Keeping King Donald I safe from America’s geriatric Cessnas is turning out to be a full-time job for supersonic fighter pilots: “12 Aircraft Violated Restricted Airspace Around President Trump Over the Weekend”
The sclerotic processes of aircraft certification and updates to air traffic control have left us basically with the same systems of the 1950s in a world where there is a lot less trust. Even the F-15 pilots don’t have anywhere near the advanced software of a $1,000 Chinese-designed-and-built drone.
When does it all fall apart to the point that someone is willing to ask “How would we design air traffic control if every aircraft had GPS and a digital communications capability?” (of course, with ADS-B, in theory passenger-carrying aircraft by 2020 will have this, but most aircraft are drones and they aren’t required (or even encouraged) to have ADS-B; also there doesn’t seem to have been any fundamental re-thinking prompted by ADS-B. It is just layered on top of the 1930s and 1950s stuff)
Agree it would be nice to require ADS-B for drones as well… and with http://www.uavionix.com/products/ping2020/ at least it looks like someone is experimenting with this idea … that $1,200 USD price-tag though. Anyway it’s a start – it’s always easier to mandate things when you can point to working implementations.
They need to just ditch the TFRs
How much is a fleet of 16 – 20 barrage balloons situated around Mar-a-lgo at various altitudes?