."
In response, state officials have introduced legislation that would allow first responders to disable drones in emergency situations. A second bill would allow jail time and fines for drone users that interfere with firefighting efforts. "Senate Bill 168, introduced by Gatto and Sen. Ted Gaines, R-El Dorado, would grant 'immunity to any emergency responder who damages an unmanned aircraft in the course of firefighting, air ambulance, or search-and-rescue operations.' Los Angeles County fire Inspector David Dantic declined to comment on the specific legislation, but said his agency's aircraft cannot operate safely if a drone is in the same airspace."
In response, state officials have introduced legislation that would allow first responders to disable drones in emergency situations. A second bill would allow jail time and fines for drone users that interfere with firefighting efforts. "Senate Bill 168, introduced by Gatto and Sen. Ted Gaines, R-El Dorado, would grant 'immunity to any emergency responder who damages an unmanned aircraft in the course of firefighting, air ambulance, or search-and-rescue operations.' Los Angeles County fire Inspector David Dantic declined to comment on the specific legislation, but said his agency's aircraft cannot operate safely if a drone is in the same airspace."
More legislation by people who don't know how laws actually get applied, or probably rather just don't care.
If these people are flying their drones unlawfully then reasonable measures should certainly be allowed to stop them. But, if they are being flown unlawfully, the question of whether emergency workers had immunity should not even enter the discussion. If a drone is damaged it is the owner's negligence and conduct to blame. If emergency workers get immunity that means they could step on your 20,000 dollar drone while fighting a fire in your neighbor's backyard and do nothing but laugh in your face.
>> Allow First Responders To Take Out Drones
Er...how would they do that? Fire a weapon into a smokey background? Jam the radio...in a way that couldn't possibly interfere with other emergency communications? Or what?
Nuke it from space. It's the only way to be sure.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Depends on the kind of jam they use.
I hear raspberry works great, but only the Lone Star state would dare use raspberry jam, so it's pretty much out for California.
Firefighters already have the ability to damage private property when it is necessary to contain an emergency situation. I can't imagine this law adds additional powers, but perhaps clarifies that existing standards still apply to a new technology that didn't exist at the time. Perhaps also a reasonable public awareness / scare campaign to remind people to keep their drones away from disaster areas where they are interfering with life safety.
In Soviet Russia, drones take out you!
[Uhh ... maybe not just in Soviet Russia.]
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Just exactly how do they propose 'taking out' a drone? I can only hope that they're not thinking about shooting out of the sky. Remember, any bullets that go up must come down
Bird shot doesn't come down with enough velocity to be a hazard. But of course, it has extremely limited range for the same reason.
FTA: "Five such 'unmanned aircraft systems' prevented California firefighters from dispatching helicopters with water buckets for up to 20 minutes over a wildfire that roared Friday onto a Los Angeles area freeway that leads to Las Vegas."
Yeah, I wouldn't have asked permission before shooting those drones from the sky.
You assume they are being actively piloted. The could be following a waypoint program in which case the only way to "jam" these would be to jam their GPS signal.
High powered water gun.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
High pressure water gun.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Raspberry jam is known to the state of California to cause birth defects in drones.
For firefighters, a high pressure water blast should do the trick. EMT's might have to fashion some sort of rudimentary surgical-tubing slingshot, though.
Anonymous coward responding to anonymous coward claiming that anonymous coward looks dumb for responding to anonymous coward.
-AC
A goodly number of the 'drones' these days have 'return to launch point' modes that activate when 2 way communication with the controller is lost, so jamming those would actually serve to clear the flight space, and locate the pilot/owner. Probably will see that mode become mandatory in any models above the indoor flight only size if this behavior persists.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Do YOU want to be in a helicopter when a drone gets sucked into its intake. What happens then? The helicopter's engine likely stalls, the helicopter then goes into autorotation if you are lucky...landing in the fire you are trying to put out.
What if the drone smashes into your windshield in limited visibility, knocking the pilot out cold or worse.
You are very wrong here. Look at the airplane that landed in the Hudson River that was taken out by a goose. Seriously, a goose, a lot of drones are of similar weight or larger, also a lot softer.
If bird strikes are a hazard, how would a drone NOT be a hazard?
How about making it like ham radio: you get a license, mark your drone with your number. You get in the way, get government knows who to bring the remains back to.
Aircraft have been taken out by geese. Drones are a lot harder than goose.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
There are little drones and there are big drones. The big ones can weigh 5 pounds or more. Also all drones have steel parts like electric motors.
Maybe Mythbusters or somebody can do a test, shouldn't be that hard or expensive. Get a helicopter tail rotor and mount it on a platform and spin it to normal operating RPM. Fly a popular drone such as a DJI Phantom with a GoPro mounted on it into the tail rotor. See what kind of damage occurs.
My guess is that the damage to the tail rotor will be major and the helicopter will experience yaw stability issues, but a decent pilot should be able to make an emergency landing.
They weren't afraid of damaging the drones, they were afraid of the drones crashing the planes dropping the water. The air dropping planes end up flying rather low to avoid dispersing the water too far since the heat in the fire is enough to otherwise boil it off before it hits the ground, making it roughly useless in that case. Since the drones are flying high enough that they could hit the planes or end up in the jets there's a real risk of a crash which isn't going to help anybody at all.
It was an undocumented drone flying over a sanctuary city.
It's not the hazard, it's the potential hazard.
Let me set up the firefighting environment.
You're in an aircraft. Could be a helicopter. Could be an airplane (single engine agplanes are commonly used). You're flying low to the ground, because if you go too high, the effectiveness of your water/retardant/foam drop diminishes significantly. So you're having to fly in a narrow band of altitude above ground. You can't go up - lowers the effectiveness, you can't go down - reduces your spread, and again, lowers the effectiveness because you're not covering as wide an area.
OK, now we're near the fire. As everyone knows, heat rises, and fires generate a lot of it. This makes for wicked turbulence as you fly - it's extremely difficult maintaining attitude ("blue side up"). You've got to fly this path to lay your water/retardant/foam in the planned area, with air upsetting your aircraft and making it hard to keep a straight line (i.e., straight and level flight).
You're concentrating making your location, dropping your load (which alters the CG of your aircraft - in some, they will pitch up as they get lighter, in others, pitch down, and you must correct for this as you're dropping. If you don't, your chances of crashing are basically certain).
In other words, it's already a hard job, and now you want to add avoidance to the mix? I mean, if you're dropping, and a drone comes up, that could distract the pilot long enough to do the wrong thing. Or it could hit the aircraft and damage a prop, at a time when the workload is high.
I did mention you were already low to the ground, right? So if you have a problem, you can't fix it - and if you can't fix it, you're going down. If you're lucky, there's a crew nearby who will come to your aid in your crashed aircraft. If not, and you land in flames, well, hero down.
But I'm sure it was all worth it to be on YouTube, right?
And that's the real danger - it's really turbulent, so drones are no match for the wicked air currents. There's a chance that "harmless drone" far away could be gusted right into you, perhaps damaging a control surface (and it doesn't take much - the aluminum bends really easily).
Plus, it's high workload - you're already busy enough flying, you really shouldn't have to worry about other aircraft in the area. (And you don't - there's an aircraft flying overhead that manages the airspace so you will not encounter another firefighter accidentally. That control aircraft schedules every helicopter, agplane, waterbomber, etc., in sequence so as to allow the pilot to just concentrate on their job - dropping their load at the right place and right time).
Since this is /., how about a work analogy - say you have a deadline coming up and you need to finish your module by that time. In a normal environment, you're given the alone time you need to concentrate because it's tricky, and it's due end of the day. Drones are more like those coworkers and your boss asking you to come into a meeting, or bugging you every 10 minutes with a question. That's why drones are so dangerous - they're distracting and their potential for harm is heightened because of the urgency of the task at hand.
And in the end, really - it's all just so some idiot can have something cool to post on your YouTube channel.
And FYI - the airspace around a wildfire is restricted airspace - no aircraft
Mandatory mode? Mine runs a modular radio system which I can operate on any band I choose, including digital over cellular if I so desire. It also runs open source software on open source hardware, so it's pretty easy to control what "modes" it can operate on. This isn't something that can be controlled by a dictating rules to a few commercial manufacturers, though I don't know if statistically that may solve the majority of the problem. They're not hard or expensive to build. The flight controller is nothing more than an arduino with an accelerometer and (optional) GPS.
The short answer yes. If a drone was flying over the road at your windshield, as you are doing 65mph, you'll probably have problems driving, and even lower it could still do damage to your car if was at the grill level. Now double or even triple that speed, and your probably going to have even more serious damage. Remember double the speed, quadruple the force. As for around airports, they actually hire people to scare off and keep the birds away from the airport to protect the air space from bird strikes, and often civil airplanes are used at a high altitude limiting the time of risk to take offs and landings.
As for forest fire fighting, they are incredibly difficult for a pilot to work, with limited visibility, thermal up drafts and down drafts, high speeds, and drastic in-flight weight changes. These all create a massively complex flying environment, and in many cases considered as dangerous as flying a military fighter in combat. Now this is where drones become the problem unlike birds they might stay in an area where the birds would normally leave, secondly for water bombers they fly relatively low, often well within the limits of legal and physical capabilities of the drones.
Were you? Were you really wondering?
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyli...
After the fire-fighting aircraft were grounded because of drone activity, the wildfire went from 750 acres to 3500 acres.
Do you really think - are you such a goofball - that you think the people in charge of fighting a wildfire in California are going to call a halt to firefighting activities because they simply had an opposition to private drones?
I hope you never have need of any first responders.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Birds are also usually smart enough to get out of the way when a helicopter is approaching, or a fire is raging for that matter.
"Even at 500' he'll still have time..." to auto-rotate into a fire.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain