This also becomes an issue for new entrants into an established industry. My own experience with the commercial drone industry is a fantastic illustration playing out in real time. Drones have been sharing the airspace with crewed (don't call it "maned") aviation since the dawn of powered controlled flight. In fact, the Wright Brothers were interlopers into the space taken up by kites, balloons and toys, not the other way around. The military has been using uncrewed remotely operated drones for decades (in fact the term "drone" comes from the remote controlled targets used for training anti-aircraft gunners).
The FAA wasn't ready for commercial drones. Even though the RC model community had been mounting cameras to their aircraft since the 1960s, and photographers have been using balloons, kites and even long poles to capture aerial photographs, the rise of the quadcopter caught them completely off guard. To them, the invention of the small quadcopter was a black swan event.
So what's a regulator to do? Shut it down, that's what. Basically killed the small but growing industry including the leader at the time, 3D Robotics. That opened the door to a small Chinese company called DJI, but that's another tale. Sometime around 2010, the FAA banned quadcopters from the US airspace while they developed regulations. For the next 5 years anyone flying a drone for money or as part of their job was committing a crime (with certain exceptions and exemptions that required a lawyer to walk up through the channels). Then in 2016 the administration rolled out 14 CFR part 107, the framework for commercial UAV (unmanned, later unCREWed aerial vehicles). Generally a fairly soft set of requirements and testing that didn't actually require a pilot know how to fly a quadcopter. It did set some hard rules around weight restrictions, registration requirements and defined what a small UAV is, exactly. Five years of work, good job fellas. But then they started micromanaging pilot activity, reacting to events, locking down airspace and rolling out new regulations like the poorly thought out Remote ID system.
Anyway, without getting too long, the industry is not healthy in the US. Between the FAA and now the rest of the DC regime calling for banning of DJI drones because of their "ties" to the CCP, money is drying up, companies are giving up and lobbyists are in charge. If you're building UAVs for military or surveillance use, you're golden. But if you have a product that isn't of interest to government users, forget it. There's far too much risk of arbitrary decisions by the regulators.
This also becomes an issue for new entrants into an established industry. My own experience with the commercial drone industry is a fantastic illustration playing out in real time. Drones have been sharing the airspace with crewed (don't call it "maned") aviation since the dawn of powered controlled flight. In fact, the Wright Brothers were interlopers into the space taken up by kites, balloons and toys, not the other way around. The military has been using uncrewed remotely operated drones for decades (in fact the term "drone" comes from the remote controlled targets used for training anti-aircraft gunners).
The FAA wasn't ready for commercial drones. Even though the RC model community had been mounting cameras to their aircraft since the 1960s, and photographers have been using balloons, kites and even long poles to capture aerial photographs, the rise of the quadcopter caught them completely off guard. To them, the invention of the small quadcopter was a black swan event.
So what's a regulator to do? Shut it down, that's what. Basically killed the small but growing industry including the leader at the time, 3D Robotics. That opened the door to a small Chinese company called DJI, but that's another tale. Sometime around 2010, the FAA banned quadcopters from the US airspace while they developed regulations. For the next 5 years anyone flying a drone for money or as part of their job was committing a crime (with certain exceptions and exemptions that required a lawyer to walk up through the channels). Then in 2016 the administration rolled out 14 CFR part 107, the framework for commercial UAV (unmanned, later unCREWed aerial vehicles). Generally a fairly soft set of requirements and testing that didn't actually require a pilot know how to fly a quadcopter. It did set some hard rules around weight restrictions, registration requirements and defined what a small UAV is, exactly. Five years of work, good job fellas. But then they started micromanaging pilot activity, reacting to events, locking down airspace and rolling out new regulations like the poorly thought out Remote ID system.
Anyway, without getting too long, the industry is not healthy in the US. Between the FAA and now the rest of the DC regime calling for banning of DJI drones because of their "ties" to the CCP, money is drying up, companies are giving up and lobbyists are in charge. If you're building UAVs for military or surveillance use, you're golden. But if you have a product that isn't of interest to government users, forget it. There's far too much risk of arbitrary decisions by the regulators.
I totally agree, and it ties in nicely with today's post.
Coercion and cronyism, as far as the eye can see.