USAF Sets up a New Flying Unit without Pilots

A full Colonel assumed command on the 1st of May of the USAF's first Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Wing. The 432nd Wing will comprise 60 MQ-1 Predator surveillance airplanes with intelligence gathering and reconnaissance capabilities and six MQ-9 Reapers. The Reaper is a strike platform that carries up to 4000lbs of munitions. The Reaper has an operational ceiling of 25,000ft with a full weaponry warload but the Predator can loiter at up to 50,000ft. It has a range of 1878 miles.
The rapid expansion of use of UAV's in the American Armed Forces since the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has meant that the technological capability is being quickly exploited for other civil uses. These include border patrol, ocean and littoral surveillance (drug-smuggling and immigration), powerline videoing, police surveillance and upper atmosphere sampling. There are also plans afoot for a trans-oceanic freighter. The FAA must now harmonize with the armed forces and law enforcement and concentrate on rewriting the rules of the air to accommodate the fact that many regulations (air traffic control and otherwise) don't cover the contingency of there being no pilot in situ. In some instances the operating authority will have practical liability however, in many other scenarios liability will likely be indeterminate and arguable.