It was the existence of Section 336 which facilitated the successful legal challenge against the proposed 2015 Drone Safety Act so there can't be much doubt that 336 will be repealed or amended. All stakeholders - apart from the hobbyists - seem to want a blanket level of regulatory control hardwired into drones at the factory. And if hobbyists fully understood the alternatives, they too would be in favour, imho.
The talk about forcing hobbyists out of the sky is scaremongering as that surely isn't the intention. The regulators must get control of the low airspace in order to enforce safety restrictions and marshal traffic in a space which is likely to become increasingly populated by commercial, emergency, policing and inspection drones - as well as growing numbers of hobbyists. Surely, this is inevitable?
Hobbyists are big business - for the manufacturers and the government treasury. According to these estimates, there were 1.1m hobby drones in the USA back in 2016 and some 79,000 commercial UAS registered with the FAA. Even allowing for the greater cost of commercial drones, the hobby market is bigger and likely to remain so for some time. So nobody with any sense wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Instead, the revived Drone Safety Act will allow the regulators to impose tamper-proof, built-in safety controls on drone manufacturers - including a sophisticated/dynamic network of No-Fly Zones which will keep most hobbyists out of trouble without an unfeasible level of monitoring and intervention. No doubt there will also be protected lanes for commercial and government drone traffic which hobbyists won't be allowed to fly into.
As a way forward, that makes sense to me. The alternative would be for hobbyists to be grounded or forced to undergo expensive "overkill" training before they can fly in their own back yard (which would decimate the hobby market overnight - and still not guarantee safety and security).
And commercial/industrial/professional drone pilots will be able to bypass or unlock the built-in safety measures by applying for a permit. Given the much greater number of hobbyist pilots, that seems to be the sensible option in terms of allocating resources to the process.
In short, there can be no denying that the environment is changing rapidly and that all stakeholders need to find a safe and manageable way forward - which can't allow Section 336 to remain on the statute books. Times have changed.
The talk about forcing hobbyists out of the sky is scaremongering as that surely isn't the intention. The regulators must get control of the low airspace in order to enforce safety restrictions and marshal traffic in a space which is likely to become increasingly populated by commercial, emergency, policing and inspection drones - as well as growing numbers of hobbyists. Surely, this is inevitable?
Hobbyists are big business - for the manufacturers and the government treasury. According to these estimates, there were 1.1m hobby drones in the USA back in 2016 and some 79,000 commercial UAS registered with the FAA. Even allowing for the greater cost of commercial drones, the hobby market is bigger and likely to remain so for some time. So nobody with any sense wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Instead, the revived Drone Safety Act will allow the regulators to impose tamper-proof, built-in safety controls on drone manufacturers - including a sophisticated/dynamic network of No-Fly Zones which will keep most hobbyists out of trouble without an unfeasible level of monitoring and intervention. No doubt there will also be protected lanes for commercial and government drone traffic which hobbyists won't be allowed to fly into.
As a way forward, that makes sense to me. The alternative would be for hobbyists to be grounded or forced to undergo expensive "overkill" training before they can fly in their own back yard (which would decimate the hobby market overnight - and still not guarantee safety and security).
And commercial/industrial/professional drone pilots will be able to bypass or unlock the built-in safety measures by applying for a permit. Given the much greater number of hobbyist pilots, that seems to be the sensible option in terms of allocating resources to the process.
In short, there can be no denying that the environment is changing rapidly and that all stakeholders need to find a safe and manageable way forward - which can't allow Section 336 to remain on the statute books. Times have changed.
