Civilian UAV

     Civilian use of UAV's has always been a controversial topic. As it stands now, there are only a few hundred FAA approved operations going on and they belong to Universities, Government agencies and a few private companies. The airspace is not getting any larger and the ammount of aircrafts in that airspace, whether manned or not, is only going to increase. Currently, civilian UAV's are used in several different ways. One interesting way is hurricane hunting. This is a very effective use for UAV's for several reasons. No pilot will be killed if there is a crash and also aircrafts do not fly in hurricane weather so the potential for mid-air collisions is very low. The UAV's are able to get in and take accurate measurements of windspeed and direction while they are in the hurricane. Another use is for search and rescue. They can be very costly, time consuming and potentially dangerous if there are no air strips to land at so using UAV's would be a practical solution in this arena as well. UAV's are regulated by the FAA. You need to obtain a special airworthniness certificate in the experimental category for a particular UAV. There are a lot of hoops to jump through to get this permission and to be able to operate a UAV legally.

     I forsee UAV's becoming more popular and joining the NAS as time goes on. There will definitely be tight restrictions and regulations on their operation, but I believe the FAA will make it more accessible to those who wish to begin using UAV's. I see them having a certain ceiling that they cannot go above or only allowing them to fly at certain times. There will always be the problem of them interfering with scheduled air carrier operations as well as general aviation. By limiting the ceiling or only allowing them specific windows of time to operate, the risk can be mitigated. There is also the possibility of using them for the wrong purposes whether it be terrorist activity or any sort of mischieveous intention. This risk may be harder to reduce especially as more and more UAV's take to the skies.

     Military strategy has definitely been affected in a positive way by the application of UAV's. Not only for reconaissance, but also some UAV's are equipped with missles and can destroy enemies on the ground. Their use by the military has no doubt saved countless lives because when a UAV gets shot down, a life is not lost on our side. Now we can send in a machine to do a job that was formerly done by humans. From a financial standpoint, instead of an extremely expensive fighter jet going into combat or a high flying recon jet, now a UAV smaller than a car can be deployed. The economic impact has been very positive.

     As of today, there are very few civilian jobs pertaining to the use of the UAV. We will eventually see more openings as jobs are created in the future. It will be a long time before there are schools or programs specifically suited for training civilian UAV operators, but this is a definite posibility one day. There are some jobs that are being done by people now, but one day that may shift towards a UAV only operation. One example I can think of is aerial surveillance. Why would a company pay for both the plane, pilot, gas, and all the costs associated with maintaining an aircraft when they can simply fly a UAV over the area that needs to be surveyed. There are some jobs that may never be done completely automated such as the airline industry. One of the interesting things to me is going to see just how big these UAV's will get and if there will ever be a limit on the size they can be. Time will tell, but as the rules relax and more UAV operations spring up, it will be interesting to see just how large the UAV's become. Perhaps they will designate airports as only for UAV's. That would be a great way to seperate traffic from UAV's.



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130606-drone-uav-surveillance-unmanned-domicopter-flight-civilian-helicopter/

https://www.faa.gov/uas/