Who is Flying Drones in the U.S. and Where Are They Flying?

FAA releases a list of authorized domestic UAVs

By Clay Dillow Posted 04.25.2012 at 3:45 pm 6 Comments

More Drones are Coming to U.S. Airspace U.S. Department of Homeland Security

A list of current entities permitted by the Federal Aviation Administration to fly unmanned aerial vehicles in U.S. airspace says one thing very clearly: if you fear the drones, stay the hell out of Texas. The Washington D.C. area as well, for that matter. The list of Certificates of Authorization, obtained by civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, shows that even as the FAA scrambles to open up the U.S. airspace to commercial drones over the next three years, there are already quite a few of them in the sky.

Much of the list is unsurprising. Several of the COAs are granted to military branches, defense contractors or technology development agencies like DARPA, or educational institutions like the University of North Dakota or Texas A&M University. Others are perhaps more unexpected: the Ogden Police Department in Utah and law enforcement in both Houston and Arlington, in Texas. Or the City of Herington, Kan. (though the COA list doesn’t specify whether it’s the police department or some other city agency in this case).

What the COA list doesn’t include is what kind of drone each certified entity is flying or what each drone’s purpose is. Moreover, it’s clear from the numbers that some entities have more than one COA. There are just 60 universities, government and law enforcement agencies, contractors, etc., on the COA list. Yet there are about 300 active COAs, according to the FAA.

If you’re trying to puzzle out who has what drones and why from this recent reluctant release of documentation (EFF had to file a lawsuit against the FAA after it failed to respond to its Freedom of Information Act request for the COA list), your job is about to become vastly more difficult. The latest FAA budget passed by Congress requires the FAA to integrate drones into the national airspace at an accelerated rate, specifically fast-tracking drone clearance for first responders, who should be able to get clearance to fly small drones relatively easily starting sometime next month.

The bill requires full unmanned aerial system integration for commercial purposes by September 2015. Click through to EFF for a Google Map overlaid with the COA data to find the drones nearest you.

[EFF]

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6 Comments

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Shinkaze

04/26/12 at 1:44 am

Funny how military hardware stops being so cool when we turn the guns on ourselves.

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johnt007871

04/26/12 at 2:47 pm

Or the cameras, as it were.

My brother being on a US marshal task force and all I can definately see a need for a cheap drone with a camera in tense situations especially when many copters are grounded due to costs in a miserable economy. It would be interesting to see what city rolls out a full fledge drone to hang out over "high risk" areas (cough the hood cough) first.

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Raynre

04/26/12 at 6:12 pm

Meh, until they start deploying Predator drones I don't see anything to be worried about. As it is, this is the equivalent of a police chopper, but at a fraction of the cost. Nothing that hasn't already been done before.

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Artex

05/01/12 at 1:07 am

I'm just wondering when these things are gonna be used for exploration. Search and rescue anyone? If these things can find people in the desert, the sure can find people lost in the forest.
---------------------------------------------
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.

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spazzered

05/03/12 at 1:30 pm

they are up in the US

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TeslasDisciple

06/19/12 at 6:17 pm

@Artex, thank you, 'bout bloody time someone decided to metion that.
@john, tell your brother thank you for his service, and I agree. Just giving one of these things a thermal cam and maybe (at the extreme) an M14 with a gunner type deal. A second operator would be able to fire from a rotor wing drone and aid the boots on the ground by hitting a fugitive with an AK-47 left over from Fast and Furious (no malice).

I find drones to be a fascinating subject, and truly they are. One thing we need to remember is that any two bit hacker with good software can either knock these puppies out of the sky, or else show a fake system. Last thing we need is a drug lord making a video of a mary field look like lima beans. I have a friend who can hack a computer in tokyo and make a sensless message that actually made it onto the Japanese news (hilarious story that), in under five minutes.
Just to blow your minds, 16 years of age.

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