US Creating Drone Registry Plan In Response To Safety, Security Concerns
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As part of the U.S. aviation authorities’ effort to tackle the growing safety and security problems posed by drones, U.S. drone will soon be required to register their aircraft with the Department of Transportation.
The register comes in response to a surge in incidents in which drones have flown near airports and crowded public venues.
Fortune reports that the Obama administration will announce the formation of an independent advisory committee tasked with creating the structure of a federal drone registry by December.
NBC News was first to report the plans.
According to Home Land Security News Wire the FAA has reported that between 1 January and 9 August this year, there had been more than 650 unauthorized drone sightings, compared with 238 in the whole of 2014. The FAA says that at this rate, the number of sightings would be about 1,100 by the year’s end.
The sharp increase in drone flights near facilities such as airports, where they cause serious damage, and the fact that forecast speak of more than one million drone sales in the United States next year, have caused aviation security experts to worry about drones colliding with commercial aircraft during landing or take-off, or being used by terrorist and criminals as a weapon for attack.
Hobbyists’ and news organization’s drones already disrupted fire-fighting activities in the West, when tanker planes carrying water and fire-suppression chemicals had to turn away from blazes when their planes’ pilots spotted drones flying over the blazes.
Aviation officials noted that efforts to track down the owners of rogue drones – even those flying dangerously close to busy airports — have been made nearly impossible by a 2012 congressional bill which bars the FAA from regulating recreational drones.
