UAS News Podcast — 2012-06-13
Audio not available on SoundCloud — full transcript below.
Transcript
Hello everyone and welcome to the UAS News Podcast Series where we try to bring you news and information about the positive potential uses for unmanned aircraft systems. I'm your host Patrick Egan and our co-host is also on board Gene Robinson. Hey Gene Robinson, how's it going?
Great Patrick, how's everybody out there? We're doing good. I wanted to talk a little bit, Gene was gone last week, you were down there at the NIST thing with Steve Morris and I wanted to have a little report about that as I put it last week, you know, people here at SUAS News are the people making the news and so I want to hear a little bit about what transpired down there and maybe you can, is it possible if you could tell us what model of aircraft you were flying, stuff like that. Sure, we were flying the MLP Superbat and I have to say that our flying sections went exceptionally well.
We're working on trying to streamline our process and start our communication down because we are using the two man concept or actually more man concept because we're going to add a payload specialist as well. So we did the full pilot in control, pilot at control with observers and streamlined that communication, streamlined the free flight checklist and how we communicated back and forth once the flights were underway and how we could actually start collecting the science that we needed to collect and we flew every aircraft that we had multiple times and it got better each time we did it.
We had no mishaps, there were, every flight was just flawless. So the owner was happy, Steve was happy, we were very happy as the operator so it went exceptionally well and we're delighted to be involved with it and look forward to doing a lot more with that aircraft. Yeah, he makes some good products, you know, Steve's been around for a while and I know you guys got a chance to chat and we're going to try and get Steve maybe next week to impart his, what it would take to get me to come to your test center musings for test center proponents.
He's got some interesting concepts, you guys probably talked about that, I think it's really refreshing and it's right up my alley so that would be, that would be something I think people would be interested in hearing. I'm glad to hear that all went good, I knew it would, you got two pros on the job. You know, you've been to the rodeo once or twice, right Gene?
I think once in the bold thrown me but that was years ago. Okay, well that's good. So the other question I have for you is how's the book coming along?
First to deploy. We are just about there, we're doing some final tweaking, we've done our conversion, we've had a couple of reviews done on it, some peer reviews and it's getting really good reception out there and I think it's about ready to roll and we should be starting distribution next week so I'm pretty excited about that. It's fairly large for an iPod book or an ebook but it's got a lot of information in it and I'm excited and I think it's going to be out hopefully next week. Sounds good, I'm waiting for it with bated breath, you know, I want a signed e-copy.
Anyway, okay, well that's good, okay, we'll be looking for that and I also want to talk about that too when it comes out, maybe we'll do another at least a segment on that. And so moving into the current news which we like to do every week, what's going on at the SUAS news, I don't know if anyone else caught Blastie the Magic Drone but I think that that video pretty much puts public sentiment, neatly packages it in a nutshell. It's worth a look, it's a funny little video
but it's, and on the other hand it's a little sad that that's kind of how the public views us but you know, it's up to us as a community to work on changing that perception.
And of course we had that global hot go down so it looks like we didn't put, we put no points on the scoreboard this week. Anyway, I want to extend a warm welcome to our guests, we have Tim Adelman and Leonard Lagone, howdy gentlemen. Hello, good afternoon, Matt. How you doing?
Good to be on the show, thanks for having me. Hey, well I want to thank you guys for coming on. So I think how we're going to start this out is Tim, if you could, could you please tell the audience a little about yourself and how you got involved with UAS or RPA or unmanned aircraft, whatever you want to call them, could you please tell us a little about yourself?
Certainly. I got involved with unmanned aircraft through a program I was managing as a contractor with the Department of Justice National Institutes of Justice, which is really the R&D branch of the Department of Justice. And the issue that came up through NIJ was local, state and local law enforcement needed aviation assets. But after the war in Iraq and overseas, a lot of the guard helicopters were providing support to state and locals were being called up and these agencies couldn't afford to go buy their own helicopters or, you know, high-end aircraft.
So they wanted to see are there alternative aircraft. And we looked at some manned aircraft options and around that same time we started also looking at unmanned aircraft systems and how they could help law enforcement. At the time there was really no one doing the legal side of unmanned aircraft and as a background I am an attorney that does aviation law. I'm also a flight instructor for manned aircraft
and then through the program and working with unmanned aircraft system was, you know, certified on a few unmanned small systems and got thrown into the mix of law enforcement wants to use unmanned aircraft systems and what are the hurdles to it and we looked at it both from a technology standpoint as well as a legal standpoint.
And since then it's just kind of blossomed from there to the point where I am doing a lot of work with various entities looking at the use of unmanned aircraft systems and recently doing a lot of work with NIJ on how do we streamline the process for law enforcement to get, to use unmanned aircraft systems and even most recently the outspurt of the privacy issues. So I look at it more from the public side than I have from the civil operations side but that's only because that's who's been knocking on the door.
Right, right. And you know we're going to touch on some of those subjects that you mentioned as we progress through the show. But let's, okay we got Leonard's on too and Leonard I'd like you to kind of give the audience a little background on yourself and how you got into this and then we're going to dive right into the deep end of the pool. Certainly.
First let me say to Tim, with regard to Tim's qualifications, one of the things that he didn't mention that he is probably one of the leading attorneys that specializes in public aircraft and public aviation and probably one of the leading ones in the country and although he did touch on that I just wanted to compliment and say that it's hard to find anybody that can talk with the kind of authority he can on that. That said, I was, back in 1993 I was active duty army and the unit I belonged to did testing of 1Z, 2Z small devices and we started working with unmanned aircraft.
The FAA and Albuquerque Center came to us as we started working with unmanned aircraft and told my unit you guys are going to have to find a place to fly these things and you're going to have to come up with an airspace manager and why not just call them a UAV airspace manager. Consequently, back in 1993 we started the unit I belonged to, we started the very first DOD UAV test range and I was consequently named the very first DOD UAV airspace manager. From that point on we picked up a fellow by the name of Glenn Ripp when he retired from the FAA
and Glenn with 36 years of air traffic control and rules and procedures under his belt became my teacher and my mentor and for the next 10 years I tucked myself in tight under the wing of Glenn Ripp whereupon he just taught me just volumes of airspace and FAA and what all that means.
Consequently, for those next 10 years I worked probably 25 different COAs with over 30 different systems from the hand launched all the way to the Global Hawk and presently I am the airspace integration lead for the BAMS integrated test team program. The new BAMS bird is called the Triton now, not the Global Hawk. And I work very closely with educational institutions and public safety elements around the country helping them get the wheels on the ground for their program and the University of Alaska has asked me to come on board and help them with significantly more time as well.
That's excellent and again I'm going to bang on the drum about the people that we have all in here, these podcasts. You know, the gang that's making the news. And a little back story for the audience benefit, I met most of you gentlemen at the UAS 2009 in Paris. It was 2009 wasn't it?
Been to a few of those, I'm pretty sure it was. Yeah, I recall that. And I think we were all, the little side bar that most people were having at that meeting was you know, everybody was kind of expressing their displeasure with the snail's pace that the FAA was working at. And there were some other subjects that were discussed.
It's kind of funny that here we are 2012, we're still waiting for some action. That's a little bit frustrating. It is kind of funny too that here we are, it's 2012 and that's going to bring us right into really the first topic of the day and the streamlined COA process. And the Schlemacki's been flying around about that new COA process.
I know personally I was involved in something this week where some people wanted to put together a training program, a manufacturer. They had a system they were going to sell to let's say public safety officers. We got hotcakes, we're selling here. You're not going to be able to keep up with what's in the hopper, yada, yada, yada.
And they wanted me to come up with a training program and manuals and procedures and checklists and all the rest of that stuff. And I'm saying, no, you know, we have time because they're going to have to go out there and get COAs and you know, it came back to me that the manufacturer was saying, no, if you fly under 200 feet, you don't need a spotter. You can fly under AMA rules, yada, yada. They changed the COA thing.
There's no real COA anymore which did not pass my Shinola test. So I guess that's going to segue like right into where we're at because I had discussed with Gene, we had kind of batted back the streamline process with the training COA, et cetera, and maybe Gene, you can just bring the audience up to speed on that conversation we had about the streamline COA. Sure, this is based on some information that I've received recently because I've applied for several COAs for several different agencies.
And since the ruling, the 90 days from the ruling or the FAA reauthorization were supposed to allow the law enforcement first responders and fire to get a COA or the ability to fly easier, well, that may be the case, but it's for the 4.4, the 2 kilo unmanned aircraft and that is essentially a training COA still.
As you know, most of the COAs that are out now are for training or research and development. So they started this and, Gene, you would probably be able to give a little bit more background on this since you're closer to the hill, but you are to train with the small unmanned aircraft and then you are to advise the FAA when you feel like you've reached proficiency. I feel proficient today. I have a strange that
you get to decide when you're proficient because there is no real vehicle for us to be able to determine, well, I've put in X number of hours and I only crashed three times, so I'm proficient.
And we've gone X number of hours since those crashes and we're good to go and we're going to move up to the large aircraft. So, and that is still to get the training COA from what I understand, it's still looking, you're looking at eight months to get it when it's supposed to be a 60 day process. And do you guys, Tim or Leonard, do you got any other information contrary to that?
Yeah, I can give you quite a bit of information. I've sat in all the conversations for the streamlined COA process. So, I'd be more than happy to give you the forest and then the trees view. One of the things that initially happened, I applied for a COA in 08, I believe it was, for Queen Anne's County in Maryland.
At the time, they were issuing emergency COAs or specific mission COAs and I, you know, we had gone through this significant legal debate about the authority of the FAA. At that time, I believe the FAA was the single biggest obstacle to unmanned aircraft operations and I'll get to this later but I don't believe that's still the truth but I'll explain why. What we ended up doing is took a year and a half to finally get a jurisdiction wide COA for that county which allowed us at any time to make a decision we needed to fly the unmanned aircraft system in support of a mission
and do so with just simple notifications to ATC.
We didn't have to get another COA, we didn't have to get emergency COA, we didn't have to have anything else done. We said that is the type of COA law enforcement needs. An agency gets an unmanned aircraft system, they need authorization to fly in their jurisdiction when the mission comes up and they don't know when someone's going to get killed in advance otherwise they'd be extremely effective at stopping the killing. So, these things come up
and so what we looked at on the COA process was one of the things I kept finding out when I worked with clients and talked to clients who were using this is applying for COA is a lot like going into a room, turning off the lights and then having someone put a dart board on the wall and giving the guy three darts and say hit a bullseye.
You throw the dart and if you hit the bullseye we'll tell you but if you don't we're not going to tell you how close or how far away you are and that was what flying out COA was all about. You just, you submitted something and they said nope and you said well what's wrong?
Well, it's not what we wanted. Well, what did you want?
Not that. And so the next thing you found out was well give me some guidance. So, we said to them if you're, we argued about not having a COA but one of the things when we brought the agencies together they said is listen we don't mind having some COA where the FAA can come to us and say we've reviewed what you're doing and we think it's, and we deem it to be a safe operation because from a liability standpoint that really helps out the local law enforcement agency. So, that was something that they were
okay with but they weren't okay with throwing darts in a dark room and not knowing where the dartboard is.
So, the streamlined COA process does a number of things. First of all, it's going to automate a lot of the process. Now, if you go in a file at COA, if you've done this you know you've got to put all the specific information about the aircraft and feet per minute, etc. And regardless of the fact that the FAA already has COAs on the exact same aircraft.
So, we want all the aircraft that are being used to be on a drop down menu. Manufacturers will be able to tell the FAA here's the data for the COA, put it into your database, we can do a drop down menu, they can click it. That right there saves you a fair amount of time because it will also include all of those attachments which have your ground station description, your lost link procedures, your frequencies, all that information will already be on there. So, the only thing that you're adding on there is where do
you want to operate, who's your point of contact and then why you're operating this aircraft.
So, what they call it is their safety risk management plan essentially or assessment plan. So, basically the FAA is going to give us a model version of this. And as an agency I will get a model version and I just have to basically cut and paste what I'm going to be doing from that and submit it. So, it's going to take a lot of the guess work out of it.
And in addition we are now getting, agencies are getting COAs within 60 days. So, the time limit has come down. They really have focused on this and they've been beat over the head pretty hard. You know, first it was with the golf club, then a bat, then you know, a sledge hammer and now it's you know the 800 pound gorilla is pounding on them saying you got to fix this.
And they are now and I can tell you the folks that I've worked with in the UAPO or what an air space integration office now I'm in aircraft have been excellent. There was a, we sat in a meeting two years ago and they said we were told to come here to find a way to make law enforcement operations work. We said okay great. Thirty minutes later we were steaming out of our ears ready to storm out because they didn't know what the hell they were doing there.
What? The FAA not know what they're doing?
We got a call a month later and apologizing and from that day forward it's been an extremely effective and good working relationship. And I don't believe and I think if you dug further you would find out that the FAA is not really the agency or the reason why it's taking so long to get integration. Are you mean with the, the S-FAR or just in general?
Well in general there is a significant political element to this that really has come to light over the past five months and really is part of the FAA Reauthorization Act. A lot of people interpreted that act as saying I'm in aircraft systems are going to be used by everyone all the time everywhere. And then you got the privacy fights. Then you got politicians involved.
Then you got OMB and GAO and DOJ and FAA all saying don't do anything right now. Wait. And so it, it threw this whole thing into a political mess whereas before it was a technical mess. Right.
I would. So I can feel a bit of a technical mess, Jim, when you consider that for example in a COA that I applied for an agency here they've asked me to provide documentation that the county is a taxing entity from the district attorney or the attorney general, excuse me. Yeah, that whole situation. Yeah, that whole situation is a mess.
So the Streamline COA process is not in place right now. They've reached the agreement but the problem is there's got to be some build out. They've got to actually change the online COA program to accommodate all the changes that we've asked them to make and it's a lot of language changes as well as check boxes, drop down menus. In addition, there's a couple other things we're going to do.
One of which is a knowledge test. NIJ has accepted responsibility for developing a UAS public safety operator's knowledge test which will be an online exam. And so they're basically going to take a lot of what's, they're taking the private pilot exam and gutting out all the stuff that doesn't apply to unmanned aircraft operations and going to make it more of a specific. So they're, and add a few more questions, to make it more specific to unmanned aircraft operations.
The interesting thing about that which I think the industry will be interested in is that while we're going to create the test, we're not going to at this point create the books and the study materials and the ground school. So hopefully someone else will come along and we would expect that the private industry will come along and help be able to provide those training courses and everything. So that to the extent that you do want to take this test and you don't have a base knowledge, you have a resource to go out there and get that type of knowledge.
And the streamlined COA process is not in place yet. Well, there's two things there. I saw the press release where the FAA came out and said that, you know, the streamlined thing was happening, so I guess it was a little premature. And then the other thing is who's working that, is that like a committee that's working at that online testing, because, you know, the reason I ask is the RCAP had, the Remote Control Aerial Photography Association had a program in place where we were already doing that prior to the 2007 edict.
And, you know, gave all that information to the FAA and they did look at it and say, hey, that's kind of an interesting idea and I'm just kind of, I guess what I'm wondering is, I'm kind of interested to see maybe mechanically how that's working. Is it possible for me to talk to somebody about that?
Is it a committee thing? Is it one person?
Yeah, we should definitely follow up. I'd love to get some information on what other people have done. The, there is, I wouldn't say there's a committee. You know, I am assisting and leading the charge on this one, partly, but the NIJ has got some contractors that are going to step in and basically what we're doing is going to the FAA saying these are the subject matters we're going to cover.
FAA says we agree those are the subject matters, then we'll build up a test and give the test to the FAA and FAA say we agree that's the appropriate test. All right, yeah, because we, with the process that we came up with, and I don't want to toot the horn too hard, but the process that we came up with, actually, we got an insurance company to buy into those online tests and basically the concept was, it was information
you could find on the FAA's own website, you know, basic airspace, things like that, and it was, it was able, that made it possible for us to get a million dollars worth of liability insurance for our members.
Each member could, you know, go out and actually buy into it. That's great information. Yeah. Yeah, that's excellent information.
I think that's one of the problems in the UAS industry is that there are so many disjointed segments of the industry that don't have great communication and, you know, the public side and the civil side are very different and I see that when something comes out on the public side, the civil side is looking very closely, but they do have substantial differences and as such, and it's the fault of the public community, is that we don't look to the civil side as often as we should to say, hey,
you guys, you know, you are, you're already doing this work in preparation for integration, let us borrow some of your stuff, and that's something that we should as a whole entire community leverage better, but they haven't in the past.
Well, let's, you know, let's take that conversation offline because I think that, you know, I'd like to share the information that we have. I think there's some good stuff there. Again, you know, we were kind of thinking in the beginning that it was rudimentary, but when, you know, a big insurance company said, hey, you know, we'll ensure this technology up to, you know, there was really no weight limit. They were ready to go in whole hog.
I was like, okay, well, that's confirmation that we did something right. So let's, we'll talk about that offline because, you know, we've been chatting here enjoyably for already almost half an hour, believe it or not. So I want to keep the ball rolling. The conversation is really good, and I just wanted to give Leonard a chance on this COA thing.
Leonard, if you had anything you wanted to add from up there and the, close to the Arctic Circle, you got anything? Well, I'm down in Albuquerque right now. Okay, I thought you were up there in Laska. No, yeah, no, I was up, I was up, yeah, 60 miles from the Arctic Circle for the last two weeks, and I'll be going back up there soon.
But I'm very interested in seeing how this online COA process is going to work, the streamline, because currently I'm working two COAs, and there's a lot of elements that are missing that we need to be able to see on those. And I guess the biggest frustration that I've had from the beginning, and Patrick, I remember seeing you at the, when the RTCA first started up. I was a member of the RTCA for the first three years,
and I believe I saw you there also the same first three years. And wasn't seeing a lot getting done on how to progress everything, and I was real glad just now to hear Tim say that two years ago somebody turned on a light there at the UAPO, and they started to come around and say, hey, we're ready to listen to you now.
Because that's part of the problem that I've seen up until now is that there's been two separate, two distinct offices, or two distinct FAAs. One, the FAA, which has a monumental job to provide for the safety of all the airspace users, and their job is a hard job, especially with the buzz of unmanned aircraft coming into the mix. They've got a real responsibility that they're still trying to get their head around. And then there's the UAPO, which is now the UASIO.
I hope the UASIO approaches it a little different than the old UAPO did, which was basically we'll let the FAA tell us what to do, and then we'll interpret how that needs to happen. And consequently, what happened was while the law made it very clear, and Nick Sabatini made it very clear when he spoke to Congress back in 2002 that there's a clear distinction between public aircraft and civil or commercial aircraft,
and that the public aircraft industry would be self-governing and self-certifying through all things public aircraft, the UAPO refused to allow that to take root, while the FAA would sit there and watch them and say, okay, well, you guys got the ball on this, just know that if this ever goes to battle, we're going to lose.
We may be an 800-pound gorilla, but we're still going to lose this one if this goes to battle. So consequently, I saw, as I said, there's two different FAAs. People would say the FAA say I can't do that. Well, the FAA says you can do that.
It's the UAPO who says you can't do that. And that was where a lot of us got our sour grapes and the sour taste in our mouth with regard to the FAA. The FAA has been doing a fabulous job, a great job, and, you know, I've been working closely with the FAA now for going on 20 years, and I can't give them enough credit, but the UAPO seems to somehow sidestep and take a different path all too often and say, well, we don't want you doing that because. Well, what do you mean because?
Give us the reason for the because. Well, the because, we can't tell you because there's no definition. We just said because. Right.
So it's been a revolving door too in that office for several years. Well, hopefully they got, you know, they got some great guys up there. You know, Steven Blueicki for, I got to give him, he's one of the guys who's been up there since the very beginning, back since Rick Hostetler stepped out of the role and John Timmerman stepped in and Steven was one of the few people who's still there today. And I got to say, I got to give it to him.
His level headedness, he approaches things with reason, he listens, he's highly intelligent, but sometimes even he is told to sit down and shut up in color, I believe. Yeah, I hear a lot of that goes on. The frustration with that is, you know, and I've been going on and I'm sure, you know, if you guys have known me and been around long enough, so I've been kind of beating on them for many years now, I think since 2005 with this, well, you know, we got to have some data, we got to have some data, we got to have data.
Okay, sounds good. You know, what are you looking for?
That's fine and good and you know, the data is going to go and support the civil commercial side of things as they progress and start breaking into the airspace for commercial purposes. But the public aircraft side, you know, when the FAA decided to call unmanned aircraft or UAVs, air vehicles, when they decided to call them aircraft so that they could regulate them, what I believe they didn't see
was by identifying them as aircraft, the minute the public agency put their own moniker on it, calling it a public aircraft, it then created a whole new can of worms for the UAPO that they were not prepared to deal with.
So by calling them aircraft, they may have been able to get what they wanted in determining how to regulate unmanned aircraft, but they opened a can of worms that they couldn't put the lid back on, kind of a Pandora's box because now with the law and you know, saying that, you know, the statutes say that the public aircraft owner doesn't need to get certified, he doesn't need to do certain things, he doesn't need the license per the way we say it has to be done, then that opened up a can of worms on them that they're trying to get their head around.
Now I see them groping in the dark like Kim said, throwing the darts in a dark room and you know, one example came to light last week, I was talking to somebody who wanted to go and operate their unmanned aircraft and they were told, well you didn't, you have to have pilots with FAA licenses. No I don't, I'm using government employees to operate these things. Yeah, but your training program and your certifications don't meet our standards.
Well we don't care about your standards, we've determined that for the type of UAV we've got, it's small, it's safe, it's you know, it's four and a half pounds, we can snatch it out of the air and it's always within line of sight, this is how we're going to do it.
So we're self-certifying and we're self-governing on that and they were told, what I was told, and of course this is all second hand, is that no you can't do that because you're not a Title X authority. Wait a minute, now you're telling us that public aircraft have to be DOD and DOD only or DHS, a Title X authority?
No, that's not how the law breaks it down, it says public and private or civil and those are the only two qualifiers out there. And again, the FAA agrees with that, the UAPO doesn't agree with that, consequently we have two disparate offices trying to run their own programs, the FAA is right because you know the general counsel's office will be the first one to come in and say this is a distinction that we have to follow when we address this in court, when we address this to Congress, when we address it to the law.
The UAPO says well we don't like that, we're not going to do that and our charter is to, you know obviously their charter is safe flight and you know we can sympathize with that but don't micromanage me, let me take the mantle of responsibility, if I'm a government agency let me take that mantle of responsibility and the weight of that responsibility and if I'm willing to do that let me hold that on my shoulders
and then consequently when Congress comes down and says you know how did you crash into that school bus full of nuns, when they look at the FAA, the FAA can now say hey, we advised them, we strongly advised them not to do that but it was on them, they took the mantle of responsibility themselves.
Yeah, well I think you know you're dealing with a situation where I mean this has been their game and this runs the gambit here, moving targets and just like I said they opened the Pandora's box and people are concerned and what are we going to do, I think every time they make a step they think well if we do this you know you're going to let this activity loose then we're going to have a flood of this activity come in
and whatever the case I don't you know maybe that, I'm speculating as far as what their mindset is, there's a lot at play there I think and I have to be honest all along one of the big problems with the UAPO and the new UASIO or whatever they're calling it this week is a lack of experience with unmanned aircraft systems and that has been a real stumbling block for them, I know now everybody's getting trained on small UAS
and it's the Aeroenvironment product line which is kind of a drag and I wanted to get into the preferred vendor list and all the rest of that so we're going to move along because we only got about eight minutes left and I wanted to talk about the timely subject of the privacy thing and maybe we can talk a little bit about that, I think that you know not that it's much to do about nothing but I think that we really got to go out there
and educate the public that a lot of this stuff that's going on now or is proposed with unmanned aircraft is already allowed with manned aircraft you know I mean you can, take pictures in navigable airspace now or you know certain operations, the public operations that are happening now and will happen in the future with unmanned aircraft will be governed in kind of the same way and I kind of wanted to get Tim's take on it
so maybe Tim could you speak to that?
Certainly I think one thing to know right off the bat is there was a bill introduced in the Congress yesterday and one or two days ago and one by the Senator yesterday on preserving freedom from unwarranted surveillance act of 2012 which is targeted at, the way it reads is I believe they're targeting at federal law enforcement agencies, the concern is while this statute would only target federal law enforcement it would be used by states and act similar legislation and then people would try to extend it beyond that to civil operations.
There is no reason first of all for a separate act. We already have extremely well established law on search and seizure. Your fourth amendment gives you the right to be protected from unlawful search and seizure and then there is a whole host I mean hundreds of court opinions that say what does that mean and what are the parameters and we've gone through it with technology so there is a lot of stuff out there about what are the parameters out there for search
and seizure and one of the things is you know we've got aircraft first of all, we've already litigated the cases about flying over and looking at someone's backyard, we've litigated the cases about using IR sensors to look into someone's, to look at the heat signature off of someone's house, we've litigated the use of you know, GPS trackers on cars, we've litigated the use of other technologies to observe individuals
and when is it a search and when do you require a warrant and when is it not?
The upcry on privacy you know is twofold. There is a component of it that says law enforcement is all of a sudden this you know, Stalin's secret police that's going to go out there and observe you all the time which is not reality but if people want to believe that, okay, we have laws to protect you from that and so that isn't going to be happening and if it does you've got laws to protect your rights and to have them enforced so we don't need anything new. The other fear is these civilians are going to use it and you know when I argue about the law enforcement, what about the civil side?
And I recently wrote an article in there and I saw a few people comment on it about, I said in there well if you made it, if you had a regulation that made it a crime to inappropriate use on an aircraft system to spy on someone, to take photographs and sell them for personal gain or something of that nature, that may be a way to help enforce privacy and I think what people have to understand is there's definitely going to have to be at some point a give and take on the civil side because we don't have the Fourth Amendment and all the other court opinions about that.
There's going to have to be at some point a framework put in place for when can the civil side use this technology because right now a lot of aircraft can't have a gimbal put on it for a civil person to use without getting either an STC or an extremely expensive camera that they can't afford. But people can go out and make even home built unmanned aircraft systems and use them to take photographs, etc. And at some point there will have to be discussion about okay the public side should already have sufficient body of law taking into account the use of this technology.
The civil side doesn't and I think if the civil side were to come to the table and say we understand the concern and we're willing to agree to X or whatever it is, a penalty for unlawful use of this to you know take someone's pictures and sell them on the internet. If you did something of that nature I think you would substantially alleviate a lot of concerns but with no framework in place it really is going to be used against the civil community for operations. Right. Already seen it in the public, a very common sense approach.
And all of that makes sense but like I was saying I mean you know I was having this conversation yesterday in my own living room but I don't think people understand like those you know and last week I kind of suggested as homework or maybe the week before that people go out there and Google or YouTube like MX15 or Flair, C-Star, Sapphire and see what the capabilities are already you know these gimbal EOIR sensors that we're talking about you know it can be seen from you know 15 nautical miles out you know.
People could watch you and there's a lot of misnomers as far as people have in their heads about this surveillance thing but I do think that a lot of the laws that are on the books are going to overlay onto unmanned aircraft and we need to as a community kind of I guess get out there and then put the word out to the public and kind of you know ease some of the fears that they have. Now we're getting close to the two minute warning as
I like to call it and we've covered some good ground and we've had really some good conversation and the thing that I wanted to touch on and I think that our listeners and readers are going to be interested in and Tim maybe you could talk to this.
We hear about that and you kind of spoke about the NIJ DOJ vendor list which is the like the drop down menu which is going to be part of the automated system for the FAA and the COA thing possibly you know assume that I'm a manufacturer and I make the you know water bottle 2000 unmanned aircraft and I want to get it on that list. How do I go about getting my aircraft and its capabilities whatever onto that list?
The short answer is once an agency files a COA with that aircraft it will go onto the list. So the goal is the FAA is taking these aircraft when a COA is filed we say okay you've seen one area in scout now you've seen four or five of them why do we have to insert each of these scouts individually why can't we just have it to be just one area you know a drop down menu set. So as an agency applies the but the bigger question you're getting to is and I'll try to do as quickly as possible NIJ has a standard for ballistic vests.
They create the standard that says if you want to if you're a law enforcement agency want federal funding to buy a vest you have to get one that's NIJ approved which is done at a third party lab that assesses it and NIJ credits that. We've been talking about trying to do the same for unmanned aircraft systems which is to take a standard and then to certify labs across the country or test sites however
you want to do it to say a manufacturer gives their aircraft to that test site, pays them you know whenever it is and that test site will verify that it meets this standard and when it does that they'll issue a certificate that says this meets the standard by NIJ and then the goal would be in that it would give that agency comfort.
Tim I hate to catch up we're at about 24 seconds. Excellent conversation. I do want to try and maybe talk to you tomorrow on the phone if we can sidebar me and you. I want to thank everyone for being on the call.
Excellent conversation as usual. I think you guys both you and Leonard brought a lot of good information to the table. I appreciate you guys being on. Thanks a lot and we will see everyone next week.
Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you.