The concept of uncontrolled air space has been incredibly important for non-commercial use of the skies, around the world, for over sixty years. Obviously, controlling the air space around terminals is even more important to the safe operation of commercial traffic – especially with the quaint mixture of non-commercial light aircraft and commercial jets that occurs at so many airports in North America.
During my flying life I only ever once landed, and departed, in a light aircraft at an “International” airport – Stockholm-Arlanda – when I was given a special clearance to pick up a friend from an arriving commercial flight. It was a scary experience because the tower opted to speak Swedish with much of the traffic, so I was totally unaware of where anyone was. At take-off I was also instructed to move as fast as I could down the runway in the Cessna 172 I had rented, and then take off as close to the end as possible, so that the commercial SAS DC-9 my friend had arrived on could line up behind me for his departure: I moved the fastest I could by actually leaving the ground and flying at about ten feet above the runway… and then got into uncontrolled air space as fast as that little prop could take me.
The threat of filling that uncontrolled air space with unknown traffic, especially traffic that doesn’t talk, is a really frightening proposition. But it is going to happen.
We are all very aware of the major acceleration in the deployment of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) - mostly in war zones, thank God. They started as simple surveillance devices having the ability to stay aloft for hours at a time. They carried cameras, sensors, and nothing else. As the drones have become more capable of load carrying they have been weaponized and there are types that can carry missiles, types that can carry bombs, and types that can deploy both with very sophisticated targeting. We have all seen stories in the last months of the US carrying out UAV rocket raids in Pakistan territory against believed Taleban/Al-Qa’eda targets.
I suppose it is always easier to kill people when you cannot see the proverbial whites of their eyes, but weaponized UAV operations are even more clinical than being overhead your target in a large bomber.
One of the major hubs of UAV operation – excluding CIA work, which is presumably a completely different story – is nowhere near the ground operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is in Nevada in a little town called Indian Springs, about fifty miles Northwest of Las Vegas. A US Army air facility was built there to support WW-II efforts but it was latterly transferred to the US Air Force and eventually renamed
Creech AFB after General Wilbur L (Bill) Creech: a man who helped modernize the US Air Force in the 1970s/80s.
Indian Springs/Creech has been associated with research projects for some decades so it is probably no surprise that UAV flight training and operations should end up there. What is maybe surprising is that operations in the Middle East are under the
purview of British RAF officers. The MQ-9 Reaper (why the death allusion in these weapon names? Is this fun?) is a version of the Predator UAV and has a
payload of 3700 lb, which can be a combination of Hellfire missiles, GBU-12, and GBU-38 bombs. The Brits are, apparently, really accurate bombers.
Good for them. My problem is that law enforcement has been talking about bringing the UAW into domestic service for tracking bad guys, taking a look at potential bad guys – and where they hang out, and with whom – using visible light, and infra-red cameras and sensors.
Now a Canadian company has a federally-approved UAV helicopter, the DraganFlyer X6, which is legal for use by emergency services across North America. Saskatoon has been
announced as the first city to deploy the mini vehicle, but there is no doubt that law enforcement around the globe is watching developments. The DraganFlyer X6 is cheap at CA$15,000 compared to the Predators of our new war-automated world.
Each of these UAVs, military, CIA, or civilian law enforcement, has a pilot – who uses the front-mounting color camera and on-board instrumentation to actually fly the thing – plus an observer (weapons officer in military use) to monitor the target(s). There is no voice contact with ATC, or other aerial vehicles (as in airplanes) that might be in the area. That is even more scary than other pilots talking Swedish.
