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U.S. Forest Service buys pilotless drones
The Forest Service bought two SkySeer drones for $100,000 to search for marijuana growers in California's national forests. Both of the drones are equipped with remote-control pan/tilt cameras and one is equipped with an optional thermal camera for nighttime operation. The Forest Service purchased the drones from Octatron of La Verne, Cal if.
The SkySeer is a small battery powered remote control airplane with a 6½ foot wingspan and weighs 3.1 pounds. It cruises for 45-60 minutes at 23 miles per hour within a two mile radius of the ground station. The device is collapsible like a kite and can be stored in a shoulder pack, smaller than a golf bag. Once unfolded from its storage tube and its electronics initialized, the SkySeer is then hand-launched by its operator. All of the drone's basic flight functions are handled by GPS including landings on a laptop computer at the base station.
Flying at 250 feet, people on the ground cannot hear the SkySeer and it can barely be seen with the naked eye.
Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey says the pilotless aircraft will allow Forest Service law enforcement officers to pinpoint marijuana fields and size up potential danger before the agents make arrests. He pointed out there is an increasing number of marijuana growers financed by Mexican drug cartels using California's national forests for their operations.
They were delivered to the Forest Service’s aviation branch in Montana and are being kept there until they are put into use. Rey said the agency wants to have the machines flying over California by late summer or early fall. The Forest Service is training two employees to operate the SkySeer. Rey expects FAA flying approval to come with completion of the training.
Octatron spokesman Randy Earp acknowledged some drone sales have stalled while the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) adopts long-term regulations for their use. FAA spokeswoman Alison Duquette said agencies wanting to use drones more quickly can apply for interim authorization while the rules are being crafted. Approval can take months, she said.
The purchase was disclosed in documents obtained through a freedom of information request filed by the group Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility. The group's executive director, Jeff Ruch, questioned whether the Forest Service needed the machines. He said the purchase reflected a "boys with toys" mentality within the agency. "I'm not sure what a drone gets you that a (manned aircraft) flyover doesn't," Ruch said.
After distinguished service in war zones in recent years, unmanned planes are hitting turbulence as they battle to join airliners and general aviation pilots in America's civilian skies. Drones face regulatory, safety and technological hurdles -- even though demand for them is burgeoning. Government agencies want them for disaster relief, border surveillance and wildfire fighting, while private companies hope to one day use drones for a wide variety of tasks, such as inspecting pipelines and spraying pesticides on farms.
But some experts are concerned that drones pose safety hazards to manned flights, and want rules in place to govern their use. "Technology in this area is moving way ahead of regulations," says Richard Healing, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board.
Unmanned aerial vehicles, popularly known as UAVs, come in many varieties, from micro-drones that fit in a person's hand to models as large as a small airliner. Some can fly as fast as a fighter jet. Their cost ranges from a few thousand dollars to tens of millions. Some are flown remotely by ground-based pilots who steer with joysticks, using live camera views from the plane and flight data from an onboard computer. Others fly autonomously, following programmed flight paths, although humans are able to intervene.
Currently, the FAA keeps drones confined to relatively small corridors of domestic airspace, segregated from other aircraft, whose pilots have advance warning of their presence. The FAA recently blocked police departments in North Carolina and California from deploying small drones. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department had hoped to test them in tracking suspects and providing real-time video of sensitive situations, such as hostage incidents, without the noise and intrusion of helicopters. Such police programs have been stymied because there weren't FAA guidelines for the rapid deployment of drones in domestic airspace, or the means to get quick approval for flights.
Critics fear that the proliferation of drones will endanger private and commercial planes, and they want the FAA to keep taking a cautious, go-slow approach. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, which represents recreational fliers of manned aircraft, frets that the FAA already is setting aside too much airspace for drones flown by government agencies, and is concerned about its members' safety should these pilots stray into the growing patches of airspace where drones are allowed.
Before UAVs can freely share the skies with manned planes, the FAA aims to resolve two basic safety issues: drones must be able to see and avoid nearby aircraft, and there must be back-up communications and control systems to cope with emergencies. Drone champions and skeptics agree that these safeguards are necessary before unmanned-plane operators will be able to file a flight plan and take off, just like pilots of conventional planes do today. "We are a long way from there," says Nick Sabatini, the FAA's top safety official. "We recognize the avalanche of demand that is upon us, but we will not compromise safety."
Unmanned planes have proved invaluable in military operations, but their accident rate has added to domestic air-safety concerns. Predators, 27-foot-long propeller-driven planes which are among the biggest and best known drones in the Air Force, are used daily in Iraq and Afghanistan to track enemy targets with high-powered cameras and infrared sensors. A recent report by the Congressional Research Service said their accident rate is 100 times that of manned aircraft, and noted that of 135 Predator unmanned surveillance-and-attack planes delivered and used in military operations, 50 have been lost and 34 more have had serious accidents.
To be sure, combat is different from commercial flight, but Air Force officials say that all the crashes so far were the result of malfunctions or errors by pilots who are often as far away as Nevada and lack the sensation of being in the cockpit.
In April 2006, the Department of Homeland Security's first Predator crashed in the Arizona desert during a border-patrol flight. Critics, led by the private-pilots lobby, seized on the accident to argue that unmanned planes must meet the same safety standards as manned aircraft. A preliminary accident report by the National Transportation Safety Board cited pilot error as the probable cause of the crash of the Predator, which was a newer and more expensive model than those in the Air Force's fleet. Investigators also found that the flight-control system unique to remotely piloted planes was a contributing factor: The pilot cut off the fuel supply by mistake while transferring control of the plane from one console to another.
For now, the FAA is sticking to a cautious approach in approving drone flights. Agreeing on rules to open the skies is expected to take the FAA, Pentagon and industry groups at least three years. Even then, industry officials say, only unmanned planes with advanced autopilots and fail-safe systems will likely be allowed near populated areas. |
Los Angeles Sheriff's deputy hand launching
a SkySeer drone |
SkySeer wrapped up, stored,
with supplemental gear in a
briefcase. |
SkySeer, about 250 feet above ground. |
Close up detail showing the round camera in
front of the hand and the rectangular box with
dorsal fins in front of the camera is lithium battery |
SkySeer's flight path is monitored on a notebook.
Click and drag an icon on the topo map, and the
drone follows. You steer with your mouse. |
The flat thing on a tripod is an antenna. On
the bed, laptops and other monitoring equipment.
Victor Torres, Octatron is holding the control unit. |
SkySeer's lithium battery, removed. |
SkySeer has two little digital video cameras
on board. Both shoot relatively hi-res footage,
and beam it back to the ground. It was raining
on the day this flight was made so the landing
resulted in some mud on the drone. |
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