UNITED STATES UAS/UAV Regulations Limit Corporate Growth Strategies.

It's not hard to find articles about UAV's and Drones in the news recently. It has been a hot button issue on both sides of the debate between their utility in research and personal privacy. It's hard to argue that the benefits of autonomous aircraft are not significant. Commercially, the applications of point to point autonomous delivery systems are staggering. Other application include border monitoring, agricultural research, regulatory surveillance, and environmental monitoring to name a few.

The issue with this technology is that in the United States, regulations prohibit commercial entities from operating a UAV without specific certificates with some very austere regulations. The truth is that unless the operator is a university or government entity, there is little  freedom to operate in this area.

Some may say that these regulations are essential to protect the privacy of citizens that may fall victim of surveillance or that UAV's in the wrong hands could jeopardize the security of the United States itself. While these may be real concerns they hide the fact that limiting United States commercial entities access to these types of technologies also limits their growth potential. Other countries already have well established and flexible programs that allow commercial use and development of UAV platforms. Countries like Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil have very open and unrestricted policies on UAV use. Even Mexico encourages the use and development of UAV platforms.

So what message does this send United States based companies that are in a position to develop and benefit from this technology. Well, in short, it says nothing but we are behind. The US is currently developing regulations for the commercial use of UAV's and has a mandate to do so by 2015. That being the case, is that too little too late. That puts us 2-4 years behind other countries that have established UAV platforms and have already worked these systems into their business model. It also limits innovative companies that develop UAV systems to countries allowing their purchase and use.

I live in what some would describe as the greatest country in the world, yet we continually see this type of oversight that remind us of just how shortsighted our government policies can be. In truth we may have become exactly what our ancestors fought to break free of so long ago. If we want to reclaim the throne we must be more flexible in developing innovative technology regulations.