Surveillance drone industry plans PR campaign

[Zaune]

The Guardian

Companies seeking to enable the routine use of surveillance drones across Britain are planning a long-term public relations effort to counter the negative image of the controversial aircraft.

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems Association (UAVSA), a trade group that represents the drone industry to the UK government, has recommended drones deployed in Britain should be shown to "benefit mankind in general", be decorated with humanitarian-related advertisements, and be painted bright colours to distance them from those used in warzones, details from a UAVSA presentation show.

Plans are also under way to establish corridors of segregated airspace to fly drones – or UAVs – between restricted "danger zones" (airspace where test flights take place) in isolated parts of England and Wales.

A series of presentations given by industry figures in recent months show public opposition is considered a major hurdle. UAVSA has discussed how it could use the media to disseminate favourable stories, creating a narrative that presents the introduction of drones in the UK as part of a "national mission".

A talk three months ago at the Royal Aeronautical Society by Colin Burbidge, UAVSA's head of information services, cited the website Drone Wars UK as an example of the negative publicity the industry must overcome. Drone Wars documents the use of drones in conflict zones and features a database of more than 80 UAV crashes around the world dating back four years.

Chris Cole, the Drone Wars founder, accused the industry of trying to undermine "genuine public debate" about the use of UAVs in Britain. "They know the public don't like it," Cole told the Guardian.

John Moreland, the general secretary of UAVSA, said the industry was uncomfortable with the word "drones" and wanted to find new terminology. "If they're brightly coloured, and people know why they're there, it makes them a lot more comfortable," he said.

"We want to be associated with safe, civil applications [of UAVs] that have a humanitarian, ecological and environmental benefit."

Another UAV consortium, Astraea, which includes the arms manufacturer BAE Systems, has been advised by airspace regulator the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to "paint a more positive picture" of drones to combat fears about "big brother" and "spy in the sky".

Astraea has received more than £30m in public funding as part of an eight-year programme aiming to enable the deployment of drones in all classes of UK airspace, unhindered by restrictive conditions of operation.

Since July 2010, the Ministry of Defence has tested Watchkeeper drones at two restricted "danger zones" in Aberporth, west Wales, at a dedicated UAV centre, and at Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, a military zone.

UAVs for commercial use have also been tested by private firms in Aberporth, the Guardian has learned, with plans afoot to create corridors of segregated airspace between the Wales drone site and others, including Salisbury, although the CAA says a formal proposal has not yet been made.

Industry sources see the move as part of a progression towards larger sections of UK airspace becoming segregated in the near future, leading to an area of the sky sanctioned explicitly for the use of drones for a range of purposes, including law enforcement, border patrol, firefighting and road traffic monitoring.

The full integration of UAVs across all levels of UK airspace, however, is still considered a long way off.

Plans to introduce military-style drones across the UK, the full scale of which was first revealed by the Guardian in January 2010, have been much delayed owing to concerns they could pose a risk to manned aircraft in Britain's airspace without advanced "sense and avoid" detection technology installed.

Small, low-flying UAVs of 20kg or less – similar in size to radio-controlled model aircraft – can legally be flown under existing UK regulations, provided they have a permit from the CAA.

The latest figures obtained by the campaign group Big Brother Watch show 115 permits were issued between January 2009 and October 2011, with 43 issued between January and October this year. At least five police forces – the Met, Merseyside, Essex, Staffordshire and British Transport police – are known to have used them.

There remains a high level of police interest in military-style drones, which, unlike small UAVs, can fly at heights of more than 20,000ft, making them invisible from the ground.

At a London aerospace conference in October, a Home Office official confirmed the ongoing intention to use UAVs for "persistent reconnaissance" as part of the South Coast Partnership, a government-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan.

Yeah, good luck with that, fellas.

[madd0ct0r]

well, we already have drones flying, not to mention police helicopters.

[Ryan Thunder]

I can't believe the hoops they have to jump through just to put some cameras up in the air. Finding an alternate word for drone. Bright colours and slogans.

What are they going to film that's an unreasonable harm to anybody?

[Skgoa]

Ordinary people going about their lives.

[Sea Skimmer]

With so many cameras in the UK already I don't see how opposition to drones could be that serious, talk about having already lost that battle. Not that public opinion is all that rational or anything. The airspace issues however are much more serious and have been resolved by nobody on earth, in fact the UK already allows more freedom for drone operations then anyone else as far as I can tell. Air traffic control relies too much on aircraft seeing and avoiding each other, and nobody has yet built a UAV that can do this on its own, or mounts a good enough camera system (with the massive bandwidth issues and display screens on the ground to match) that would allow a ground based operator to do the same job. Long term hope is very small radar systems; but for the smallest UAVs that's not an option either.

[Skgoa]

From an AI point of view, the problem is solved. At least for drones that fly slow enough. I guess it just isn't economical to put obstacle avoidence systems on aircraft that now still have a very low probability of encountering other such craft.

[Simon_Jester]

I can't believe the hoops they have to jump through just to put some cameras up in the air. Finding an alternate word for drone. Bright colours and slogans.

What are they going to film that's an unreasonable harm to anybody?

Ask rather, what are they not going to film?

How much information on your activities can the state collect, before your right to privacy becomes insecure?

[Zaune]

How much information on your activities can the state collect, before your right to privacy becomes insecure?

Quite. It isn't as if they're merely going to replace manned police helicopters in their existing roles. I haven't the faintest idea what "persistent reconnaissance" is supposed to mean in this context, but it sure as hell sounds ominous.

And if the police start flying those little hovering disc things around over residential areas peering through people's curtains without warrant or reasonable grounds for suspicion then I'll be in the market for a twelve-bore and some birdshot.

[KhorneFlakes]

I would be barring your windows and reinforcing your doors if I were you. I'm expecting Manhacks to pop up in some shape or form by either this decade or the end of this decade.

[Skgoa]

Actually, the constant awareness of being under surveillences worse. That's why they make CCTV so large and obvious. It's a pretty clear "We are watching you, so you better behave."

[Broomstick]

From an AI point of view, the problem is solved. At least for drones that fly slow enough. I guess it just isn't economical to put obstacle avoidence systems on aircraft that now still have a very low probability of encountering other such craft.

Is that so? I'm surprised I haven't heard that before, as it would be big news in the aviation community. How slow is "fly slow enough"?

[Wicked Pilot]

From an AI point of view, the problem is solved. At least for drones that fly slow enough. I guess it just isn't economical to put obstacle avoidence systems on aircraft that now still have a very low probability of encountering other such craft.

TCAS doesn't cost that much, at least not in respect to the overall cost of the vehicle. Frankly, any aircraft rolling off the assembly line now a days should have that installed standard.

And this whole 'low probability of encountering' is completely off base. Most UAVs still have to launch from and recover to airports where they will have to mix it up with other traffic. They still we be parked in parts of the sky that other aircraft transit through. Just imagine a place like London, with Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton, Stansted, City, Northolt, and the many others in the area, with all their arrival and departure corridors, plus helicopter and siteseeing traffic. And above that you have all the airways connecting Europe and North America. I can't even imagine the asspain of putting one drone somewhere in there, never mind getting it in and out safely. Add more and the equation gets more complicated. Then think what would happen it one lost lock and was just up there on it's own not talking to anyone.

I've seen this before in Iraq and Afghanistan. I've almost been hit by these things, I almost shot one down once. They're great technology and they're the future, I'll admit it, but the limitations are still great and need be accounted for.

[Skgoa]

I have the suspicion we are talking about vastly different weight classes, here. I was refering to small quadcopter style drones. For those that participate in normal air traffic, there really is no excuse.

[Questor]

Could drones be used for wildfire surveillance?

Do any of them have the cargo capacity (and other capabilities) to help out with water dropping?

Those kind of capabilities strike me as something we could use out here in California, and I doubt the civil liberties issues would come up if we painted the things CalFire Red.

[Simon_Jester]

The tiny ones would be pretty useless, the big ones might be good for surveillance because of their long loiter times. And if you're using them for fire surveillance, that means they're hovering around over airspace that probably isn't heavily used by other aircraft. So that would seem like a legitimate use.

[weemadando]

I wonder how reliable the drone would be in such turbulent conditions though.

[Simon_Jester]

Not a problem for fire surveillance, though it'd be an issue if you wanted to do robot water dumps.

[Zaune]

A couple of fire brigades in the UK already use those miniature quad-rotor ones for locating people trapped in burning buildings, or internal hotspots that the crews might have missed. Nobody's ever brought them up as a civil liberties problem.

As for water bombing, I remember reading about a drone version of the MD500 being trialled a few years back. The cost and loiter-time advantage over a manned aircraft would be pretty limited, and those things probably aren't the best sky-crane platforms in the world, but I suppose they're an option.

[weemadando]

I think for grassfires and smaller brushfires then it's a great option. But for the bigger bushfires like we get in Australia with 100km/h+ windspeeds and 40+ temp and ~5% humidity, it's already nightmare conditions for rotor wings in terms of performance.

UAVs would help, but I wonder about how well their control systems would hold up.

[Broomstick]

I have the suspicion we are talking about vastly different weight classes, here. I was refering to small quadcopter style drones. For those that participate in normal air traffic, there really is no excuse.

Quadcopters would hurt if they hit a full-size plane at normal speeds. They wouldn't down an airliner but they could certainly cause damage, knock off antennae, maybe kill an engine if ingested... Basically, anything a bird strike could do they could do.

It's not that the system can't be adjusted, it's that the airspace is already being used by several interested parties. I can't imagine the air over London being less busy than the air over, say, Chicago, and the Chicago airspace is plenty busy from ground to stratosphere. It's like rush hour on a freeway at times. Fitting UAV's into airspace that busy without displacing the many legitimate users already there will be quite a task for the UK CAA.

As for fire surveillance - the smaller the aircraft the more it's affected by turbulence. Wildfires generate their own weather at times. It's one thing to zip through a building looking for hotspots, it's another thing entirely to try to spy on a firestorm.

As Wicked Pilot said - they're the future, but that future isn't quite here yet.

[Simon_Jester]

I think for grassfires and smaller brushfires then it's a great option. But for the bigger bushfires like we get in Australia with 100km/h+ windspeeds and 40+ temp and ~5% humidity, it's already nightmare conditions for rotor wings in terms of performance.

Well, you'd mostly be using the system to monitor fires, patrol and look around to see them when they're small, things like that.

Using them over a raging prairie fire would be... contradindicated.

[Questor]

Exactly, I've just heard enough interviews where the FD guys say "thank god the water bombers got here early". The big fires always seem to be the ones that start out in the muddle of nowhere and aren't seen, or that the tricks can't get too. I doubt that a UAV water bomber is going to help with the big fires, but they might help with the little ones.

[Todeswind]

Couldn't a UAV carry some sort of fire retardant chemical payload?

[Broomstick]

Well, sure, but since most UAV's these days are pretty small it wouldn't be enough to do any good. You'd have to develop a UAV the size of an aerial tanker, or rather, convert such an airplane to UAV. So far as I know, no has done that yet.

[Skgoa]

From an AI point of view, the problem is solved. At least for drones that fly slow enough. I guess it just isn't economical to put obstacle avoidence systems on aircraft that now still have a very low probability of encountering other such craft.

Is that so? I'm surprised I haven't heard that before, as it would be big news in the aviation community. How slow is "fly slow enough"?

The problem isn't image recognision or deciding on what to do, it's the sensors. Realisticly you would need a rather capable radar on your plane to guarantee all-weather detection of other flying objects. That adds a pretty big cost, weight and energy drain to your plane. If I restrict my craft to certain environmental conditions liken good weather, I could even get away with a rather simple infrared camera. Active defense systems for military vehicles work in much the same way: the detect any object that could be a threat and react automatically. And a system like TCAS for small craft and drones would be even simpler. With modern miniturization, there is really no excuse to not mandate it on every craft that gets higher than let's say 50 meters.
And by slow enough I just made a caveat for there being a finite range to any real sensor.

I have the suspicion we are talking about vastly different weight classes, here. I was refering to small quadcopter style drones. For those that participate in normal air traffic, there really is no excuse.

Quadcopters would hurt if they hit a full-size plane at normal speeds. They wouldn't down an airliner but they could certainly cause damage, knock off antennae, maybe kill an engine if ingested... Basically, anything a bird strike could do they could do.

But how many airliners fly at slightly over treetop height? Allowing small drones to participate in normal air traffic without technical and legal safeguards would be pretty... reckless.

It's not that the system can't be adjusted, it's that the airspace is already being used by several interested parties. I can't imagine the air over London being less busy than the air over, say, Chicago, and the Chicago airspace is plenty busy from ground to stratosphere. It's like rush hour on a freeway at times. Fitting UAV's into airspace that busy without displacing the many legitimate users already there will be quite a task for the UK CAA.

Yeah. They need to start that process by first putting down some additional rules, IMHO. AFAIK air space is more or less open, as long as you file your flight plan (and at the lower end you don't even need that) and keep out of certein restricted areas. That doesn't scale at all. Commercial air traffic alleviated this by switching from the old system of having "air-lanes" (I have no idea what the right english term is) to one where airliners navigate by satelite to maximise the available air volume, right?