Didn't spot it in the article but shooting a gun into the air can get you reckless endangerment in NY, if they don't find you guilty of something worse.
Something that I think would be nice is an op out process for personal/commercial drone flights under a reasonable altitude over one's house. Even without the privacy concern getting buzzed by multiple delivery drones a day wouldn't be fun.
Can’t wait until it becomes clear that documenting intent to commit a crime is a bad idea.
Not that anyone with any sense would actually do this. Shooting at things that have cameras, and always know their exact location, is a spectacularly bad idea to me. But anonymous internet tough guys gonna type what they type.
A little tone-deaf? What is it called to operate vehicles intended to trespass, cause noise ordinance violations, endanger the public? And they create press releases to announce those activities. I guess they need some of that advice.
My VTOL is just under 7' wide, flies at about 50mph. Once it transitions to fixed wing after take off its silent and at 300' just a tiny dot.
My quad is not silent but at 300' you can't really hear it unless you are listening for it. It's flying about 25mph and is just under 3' in diameter. It's impossible to see.
Please don't try to shoot at drones, it's dangerous and incredibly unlikely you'd hit the target.
If you want to take down a drone interrupt the control channel, intercept it with another drone, hit it with an EMP, take out the pilot. Be smart.
Just btw, none of that describes a delivery drone which is by necessity going cautiously toward rendezvous with a delivery location. Which describes an easy target. An consider that a shotgun doesn't have to be very precisely aimed, by design.
So amusing, to hear the advice that it's a better idea to take out the pilot than the drone. Haven't heard that one before.
Would drone harassment have similar criminal consequences?
Consider a fleet of much smaller drones “guarding” one’s airspace (putting aside that we do not own it, which IMO is a byproduct of past legislative lack of imagination), that simply get in the way of a large delivery drone. With some level of aggressiveness.
Drones above a certain size are regulated by the FAA and are considered aircraft.
Shooting down aircraft means you'll face FAA-related charges, and they will be hefty.
Under federal law, willfully shooting down an aircraft (including drones) is a felony that may lead to imprisonment (18 U.S.C. § 32)—not to mention other potential liability tied to discharging a firearm into the sky.
You don't necessarily need to shoot down drones. You can have your drone (under registration-required size) intercept and collide with the target drone.
Or you can have your done jam the other drone and try to confuse it into aborting its mission and doing an emergency landing.
Or you could try to "swallow" the target drone and then deploy some safe-landing chute or chemically inflate a balloon to make a controlled fall.
I assume there are some property damage or theft charges, but getting around faa current regulations should be doable.
> You don't necessarily need to shoot down drones. You can have your drone (under registration-required size) intercept and collide with the target drone.
Also a crime, the same way as shining a laser at a plane to mess with the pilot is a crime.
> Or you could try to "swallow" the target drone and then deploy some safe-landing chute or chemically inflate a balloon to make a controlled fall.
Interfering with aircraft operations.
> I assume there are some property damage or theft charges, but getting around faa current regulations should be doable.
interfering with flight operations doesn't require you to discharge a gun into the sky -- that's why they have that as a separate crime. balloons, other drones, eagles, shining a laser pointer, whatever, is also illegal. woe be to you if the FAA can figure out you did it.
also true for jamming. and keep in mind the ham radio "elmers" plus the FCC -- who are very good at triangulation -- will be on your ass for trying something like that, on top of the FAA chasing you. See also: https://www.fcc.gov/general/jammer-enforcement
all of the techniques you mentioned work for a combat zone -- e.g. Ukraine, or Sudan -- but if you try those in the US you will have federal agencies on you, and they do not mess around when it comes to anything related to aircraft. source: former EW guy, work in train/aircraft/drone control systems.
Agreed. But I wouldn't ever deploy the above with any requirement to actively provide radio comms back to me as the host. They would operate with autopilot, gps waypoints, and engage based on ML models.
Though if you really have fleet of drones "guarding" your airspace - will the FAA actually be able to enforce? Considering that at that point you basically have an air force, and if the drones are cheap and effective enough, it may be better than the air force available to the FAA?
The point being made here is one about military capabilities rather than legality. If you really have a fleet of drones guarding your airspace (which implies a technology & industrial level more than anyone has publicly announced, but then, if I owned a fleet of drones I probably wouldn't announce it either), you kinda get to make the laws by virtue of being able to kill anyone who disagrees with you. So yes, you could shoot down a Delta flight at 30k feet, but the more relevant technological capability is being able to drive one of your expendable drones into the jet intake of an F-16.
if you can fly your drone precisely enough to be sucked into an F16 going hundreds of miles an hour faster, you are now in the realm of ITAR tech and the government can come after you for a whole bunch of crimes that have nothing to do with actually downing a jet
It crashes, and you inconvenience several people. The ramifications might look something like criminal damage to property, unlawful use of a firearm, and possibly theft if that's your intention.
The government doesn't differentiate much between aircraft and drones. As I understand it, shooting down a drone is a federal crime and can you get you 20 years in prison.
Aircraft under a certain size, like 250g -- yes, 250 grams -- are toys, and generally don't require a license.
Above 250g are Drones, and require FAA-related certifications to operate. They are aircraft, and are covered by laws protecting aircraft (18 U.S.C. § 32).
Messing with those will catch you Federal (felony) charges, and could get you in prison.
The drones under 250g don't require a license only for recreation flight. You also can't fly over people and a few other things like that. You still need an FAA license to operate a sub 250g drone for anything commerical.
Also drones under 250g are still considered aircraft and protected by law.
Yes. An RC Toy is another word for a drone. If you shoot down things under the FAA's jurisdiction they will be interested. They have publicly maintained that position since 2016.
The FAA, despite their behaviour with Boeing, will absolutely make an example of people who do stupid things.
Yep. The FAA is slowly enforcing the rules around drones more and more harshly. Someone recently flew a drone over a concert and got a letter from the FAA asking for an explanation of their flight. From what I read, that guy is looking at potential jail time. At some point, the FAA is going to start making some examples out of people.
I'm also pretty sure people have already gone to jail for shooting down drones.
A drone is considered an aircraft by the FAA. It's not just an RC toy.
There is a small carve out that drones under 250g can be flown recreationally by anyone, but most drone flights are being done by pilots who have remote pilot licenses from the FAA. Their drones are aircrafts with all the same legal protections as a plane.
Commerical drones like deliveries would definitely not be considered an RC toy.
You do (in the US), but there's a presumed right of way granting some privileges to aircraft in that space. Separately, destruction of property is rarely a legal resolution mechanism for trespass, even when the drones aren't operating legally.
For some thought experiments, imagine somebody building a large dome over your property, only ever intersecting the airspace. Or if you built a tall building on your own land intersecting with the airspace low-flying planes used to use. Both scenarios would definitely be found in your favor; the FAA won't be the body preventing your tall building, and you'd have no trouble getting a court to remove the trespassing dome.
This came up in my FAA drone training. There is nothing legally preventing a drone pilot from hovering an inch over the grass in your backyard. They can't land as it's your private property but class G airspace extends all the way down to ground level and is under federal control.
That doesn't contradict anything I said. If the homeowner built a taller structure, you couldn't fly your drone in what used to be class G airspace. If you built a giant dome over somebody's yard, a court would order it taken down. The fact that you're able to do certain things with your drone is because of a presumed right of way the drone has, and that right of way is time-variable.
Separately, the FAA's powers aren't absolute. A drone operator's restrictions when operating as a backyard nuisance are all those which the FAA inflicts _in addition to_ any other applicable laws, regulations, and common law. Even if the FAA classifies that airspace as class G, and even if the FAA doesn't prevent hovering an inch over the ground, you'll be in hot water with the rest of the court system if you do it too long, too often, or for the wrong reasons. Even the FAA would be on your ass if you were reckless with your drone in a residential area (mentioning for completeness; your hypothetical didn't imply recklessness).
Highlighting one way things can get messy, suppose you do that hovering trick and a homeowner doesn't like it. They're free to place a net over your drone (for the sake of argument, suppose it has some sort of rigid supports so it doesn't fall into your drone blades and cause damage). What befalls the drone will likely boil down to "unclaimed property" laws -- you'll likely get it back unharmed, eventually (if you take the right steps), but your day of flying is ruined.
More generally, as I said, the homeowner owns the airspace above their home, and there exists a presumed right of way for certain activities in that airspace. The further you tread from the idea of "when flying you have to pass over _somebody's_ home," the murkier the legal waters get.
Maybe one last idea for now: even in that presumed right of way, not even commercial flights are exempt from the fact they're infringing on your rights. Just the existence of noise and turbulance from an excessive number of nearby planes can suffice (and has sufficed) for landowners to be compensated for the fact that they can't reasonably use their land anymore (and usually the land is condemned and goes through some other unimportant details). The compensation comes, transitively, from the infringing flights (usually more directly from whichever airport or municipality caused the problem, but that incidental cost is _slightly_ trickled down to the rest of the system).
Something that I think would be nice is an op out process for personal/commercial drone flights under a reasonable altitude over one's house. Even without the privacy concern getting buzzed by multiple delivery drones a day wouldn't be fun.