EASA study on UAV safety

tawnyowl

In a nutshell: don't let them operate without restrictions at the current levels of safety.
http://www.airtrafficmanagement.net/2014/10/existing-drone-technology-poses-lethal-risk-easa/

Stinicker

The recent Serbia V Albania match highlights their usefulness in the wrong hands. Some ISIS nutter could just as easily have attached something like a small bomb and flown it into a large crowd with deadly effect.

They are useful as we saw with videos of Cork City and the Kerry mountains recently on Youtube but they should be regulated and registered, although Toy Model Helicopters have been around for donkeys years and nothing ever seemed to happen although with modern technology and live video feeds the new drones are a totally different kettle of fish. Anybody could use them for spying on their neighbours or criminals use them to case a property before burglarizing it.

Irish Steve

The technology that's out there now is every bit as capable and accurate at the autopilots that are used on full size aircraft, and essentially, they are using the same (GPS) technology, and the hardware is as accurate, and the software is also very capable, and in some cases, freeware.

The real problem and issue is that they are now also becoming ridiculously cheap and easily available, and the automation also means that they are a lot harder to crash than older models were, so they are increasingly attractive to a wider audience.

That wider audience doesn't have a clue about airspace legislation, or even just how much potential fatal damage a UAV or drone, or quadcopter could do to an aircraft engine, or other parts of the aircraft.

There are many potentially useful uses of the technology, but for it to safely exist alongside full size aviation, the users of the models need to be made fully aware of just how dangerous the technology is, and also (for similar reasons) just how dangerous it can be if control is lost over a populated area. A large UAV or quadcopter has the potential to kill someone, and if control is lost, there's no way to predict, or manage, where it is going to come down.

Another issue that's been seen also on full size aircraft is that these newer models use LiPo, (Lithium Polymer) batteries, which have the advantage of being much lighter and able to hold much larger charges than the older Nickel Cadmium or NiMh batteries, but the downside is that if the model crashes, a severe fire can follow, depending on how badly the battery is damaged.

I can see a time coming when models above a certain size or weight are going to have to carry a similar device to the transponder that full size aircraft carry, operating on that frequency, so that a model can be detected by TCAS, and a suitable avoidance issued. The models will have to be allocated a special transponder code that will indicate to all concerned that it cannot issue a resolution to a conflict to the operator in the same way, although (in theory) it will become possible in time to have the ability to prevent the model from going into airspace that it should not be in to start with.

There are much wider issues than just the few I've outlined above, there are models out there now that are seriously large and heavy, and they are already subject to very stringent control, the real issue of UAV's and Drones is the lack of awareness by many users of the risks they present to other aircraft if flown in the wrong places, and with FPV ( camera on the model relaying HD video back to ground in real time) there are many potential misuses, as well as many potential advantages.

EASA are right to be looking into the issue, but regulating it will be a lot harder, and even if they do come up with stronger regulations than those that already exist, ensuring compliance is going to be significant challenge.