When it comes to new technology, especially technology that changes how society operates, there is always a worry of it being unsafe, insecure, and a hazard to society. These inherent risks are merely obstacles that can always be worked out and the technology can be improved. Since manned flight was first invented by the Wright brothers there have been these worries and risks in aeronautics. The newest aeronautical concern is with remote control aircraft called unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned aerial systems, commonly referred to as drones. Society is afraid of them being used for unethical purposes like terrorism, but the technology of drones is already progressing. As the technology of drones progresses these dangers will disappear almost entirely and the usefulness of drones already far outweighs any potential dangers. Drones will progress and eventually shape the future of three distinct institutions: industry, observation, and military. Each institution has respective obstacles they must overcome before drones can be fully implemented within them.

As is the case for most technology, drones originally started to progress for military purposes. The first implementation of advanced unmanned flight technology was by Germany during World War II with the V-1 flying bomb. The V-1 was outfitted with an 1870 pound warhead and was designed to be either ground launched or be launched from beneath the wing of a manned aircraft. This made it very versatile but it had to be controlled in some way, which started to advance flight technologies like gyros and barometers (Sloggett). This motivated a startup for a program in the U.S. for unmanned aircraft which did not go into full swing until the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam War manned flight became increasingly dangerous so an extra push towards unmanned systems occurred. This ultimately led to the development of the Predator and Reaper drones the U.S. still uses today as well as the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System (UCLASS) program. Both the Predator and Reaper were developed as part of counter-terrorism military efforts as a cheaper alternative to the F-16 fighter jets. The drones are not only capable of conducting pinpoint airstrikes, but they can also conduct stealth reconnaissance missions (Sloggett).

The most recent development for military drones is a project done by MIT for the Pentagon called Perdix. Perdix is a fully autonomous system and “operates in swarms of 20 or more” where “if one drops out… the group can rearrange itself to maintain coverage” (Mizokami).  This new development shows that the potential for drones only continues to increase as the capabilities of smaller technologies increases. This style of drone opens up a whole new possibility for stealth missions, where drones could potentially be mistaken as a flock of birds on a radar. The drones also have the potential to cheaply and efficiently scan a mountainous area, and conduct reconnaissance on small caves. This would keep many soldiers out of high risk areas. They could even be loaded with small amounts of explosives for extremely precise targeted attacks on individual enemy soldiers (Mizokami). This could be used as an amazing alternative to carpet bombings and other types of large scale bombings that put many civilians at risk in populated cities under hostile control. 

Not all drones are used as weapons in military applications, they are actually used to keep a lot of soldiers out of harm’s way. In war torn regions in the Middle East there is a very high IED threat on major resupply routes used by coalition forces so some sort of sensor system needed to be present. To have a ground based system would require “deploying and maintaining a sophisticated network of ground-based sensor systems” or risking servicemen to constantly patrol and watch sensitive areas (Sloggett). So instead of risking many lives a drone system was implemented to surveil these routes. Drones are also hand launched and used to fly ahead of convoys and search for possible ambushes. They are still used to track the movements of enemy forces, just like they were used during the Vietnam War. All of this shows that drones have progressed a lot and are continuing to progress. Drones add a whole new level of safety and precaution for soldiers and have the potential to save many more lives.

Some people believe that drone piloting can be likened to video games, where operators feel no guilt over killing and can completely detach themselves from the atrocities of warfare. This could potentially turn war itself into a game, instead of a terrible thing that should not be taken lightly. Unlike video games, drone operators are deeply integrated into the theatre of war by communicating with soldiers on the ground and tend to spend “hours upon hours of simply watching potential targets up to the point where a strike may be carried out” (Sloggett). According to Sloggett recent surveys have shown that decompression, where a soldier leaves a theatre of war to return home, is very hard and almost impossible on a day to day basis for operators. The operators often continue to feel that they are still at war and require medical help for coping with it. This is evidence that as long as drones still need operators in the military war will never be turned into a game.

Drones currently have one main vulnerability, hacking. Almost any drone, including the complex military ones, can be hacked with the right equipment. There are many methods of hacking that drones a susceptible to including distributed denial of service, Trojan viruses, and even simple “channel hopping” that can be done with a Wi-Fi jammer (Rani et al.). Drones are especially susceptible to hacking from a physical control system standpoint where a hacker can essentially feed the drone false information to it’s on board mechanical control systems, such as wrong GPS coordinates, and force the drone to crash wherever the hacker pleases. This is a very huge flaw in drones and a threat to civilians.  A terrorist could potentially hack into a drone and load it with chemicals or explosives, or try to just crash it into a populated area. There needs to be a public realization of these flaws so something can be done about them. New drone technology needs to implement hacking defense protocols and systems.

Drones are changing how things are observed with new cheap ways to take amazing photos and videos. In increasingly smaller amounts, manned aircraft are still used to do aerial surveys. Compared to unmanned drones “manned aircraft have several disadvantages” like cost where “fixed-wing or helicopters cost hundreds of dollars per survey hour”. They also can be restricted by weather local to the nearest airport and are fairly inaccurate data retrievers with low repeatability. It is almost impossible to fly small manned aircraft in the same exact course multiple times in a row, so when using sensitive equipment to gather the data the data gathered could quite possibly be of a completely different area (Watts). Drones equipped with GPS can fly extremely accurately and can be programmed to fly the same exact course multiple times in a row. This creates a much more reliable method of research, especially if a researcher wants to gather information of the exact changes of an area over time. Although GPS autopilots for manned aircraft exist, according to Watts, they cost upwards of $40000 where as a GPS equipped drone, such as a DJI Phantom or Inspire, only costs around $700-$1500. The “gimbals” or camera fixtures made for such drone are very versatile, so the camera can be upgraded or changed easily. These drones are also equipped with what is called FPV, first person viewer, where on a phone or tablet attached to the controller a drone operator can see in real time what the camera is seeing and then can adjust it accordingly.

Drones are starting to gain popularity in the press, they make it way easier for reporters to take aerial shots of an area. Reporters want to use them in order to gain more information about a situation, like a fire, flood, or hostage situation. In some cases drones can create amazing advantages for reporters to get live footage of an area with “dramatic cinema-quality video” (Spayd). So for some reporters who do not quite understand the rules, the FAA has become “an arbiter of the First Amendment”, where the laws impede on the right to have free press (Spayd). The FAA’s new laws were put into place purely to keep people safe. One of the laws is that in order to operate a drone for commercial purposes, such as news reporting, the operator must have a special pilots license for drones. This ensures that whoever happens to be flying the drone in potentially populated areas has a decreased chance of hurting someone. Spayd, for some reason, also believes that a hobbyist who flies their drone “to the scene of a train crash would likely be operating within the law”, when this is not true. In the FAA’s laws it is written that operators are not allowed to fly over emergency situations or people, in which case flying over a train crash would be illegal for two reasons (United States). The FAA’s laws create a safer environment for everyone, without them there would be a danger of many collisions with commercial aircraft, people, and of interfering with and creating more problems in an emergency situation. 

Drone observation capabilities have already progressed more than was thought to be possible. Drones are used to capture the most extraordinary things on film, from the largest cave in the world to high speed dirt rally races in the mountains. They change the way photography is viewed as a whole and because of their relatively low prices almost anyone can use them to take dramatic pictures. DJI is the most famous and largest drone company with the consumer Phantom 4 that can be flown by almost anyone, and the professional Inspire 2 that takes beyond amazing videos and takes two people to operate. 

One of DJI’s employees, Romeo Durscher, has been traveling the world taking some of these amazing videos and trying to spread the technology of drones (Smith). Durscher has traveled to many poorer countries that cannot afford to dispatch helicopters for search and rescue efforts. He introduced DJI’s drones to some of their government’s employees and taught them how to fly them. The drones can be cheaply used by government employees in search and rescue missions to quickly locate people in trouble and dispatch help to their location, saving many lives. In Myanmar they are used to fly over areas affected by large floods to find and save many people. Durscher also spread his knowledge to the mountains of Europe where avalanches are an all too common hazard. In some areas the mountains are too close together to operate a manned helicopter and can be very dangerous with the high speed winds. Even when people who were caught in an avalanche are located by helicopter there is nowhere for the helicopter to land and the area is very hard to find again on the ground by snowmobile. Drones make these rescue efforts much easier, a drone can be carried in a backpack on the back of a snowmobile and then deployed near the area of the avalanche. The GPS capabilities of drones then make actually finding and traveling to whoever is in danger much easier (Smith).  The use of drones greatly increases the likelihood of actually finding, reaching, and rescuing people in many different situations. This makes using drones the best and cheapest option for almost any search mission.

The area of drones with the most publicity and popularity is industry. Drones have many applications for industrial situations. Many companies are already starting to implement them in their systems. They are being used even in factory settings to carry sensitive and not so sensitive equipment across the large factory floors to increase efficiency and reliability of the transportation of the equipment. A drone is less likely to drop or break a sensitive circuit board than a human. Drones are also powered by electricity which is environmentally friendly, unlike most other ways of transporting materials across factories like forklifts or other vehicles.

The latest idea of industrial advancement with drones is Amazon’s Prime Air. Prime Air is a drone delivery system for packages currently being field tested in the rural highlands of Great Britain. According to Mehra there are eight main obstacles to drone delivery systems, mostly dealing with flight limitations of medium sized drones due to things such as weather and weight. Amazon has already come up with solutions to many of these obstacles. Prime Air uses two main restrictions for reliable delivery service, the package itself can weigh no more than five pounds and the building the package is to be delivered to has to be within a thirty minute flight from the carrier facility. Amazon is building special facilities filled with very common and frequently purchased products to launch their drones from so the package can be delivered in under thirty minutes. The drones have many safety protocols and stay above 200 feet for fast flying and only descend near the delivery destination. The delivery system requires the purchaser to place down a “landing pad” with Amazon’s logo on it in an open area for safe landings (Amazon). This method of delivery will change the service forever. This method could even potentially save lives, imagine if instead of just consumer products they could deliver epi-pens and Benadryl to save someone from a deathly allergic reaction or even a first aid kit while someone in need is waiting for an ambulance to arrive. Eventually USPS might even use drones to deliver regular mail, which would increase efficiency, reduce costs in the long run, and save the environment from the very polluting mail vehicles. 

The drone industry itself is already rapidly growing. According to Weissbach, the drone industry has “expanded into a more than 2.5 billion dollar industry (in the past five years)”. This is a remarkable amount of growth for a technology that has not even been fully implemented in any industry. Drones are still just starting out. Ambitious investors have already started to support and invest in the technology even in its infancy. The application for data collection is limitless for drones and they are even being used in more rudimentary applications like “crop-checking and spraying”. The drone market has received a higher volume of mergers and acquisitions than any other industry in the past fifteen plus years because of this (Weissbach). The drone market will continue to grow with some its main investors being companies like Amazon, Google, and Wal-Mart.

The potential for drones to change everyday life is constantly increasing as more and more of these major companies are starting to invest in it. There have even been some inquiries for human transportation using larger quadcopters in Dubai. Drone applications are limitless and continue to grow with this advancement of technology in autonomy and electric motors. They will also not only become safer but will actually keep many people safe and save lives. Eventually drones will become powerful enough to easily lift people, so saving someone from drowning in a flood or dying of hypothermia on the side of amount will be as simple as deploying a small drone. Even with their few dangers, drones will become the ultimate tool of the future. 

Drones are the epitome of science-fiction becoming reality.  In every science fiction book, movie, or TV show there are autonomous flying robots that complete everyday tasks for people. This is essentially what drones will end up doing. For example, instead of a person walking up and down isles in a warehouse take inventory there will be a drone with a scanner doing it much more efficiently.  They will monitor changes in the earth’s environment and provide society with more accurate information on it. They will keep soldiers out of harm’s way, preventing many losses of life. Drones are and will continue to progress military, industry, and observation.  There are no obstacles that, with a little engineering, the technology cannot overcome.
