Drones Used in Military Conflict

Drones to Monitor Hunters

Many of the previously unreported incident reports — released Wednesday by the FAA in response to long-standing public-records requests from The Washington Post and other news organizations — occurred near New York and Washington.

The FAA data indicates that drones are posing a much greater hazard to air traffic than previously recognized. Until the end of 2014, the FAA had publicly disclosed only one other near-collision between a drone and a passenger aircraft: a March 22 incident involving a US Airways regional airliner near Tallahassee, Fla.

Drone Flying Over Tampa, Florida

Imaginations everywhere have been stoked since Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced at the end of 2013 his company plans to start offering 30-minute deliveries via drone-like "octocopters" starting in 2015.

What's not fascinating about a near future in which fleets of whirring sky robots can drop our every impulse buy on our doorstep faster than we can get Chinese delivered?   We reached out to Amazon, where official details are still scarce, and chatted with drone expert Missy Cummings, an associate professor at MIT and one of the Navy's first female fighter pilots. Here's some of what we've been able to piece together on a project that Amazon says is, at the very least, a couple of years away from takeoff. Could drones really be delivering packages by 2015?   Drone Expert Cummings predicts the company will get approval to start Prime Air in other countries before the United States, but she says that having a retail and technology giant like Amazon pushing for it could speed things up for everyone.  Bezos said the octocopters will have a 10-mile radius. So, it's likely that folks in big cities near Amazon distribution sites would be a lot more likely to qualify than those in more remote areas. He says they'll initially carry items up to five pounds, which is roughly 86% of all deliveries Amazon makes. But for even that 10-mile range to work, Amazon better be onto something about battery life that the rest of us don't know. Cummings said drones the size of the octocopters have a battery life of about 30 minutes, and the weight of their cargo could make that even shorter.

Amazon doesn't directly address its drones becoming high-tech clay pigeons in a statement about safety. "The FAA is actively working on rules and an approach for unmanned aerial vehicles that will prioritize public safety. Safety will be our top priority, and our vehicles will be built with multiple redundancies and designed to commercial aviation standards," the statement reads. But Cummings says it's a real issue. "It's not just people who hate drones," she said. "It's people who want those packages." She speculated the drones will need to fly at an altitude of at least 300 feet for as long as possible to avoid attracting pot shots from target shooters or thieves. She also envisions safe "drop spots," at least at first, instead of delivery to any address within range. "There are lots of details that need to be worked out, but nothing that is technologically overwhelming," she said.

Will Drones Work When the Weather is Bad?

Amazon's official statement doesn't address this obvious question. But Cummings says that to make the drones reliable in most weather conditions, Amazon would need to improve on currently available technology.  "They can fly in some precipitation, but certainly not heavy precipitation," she said. "Sleet or snow ... would obscure some of the sensors. It's hard to make it a really solid business if the weather holds you back. They're going to have to work on that."

Amazon isn't the only company at least toying with the idea of using unmanned aerial vehicles for commercial purposes. Domino's posted video of the "DomiCopter" delivering two pizzas in the United Kingdom earlier this year. In June, the Burrito Bomber, the creation of a couple of engineers from Yelp, demoed its ability to fly that tasty treat to your doorstep as well. And in Australia, Zookal, a textbook company, is already using drones for deliveries. Cummings hopes that's all just the beginning. Using drones for beneficial civic or commercial purposes, instead of military actions, is a growing trend.  "Medical supplies, wildlife monitoring, cargo, firefighting -- it's a pretty long list of things that drones can do," she said. "It's reinvigorating a dying aerospace industry."

Read More:  The New Generation of Unmanned Drones