UAVs over America?

"Unmanned Aerial Vehicles". Colin Powell talked about them during his declaration to the UN and more recently a few were shot down by the IDF during the Hizballah war. We've also heard of the Border Patrol using them to track illegal crossers, and they are extensively (and effectively) in Iraq and Afghanistan to save lives and kill the enemy.

But are they coming to the friendly skies of your neighborhood?

In a recent conference regarding these glorified remote control airplanes, the head of the Army's UAV program office suggested there might be civilian uses for UAVs in American commercial airspace. The Colonel went on the describe the challenges of getting such approval from FAA, that according to the online aviation webzine Avweb:

By the end of 2006 “50% of our units are deployed and 50% are in the States. So what is going to happen? Probably it will be just like manned aviation. 20-25% of unmanned systems will be deployed and then we will have 75-80% back here in the United States doing what? Counting the 26 cows that reside at Fort Campbell, Kentucky? I don’t think so. I think there are other missions we need to look at.

Technological toys can be used for good and bad, and I'm not saying UAVs are bad. But we dang sure don't need to be rushing a civilian deployment simply because Army UAV units have nothing to do.

Other than privacy and Posse Commatatus issues there is also the glaring issue of safety. UAV pilots are chair-bound on the ground and their butts are only on the line if they screw up and have to explain it to the general. Pilots are carrying their butts with them on the aircraft.

It would be wrong to call for a banishment of these things as only the Islamofascists can stop the march of technology. The challenge will be to find ways of effectively controlling and utilizing these scary new technologies within the framework of democratic principles. If we don't, we're heading straight for a T3 kind of future.