Says FAA's Registration Scheme Has Many Issues

Unless you were completely off the grid Monday, you know about the announcement by DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx and FAA Administrator Michael Huerta of a task force that will establish rules for UAV registration. But will registration make things better and safer in the National Air Space? Not according to attorney and pilot Jonathan Rupprecht.

Writing in Robotics Trend, Rupprecht points out 11 issues with the DOT's plan to register nearly all unmanned aircraft. Given the language of the announcement of the task force that said one of its charges will be to determine what will be the criteria for exemption, one could draw a conclusion that there will be some UAVs that will not have to be registered.

But for the most part, anyone flying a UAV, and particularly those who wish to make money with their drones, will be required to be part of a national database. But Rupprecht says that in his view, registration is not practical, and won't make the national air space significantly safer.

First and foremost, he says, there are not enough "N" numbers available to meet the demand that will come from what could eventually be millions of drones dumped into the system. He says that registration will not prevent reckless flying, and posits that the FAA may not have the jurisdiction to regulate drones that are not actively flying He also speculates that the process of registering UAVs will be very expensive to taxpayers.

Then there's the timeline of getting a rule in place by the holiday season when a large number of UAVs is expected to be wrapped and placed under Christmas trees.

There are several other points, but Rupprecht's conclusion is that geo-fencing technology would solve the problems of UAVs flying where they are not supposed to be much more efficiently than will registration. The DOT and FAA task force is charged with having its recommendations to the federal government by sometime in November.

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