Hobby drone blamed for grounding firefighting fleet in California

boing
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Already done. The area over a forest fire is restricted airspace.

The FAA so far has released a pretty simple set of rules defining acceptable/unacceptable use of drones. People are just ignoring them, and not entirely out of ignorance, either.

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This era is so paranoid and ass-puckering that there are just about no such cases.

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Reading about nuclear accidents lately, I think the worst risks are the ones we don’t have the capacity to consider, but which are crazy obvious in hindsight. But I think the answer to @AcerPlatanoides that may be relevant is that it depends on the risks.

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Without willingness to take them, we’ll get stuck where we are, with slowly diminishing resources.
Shit happens. Count the survivors, lesson learned, carry on.
Doing anything can get you killed, including doing nothing.

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A negative bias. My favorite bias. Actually, reading about the accidents convinces me further that the risks are worthwhile. It certainly hasn’t convinced the author of the book I’m reading that we must suddenly and myopically abandon nuclear power.

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Are any news shows using drones these days? I know they used to have the “traffic 'copter/eye in the sky” and would fly that to cover fires or traffic accidents. drones make a lot more sense for them cost and risk wise, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were buzzing fires for their nightly footage.

Also, just a though, but maybe drones could be required to be equipped with a “return home” signal receiver, that when activated alerts the controller it immediately fly the drone back to its base, add a tag for sender, fire/police/military/air traffic control and that would help resolve such situations.

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Let’s also not forget that Planes are not the only aircraft that fightfighting services use in these situations - A drone through a jet engine is a big problem, losing an engine(entirely possible) is a definite emergency situation, if admittedly a worst case scenario. But a drone colliding with a helicopter rotor? That’s a bad time for everybody involved. You’re probably looking an an immediate emergency landing, hopefully a pretty controllable one, into an area that’s rather on fire. Not a good time for anyone, as I’m sure you can imagine.

If you have a drone, just be smart, be safe, and don’t be a fucking asshole. Keep it out of the operational area of other aircraft, particularly emergency services, for everyone’s saftey.

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This is a fabulous mindset for a lot of areas of technical development, but a rather BS argument when it comes to civilian drones in a firefighting environment.

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Thought. The drones usually know their location by onboard GPS. The “grown up” aircraft too. What about something like ACAS? If it is in the airspace, it should broadcast its position (and what I call “intent” - the direction/speed, where it wants to be in a moment, and “envelope” - the steering ability, where it could be if needed in a moment, and how much clear space it needs around).

All drones then receive this data, and automatically get out of the way if something heads at them.

The get-out-of-the-air-entirely approach is unsustainable; the cost of airspace access dropped to rock bottom and the benefits are too high. Autonomous agents negotiating for the airspace are a more viable way.

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Probably was a military drone. I doubt an individual would own a winged drone of that size. Also, the military doesn’t have to file a flight plan with the FAA.

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myself was wondering, WWYD? What would Yeager do? he’d have shot the drone down, and kept on working.

we have become a generation of risk averse pussies.

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Clearly the fire department are missing a golden opportunity for a bit of fun…

Sifn’t shoot the thing out of the sky. Done. Then, you know, fight the damn fire.

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didn’t know that firefighting planes were armed.

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The benefits of access are so high that you can’t stay away from a wildfire with your drone? While technical solutions can be interesting, staying the hell away is far simpler.
@cstatman:

we have become a generation of risk averse pussies

No. Risk management is exactly what the firefighters are concerned with. The need to go play over a wildfire with a drone makes this sound far more like a generation of self absorbed pricks.

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