Finding Drones in Peace and War

 

DJI, the world's largest drone maker, has announced that it is stopping all shipments of new products to both Ukraine and Russia.  The Verge reported this on Apr. 27 following earlier stories that Russian troops were using a drone-tracking technology called AeroScope to locate Ukrainian drone pilots flying commercial drones that had been converted to combat use.  And last week, the White House announced that it was asking Congress to pass laws making it easier for government agencies to detect and track drones.

 

Drones, more formally known as unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), have changed from super-expensive military-only devices a couple of decades ago into popular consumer and professional products today.  Advances in software and hardware have led to over two million drone users in the U. S. alone, and the repurposing of consumer drones for military uses both by guerilla groups and defenders of the Ukraine. 

 

Most drones are not autonomous, but controlled from the ground by means of a radio link.  The radio link is the means by which both the controller and other parties can locate and track the drone.  In anticipation of the time when radio identification of drones would become a government requirement, in 2017 DJI began to include a signal broadcast from every drone they made which provides the drone's "position, altitude, speed, direction, serial number, and the location of the pilot."  This data is unencrypted, meaning that anyone with the proper receiver can pick it up. 

 

DJI also conveniently made available a system called AeroScope, which can receive this data and provide a readout of all drone locations within distances of a few kilometers, depending on the type of system.  Up to now, DJI has sold AeroScope only to law-enforcement agencies and other entities that it deems appropriate for the technology. 

 

Confirming DJI's intuition, in 2020 the U. S. FAA issued regulations that make it mandatory for any drone weighing more than 0.25 kilograms (about half a pound) to broadcast its location, the operator's location, and an identifying number by 2023.  So by next year, all drones big enough to do anything other than entertain the owner will have to have such radio identification means, whether they are new or old.

 

As an ethics issue, the question of drone identification and location technology has a number of ramifications.  From the Wild-West days when consumer drones were too rare for the FAA to have made detailed regulations, we have now reached the point that drones of any size must be trackable by authorities. 

 

If drone users aren't doing anything nefarious, it's hard to imagine why they would object to the requirement that drones must broadcast their identity and location.  A useful comparison might be made to automobile license plates.  The first state to issue state-made automotive license plates was Massachusetts, back in 1910.  Most automobile owners back then were glad that the states began to register and license their vehicles, because it freed them from having to follow a hodge-podge of local regulations that often put them at a disadvantage with respect to horse-drawn vehicles legally.  Massachusetts started their early license-plate numbers with 1 and went up from there.  I don't know if this is still the case today, but up to 1999 (the last year I lived in the state), it was possible to will one's legacy two-to-four-digit license plate to one's heirs, so that your low license-plate number let everybody know that your ancestors were among the first thousand or so people to own a car in Massachusetts. 

 

I doubt that any drone owners are going to get so attached to their drone ID numbers.  But there are real privacy and security issues in the question of who can access the drone ID signals.  Because DJI has not encrypted the data up to now, the company's AeroScope is simply a convenient way for a law-enforcement agency to get into the business.  I suspect that any well-informed engineer could come up with a similar system by combining the suitable microwave receivers with decoding equipment that would not have to be fancy at all. 

 

The White House's initiative seems aimed at giving more government entities permission to do this kind of snooping, and providing them with a list of approved equipment that does so.  There is an opportunity here for entrepreneurs to get in on the ground floor of drone-detection equipment, assuming that Congress responds, but that is an open question.

 

What is not in question anymore is whether a drone operator can fly with the assurance that nobody can find out whose drone it is or where he is.  That assurance, if it was ever present, is now gone.  And in the vast majority of legitimate-use cases, this can only be an asset to the situation.

 

As for Ukrainian drones, one must applaud the ingenuity of those who repurposed commercial and amateur drones for military purposes, either for surveillance or actual delivery of weapons.  At the same time, it's not at all surprising that the Russians would use AeroScope or something similar to track down the drone operators and attack them, although at this writing it is not clear whether this has actually happened.  One does not see license plates on tanks, and so the requirements of wartime use for drones are very different. 

 

Drones originated to meet wartime needs, and it's likely that the U. S. or other allied countries can supply Ukraine with military-type drones that will be far more effective than repurposed hobby-type units. 

 

Whenever I bring up the subject of engineering ethics in a discussion, if it goes on long enough sooner or later someone will come up with the bromide, "Technology is neutral—it's only how it's used that's good or bad." 

 

Like many sayings, this one has an element of truth in it.  But anonymized drones are obviously more suited to warlike uses than ones that constantly announce both their position and the position of the operator.  So the cases of drone identification in peace and war shows that this saying is limited in its applicability, to say the least. 

 

Sources:  The Verge carried articles I referred to on various aspects of drones and AeroScope at https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/25/23041869/white-house-biden-admin-counter-drone-legislation-plan-tracking and https://www.theverge.com/22985101/dji-aeroscope-ukraine-russia-drone-tracking.   A summary of the White House initiative is at https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/04/25/fact-sheet-the-domestic-counter-unmanned-aircraft-systems-national-action-plan/.  The FAA's new drone ID requirements are found at https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/28/22203398/faa-remote-id-rules-location-night-over-people.  And the story about the first automotive license plates in the U. S. is from https://time.com/4301055/license-plate-history/.

Will 2015 Be The Year Commercial Drones Take Off?

If you had been in Boulder City, Nevada last December 19, you would have found Governor Brian Sandoval, a U. S. senator, U. S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials, and representatives of a company that manufactures the Magpie, an unmanned aircraft, all gathered to watch the first official test flight at one of six new test facilities the FAA has established to explore how "unmanned aircraft systems" (UASs for short) can safely use the same airspace that is now occupied by manned aircraft.  A video of the test flight shows a man holding what looks like a large model plane.  At a signal, he heaves it into the air.  It flies about twenty feet and nose-dives into the gravel, bending its nose propeller and eliciting a groan from the crowd.

It wasn't exactly an auspicious start to a program that the FAA has undertaken to fast-track new regulations that will accommodate the increasing pressure on the agency to allow legal commercial use of UASs, commonly called drones, far beyond what present regulations permit.  But at least nobody was hurt, except maybe in the pride department.  As I noted in this space over a year ago, experimental drones can be deadly—a large one went amok in South Korea in 2013 and killed an engineer. 

What we are seeing in commercial drone development is a pattern that has played out repeatedly in one form or another whenever a potentially profitable technology outpaces the ability of a regulatory agency to adapt to it.  True to its generally good reputation among government agencies, the FAA is trying to catch up to the rapid advances in commercial drone technology.  But if history is any guide, we are in for some stirring times first.

Something similar happened when advances in radio technology during World War I led to the explosion of radio broadcasting stations in the early 1920s.  The creaky regulatory mechanism of the time stated that the Department of Commerce, which was charged with the task of regulating the new medium, could not deny licenses to any qualified applicant.  As a result, the airwaves got so crowded that in some locations radios were practically unusable.  Congress eventually acted, first by establishing the Federal Radio Commission in 1927, and then following it with the Federal Communications Commission in 1934, under whose ministrations we still operate today. 

Fortunately, the FAA is already up and running, so the situation is not as wild-westish as it could be.  The main issue facing the agency is not lack of regulatory authority—it has plenty of that—but the question of how to allow drones into the air in a way that both allows innovative commercial uses and preserves the exemplary safety record of U. S. air flights that has been achieved in recent years.  The experimental test sites the FAA has set up (besides Nevada, there are locations in Alaska, New York, North Dakota, Texas, and Virginia) can play a critical role in both uncovering unknown potential problems and in finding practical solutions to them.

Just as radio benefited from wartime technology advances, commercial drones benefit from the longer history and huge development effort that has gone into military drones.  In addition, advances in high-density batteries, software, and navigational aids such as GPS systems make it technically possible for drones to travel long distances autonomously.  However, the FAA is still uncomfortable with that.

The way things stand now, there are three classifications of drone regulations.  The only one that doesn't require the operator to obtain special permission is the hobby and recreational class, which has applied to operators of model aircraft for decades.  If you are a researcher, drone developer, or someone who has other good reasons to do not-for-pay work with drones, you can apply for a "civil UAS" permit.  Law enforcement agencies and other public organizations can obtain Certificates of Waiver or Authorization to conduct operations relating to their work.  But before the likes of Jeff Bezos can start delivering Amazon orders via drone, the rules—and maybe the technology too—will have to change. 

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but the start of a new year is a good time for making predictions, and if the following pans out, you heard it here first.  Let it be understood at the outset that I think the following would be a bad idea.  But that doesn't mean that somebody won't try it.  In 1982, a guy with more bravado than sense named Larry Walters tied a few dozen helium balloons to a lawn chair and floated over Long Beach until his balloons got tangled in a power line and he made it safely back to the ground.  I don't know what the payload capability of current small quadcopter-like drones is, but at some point, somebody will have the idea of ganging a bunch of them together to lift the weight of a small person.  This would be more of a stunt than a practical way of transporting people, but if the machines get cheap and powerful enough, it will happen. 

Of course, the FAA would disapprove of such a thing, and rightly so.  But if we do start seeing small packages being delivered by drones, it will happen only if the FAA and industrial interests figure out how to have all that air traffic moving safely and keeping out of the way of buildings, power lines, and giraffes, for that matter.  And if that infrastructure problem is solved, and battery technology advances to the point that you could safely build a helicopter-like backpack that was totally under software control, maybe we could see the day when people could literally fly to work.  Unless it rains, of course.

Sources:  The FAA's overall UAS website is https://www.faa.gov/uas/, and their site stating the rules for hobby and recreational model-airplane flying is http://www.faa.gov/uas/publications/model_aircraft_operators/.  I referred to a report on the Nevada test flight of Magpie carried by Gizmodo at http://gizmodo.com/first-drone-launches-at-faa-test-site-in-nevada-crashe-1673586255.  The six FAA UAS test locations are given at http://gizmodo.com/federal-drone-testing-is-coming-to-these-6-scenic-locat-1491708151.  Business Insider was the source of the commercial drone market estimate at http://www.businessinsider.com/the-market-for-commercial-drones-2014-2.  My blog "Drones, Air Safety, and the FAA" appeared on Nov. 4, 2013.