In less than one year, unmanned aircraft crashed into the Grand Canyon, buzzed over an amphitheater at Mount Rushmore and harassed bighorn sheep in Utah. Now, UAVs are no longer welcome at U.S. National Parks. National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis will not allow UAVs to launch, land or operate on national park grounds, at least for now. During the temporary ban, he is planning to propose regulating the use of UAVs. This is often a hurry-up-and-wait process that requires a public comment period.
To the relief of a number of defense contractors, Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) clung to his Senate seat in a primary runoff election. It was not an unexpected struggle. To appeal to Democrats, who could cross party lines to vote, the six-term senator highlighted his prowess at delivering federal dollars to the state.
Smarting from the public outrage over how an aircraft the size of a Boeing 777 could vanish, a top official at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is trying to break through the inertia that often slows the release of new global standards. Nancy Graham, director of ICAO’s Air Navigation Bureau, is spearheading efforts within the Montreal-based organization to publish global tracking standards for aircraft in two years, a fraction of the time a major action might otherwise take.
T he administration’s policy toward exporting UAVs elicits grumbling, particularly from an industry that sees foreign developers cutting into a market that the U.S. could have capitalized on. Current export restrictions might cause the U.S. to lose ground in an industry that could grow to $11.6 billion by 2023, but a report by the Stimson Center, “Task Force on U.S. Drone Policy,” also questions if these restrictions are achieving their aim. “It is unclear whether U.S. export control rules for UAVs appear well-suited to advancing U.S.
