Air Collision Fears for Drones

Major advances in unmanned aircraft system (UAS) technology has advocates clamoring to use more drones for everything from coastal patrols and border surveillance to tracking natural disasters. But fear of midair collisions is holding up any broad expansion of their domestic use. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials have made it clear that until the pilotless aircraft gain the high-tech ability to ‘sense and avoid’ manned aircraft, the federal government is unlikely to allow them to operate much more freely in congested airspace. According to Ardyth Williams, the FAA’s UAS air traffic manager, “this is a new technology, an approaching technology, but there are already hundreds of them flying out there right now.”