Remote ID failed. Detection numbers are a joke. Cartels and prison pipelines used the gap. The Band-Aid box is multi-billion-dollar fix.
Dispatch 3 of 4
On counter-UAS: the snake-oilers went unchecked. The erosion of American airspace sovereignty is mind-blowing. Cartels used the systems. Prison delivery pipelines used them. Authorities put their heads in the sand. “Call the sheriff” is a piss-poor plan by any stretch of the imagination. If you have a multi-million-dollar box of Band-Aids, you might as well use them.
The government is now trying to get its arms around a problem the FAA let consumer retail help create. Remote ID is a failure. Detection and confiscation numbers are a joke. A reasonable guess is that the overwhelming majority of those airframes are one brand, and none of the “expert” produced a viable alternative. One fact is proven beyond a reasonable doubt: a great many consumer-electronics users are not plugged into the aviation community, on LinkedIn or ever related to Buzzy the Drone.
The bad actor is not going to get tripped up in toy-grade C-UAS. While we are in that mess, we also have the moving-target TFR, the NDAA, tariffs, and the rush to emulate Ukrainian innovation: affiliation problems, supply-chain problems, legal problems that you need to get wraped up by August of 2027.
Any fair-minded person has to wonder how supposed experts earn six figures a year while fumbling the ball — and how much of that economy sits on a single foreign manufacturer’s downstream ecosystem.
Drone-as-first-responder programs raise a separate alarm. Technology is affording authorities a dystopian carnival: not only drones, but shot detection, flock cameras, plate readers, Stingray-class surveillance, facial recognition. In most instances people need a cop with a badge and a gun, not a camera to witness the crime. Those tools will face backlash. They should.
DJI’s train wreck is terrible to watch. One can hope the company pulls its head out of it’s butt. Hoping is not a strategy for a Western industrial base. Kowtowing to that ecosystem produced timid coverage and a community too frightened to say the quiet part: the selfie game was self-inflicted, and the shills look small.
C-UAS theater and toy company grade RID will not restore our airspace sovereignty, or credibility. Every news story about unauthorized traffic already wrote the rebuttal.