Copy

Drones + ???? = Savings!

View this email in your browser
↞ Issue #36 - July 15th, 2015 ↠
The 500ft View

Sen Feinstein took to Twitter this week to rally support for her consumer drone bill (as seen on The Buzzer #34). Citing an incident in which a drone interfered with water drops on a California wildfire, she traveled the high road claiming “My bill would help firefighters do their jobs.” This isn’t Sen Feinstein’s first brush with drones, by the way. Back in 2014 at a Senate Commerce Committee meeting, Feinstein told a story in which she destroyed a drone with her stern gaze alone, pausing to relish the schadenfreude.

--

Speaking of drone laws, prominent drone lawyer @dronelaws (aka Brendan Schulman) has joined DJI as their VP of Policy and Legal Affairs. Given Brendan’s contributions to drone policy discussions, it’s a huge win for DJI and, with DJI’s resources at his disposal, hopefully it’ll be a win for the drone community as a whole. That said, we’ll miss his brand agnosticism.

--

Lastly comes news that the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection has finally admitted they're hemorrhaging funds in the service of their Predator drone fleet. With 10 drones, each flying an average of only 1.4 hours per day, they managed to rack up a $62M bill for operations alone (not to mention initial acquisition costs) in 2013. That amounts to roughly $12,000 per flight hour, with little to show for it.

“Unfortunately, despite its 8-year effort and significant investment of taxpayer dollars, CBP could not demonstrate how much the program has improved border security, largely because the program lacks performance measures and CBP was unaware of the true cost of the program”

The initial pitch was that "unmanned aircraft [would] reduce border surveillance costs by between 25 and 50% per mile" but, instead, that cost has ballooned as a result of the program. The expectation that “drones + ???? = savings” is a common fallacy and one we've cautioned against previously (#21). Taking a page out of Sen Feinstein’s book, we’ll pause here for a bit of schadenfreude.

Video of the Week - Drone captures a Kansas tornado (Thanks Kate!)
News
  • UK PM David Cameron will signal that he wants more drones in the UK military at a strategic defense review this fall. [Link]
  • The United States is seeking permission from North African countries to position ISIS-combating drones on their soil. [Link]
  • A North Dakota business is using drones to create aerial imaging for marketing purposes. [Link]
  • The Michigan State Capitol has banned drones from flying over. [Link]
  • The commercial drones market is set to reach $4.8 billion by 2021. [Link]
  • Drone robot company CyPhy Works is looking to build drones capable of automatically following and monitoring users, their children, and their property. [Link]
  • Recreational drones have been banned at the MLB All-Star Game. [Link]
  • The New York Giants have pledged that they will not use their drone to record practices again without first contacting the FAA. [Link]
  • After drone disruptions of firefighting efforts at Californian wildfires, Southern Californian lawmakers are calling for heavier regulations. [Link]
  • New Zealand scientists are using drones to help aid conservation efforts. [Link]
  • Teenagers in Hudson Valley, New York are learning to 3D-print drones as part of an educational summer camp program. [Link]
  • California laboratory HRL says it has created an ultra-lightweight “sandwich” structure that could be used for microdrones. [Link]
  • A list of the first 500 companies approved by the FAA to fly drones over the United States. [Link]
  • Arizona communities Paradise Valley and Phoenix are banning drones for privacy reasons. [Link]
  • Drones will be used to monitor elephant reserves in India. [Link]
  • The Mumbai police have banned drones, citing concerns of a possible terrorist attack after a drone was spotted hovering near an atomic research center. [Link]
  • York police are using drones to cut road closure times by 8-10 hours after car crashes. [Link]
  • Company Tayzu Robotics, in cooperation with the government of the Cayman Islands, will be opening a commercial autonomous drone testing facility - the first in the Western Hemisphere. [Link]
  • The largest ever drone deployment for a humanitarian cause will take place in Ghana over the next two years. [Link]
That’s it for this week. If you come across an interesting drone story, send us an email at submissions@thebuzzer.co and we’ll include it in our next edition. Until then, fly safe and enjoy living in the future.

Yours,
The Buzzer
Copyright © 2015 The Buzzer, All rights reserved.