This is an interesting FAA news release & update (see below):

Three items of note:

The sky will be quickly become very, VERY crowded. Keep in mind that the current US fleet of aircraft is quite a lot less than 250,000 units total. Plus, it’s very likely that a non-trivial number of the UAS aircraft flown by ‘hobbyist’ hands, strictly for ‘recreational purposes’ will likely fly well above 400’ AGL at some time (or times) in their service life.

At this point there exists no ADSB-OUT requirement for UAS (aka ‘drone’) aircraft.

ADSB-OUT in full size aircraft appears to be less and less useful for MAC avoidance as the UAS fleet numbers explode with exponential speed. AND, the up-to-55 lb drones capable of flying quite fast. These devices have lots of sharp and hard components that if the physics are correct, can do catastrophic damage to any of the 135,000 or so GA aircraft… and maybe even to larger aircraft.

It does appear, however, that the FAA anticipates an evolving “regulatory environment”… and again there’s some serious questions about how that will be accomplished with the current Administrations direction to eliminate 1/3 of the regs on the books. Rule making and the Trump goal to contract the millions of Federal regulations remains an open question. Additionally, the real elephant in the closet (or monster beneath the kid’s bed) is the reluctance of Congress to impose meaningful constraintss on hobby use of toy devices that are largely indistinguishable in performance and capabilities from commercial devices.

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From: Federal Aviation Administration [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2017 11:04 AM
To:
Subject: FAA Forecasts Continued Growth in Air Travel

FAA News & Updates



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FAA Forecasts Continued Growth in Air Travel

March 21 – The FAA today released its annual Aerospace Forecast Report Fiscal Years 2017 to 2037, which projects sustained and continued growth in nearly every aspect of air transportation from general aviation private flying to large commercial airline passenger levels.

In commercial air travel, Revenue Passenger Miles (RPMs) are considered the benchmark for measuring aviation growth. An RPM represents one revenue passenger traveling one mile. The FAA forecast calls for system RPMs by mainline and regional air carriers to grow at an average rate of 2.4 percent per year between 2016 and 2037, with international RPMs projected for average annual increases of 3.4 percent per year. System RPMs are forecast to increase 65 percent during the 20-year forecast.

A key new portion of the forecast focuses on the growth in the use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), also known as drones. The FAA projects the small model hobbyist UAS fleet to more than triple in size from an estimated 1.1 million vehicles at the end of 2016 to more than 3.5 million units by 2021. The commercial, non-hobbyist UAS fleet is forecast to grow from 42,000 at the end of 2016 to about 442,000 aircraft by 2021, with an upside possibility of as many as 1.6 million UAS in use by 2021. Pilots of these UAS vehicles are expected to increase from 20,000 at the end of 2016 to a range of 10 to 20 times as many by 2021.

Predictions for small UAS are more difficult to develop given the dynamic, quickly-evolving market. The FAA has provided high and low ranges around the hobbyist forecast, reflecting uncertainty about the public’s continued adoption of this new technology. The FAA’s non-hobbyist (commercial) UAS fleet size forecasts contain certain broad assumptions about operating limitations for small UAS during the next five years based on the basic constraints of the existing regulations: daytime operations, within visual line of sight, and a single pilot operating only one small UAS at a time. he main difference in the high and low end of the forecasts is differing assumptions about how quickly the regulatory environment will evolve, enabling more widespread routine uses of UAS for commercial purposes.

The FAA utilizes a variety of economic data and projections to develop its annual forecast, such as generally accepted projections for the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The FAA annual forecast is consistently considered the industry-wide standard of U.S. aviation-related activities. The report looks at all facets of air travel including commercial airlines, air cargo, private general aviation, and fleet sizes. Read the FAA Aviation Forecast Fact Sheet.
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Translation : evolving regulatory environment means evolving monetary requirement. If it's Federal, it generally garners the most money. Not that states don't waste money, but some still have to balance their budgets.

Why is ADS-B mandate a "solution" for UAS traffic?

lesuther wrote:Why is ADS-B mandate a "solution" for UAS traffic?

In a nutshell: How keen is our eyesight, and how quick are our reactions? Even a small drone hit squarely by a SE FW aircraft could suffer a LOC-I event from the midair, at least if some of the studies of impact effects are correct.

I'd guess most of those nearly 3-4 million new aerial vehicles projected to share the NAS with us in the next four or five years will be in urban areas and rural communities located near airports. Since a high proportion of the GA fleet is likely to have ADSB-OUT (because a lot of us live in/near or fly through/beneath Class B or C and maybe even fly in Class A) at least those aircraft might see an ADSB-OUT equipped drone flying where it ought not.

I guess I've lived long enough that I've seen many fads come and go. Not that drones are entirely a fad, but I think to some extent they are. And they're breakable. I've already watched kids whose skills didn't match their wannados crash their drones by their Hollywoodish antics. If it's only a $70 or $80 toy, that's perhaps not too hard to replace, but when Johnny down the street shows up at the park with a $1,000 drone, and then tries to fly it like his previous toy and crashes it, it might not get replaced. And, after awhile, there's only so much fun stuff that can be done with a drone from a recreational standpoint--the "cool factor" wears off pretty quickly.

The real niche for drones is not as toys, but as commercial tools, and those are not only regulated, but I predict that if the regulations aren't followed, soon there will be more enforcement if there isn't already. Granted that the kids' toys are also supposedly regulated, but it's a whole lot harder to enforce those regulations on a 10 year old who flies too high or within an airport area, than upon a Realtor who puts aerial pictures/videos of his wares on the Internet, and is clearly showing XYZ Subdivision from an excessive height, or the local airport appears in the corner of some of the shots.

What is funny to me is that it was only a few years ago that a remote controlled helicopter was nearly an impossible dream, until someone decided that having 4 rotors rather than just one could be easily managed remotely. I was watching some JAG re-runs a couple of months ago, and there was an episode in which a "super secret" drone with a video camera built in had been taken home by an officer, and his son had gotten ahold of it and used it to spy on some teenage girl. While JAG is certainly not the definitive history archive, it often was pretty close on then current technology. That episode is less than 20 years old.

Cary

PapernScissors wrote:I'd guess most of those nearly 3-4 million new aerial vehicles projected to share the NAS with us in the next four or five years will be in urban areas and rural communities located near airports. Since a high proportion of the GA fleet is likely to have ADSB-OUT (because a lot of us live in/near or fly through/beneath Class B or C and maybe even fly in Class A) at least those aircraft might see an ADSB-OUT equipped drone flying where it ought not.

This is probably conservative (numbers of UAV's). But be careful what you wish for. The current aircraft fleet in the US is less than a quarter million aircraft registered. Fewer are airworthy. Far fewer fly regularly. A tiny fraction are in the air at any given time

Despite this, the 1090ES ADS-B system is saturated or near saturated at some class Bravo locations at times. The 978 band (UAT's) offers more than 20 times the bandwidth of the 1090 channel, but over half of it can be required for FIS-b services.

Imagine how useful a $5k ADS-B install will be to a pilot at 1500' AGL when his 1090 ADS-B system only sees some of the traffic due to band saturation or ground broadcast issues when, say, an extra thousand ADS-b drone clients is present at 10:42 on a Saturday morning in a moderate size metro area. What will a 978 equipped pilot do when the number of irrelevant drones outnumbers relevant aircraft traffic by scores to one?

It doesn't seem very useful to me.

The "cost to treat" seems high as well. How many drone collisions in a year? To date, no drones have hit a plane in the US.

http://fortune.com/2017/02/24/faa-birds-drones-pilots/

If a UAV ads-b system costed, say, $700, and a million drone flying citizens were compelled to purchase a txcvr, the cost to avoid what appears so far to be a very low risk would be $700,000,000, and potentially render a useful system far less useful, and might not avert an incredibly rare accident in any case. I don't think $700 million in costs is the best way to avoid a rash of nearly elusive drone collisions.

On the other hand, if a mandate drove a market to produce a $400 ADS-B unit, more regular aircraft pilots would actually own one, which is great, but so would more drone flyers and the congestion problem is still at issue.

lesuther wrote: How many drone collisions in a year? To date, no drones have hit a plane in the US.

http://fortune.com/2017/02/24/faa-birds-drones-pilots/

I think the operative word here is "yet"... recalling a verified drone/aircraft midair has been reported elsewhere. The number of drone NMAC incidents has grown significantly each year since the FAA started publishing stats.

FWIW, a couple of years ago I flew fire recon out of a small airport in E. WA. Also on the field were two initial attack helicopters. TWICE some hobby drones flew over the airport and all firefighting aircraft were grounded. In both cases the presence of drones prevented our aircraft from launching, mine for recon and 'air attack' and the rotor wings for initial attack missions. For several years now it's been really common for FW and heli tanker aircraft to be pulled off of active fires because of drones. IMHO, the problem isn't one of FAA over reach, but rather gross interference by Congress in the nitty gritty details of the N.A.S.

PapernScissors wrote:

lesuther wrote:TWICE some hobby drones flew over the airport and all firefighting aircraft were grounded. In both cases the presence of drones prevented our aircraft from launching, mine for recon and 'air attack' and the rotor wings for initial attack missions.

I'm not doubting operational impacts of drones in certain cases at all. There are some well-documented problems.

I just don't think it is a half billion dollar or more problem compared to other ways of addressing it. For example, the people involved in some of these documented cases of interference were absolutely arrested and charged.

I also think that traffic reports given by current ADS-b equipment will be impacted by irrelevant clutter. For example, there is no way to ID a client as a UAV. The message field doesn't exist in the specification. And no certified system can be set to, for example, ignore all law abiding UAV's below 400' to free up situational awareness for stuff that matters. This would be relatively easy to do, by the way, but the horse is already out of the barn. And all those airborne clients could literally saturate 1090ES bandwidth in some cases from air to air or ground broadcasts. In other words, while the concept of ADS-b is great, there are technical limitations to opening the door to large numbers of users in metro areas.

Drone numbers will no doubt increase. They are a fun & useful thingie.
How about birds... millions of 'em, and many airstrikes reported. Very few actual problems (sorry Sully)