Photo: AN HONORABLE GERMAN/Flickr

Under pressure to open the nation’s skies to drone flights, federal regulators are relying on decades of aviation rules that imagined a human being in the cockpit – not an onslaught of remotely piloted aircraft – prompting questions about whether federal flight rules for drones are strong enough to prevent accidents and midair collisions, recently released documents show.

Many drones and other small aircraft don’t have elaborate on-board detection systems to help them avoid crashes in the air, said Mel Beckman, a California mechanic and pilot who’s been flying for more than 30 years. People who don’t fly planes often are surprised to learn that pilots are required to “see and avoid,” which is exactly what it sounds like – keep a naked eye out for other aircraft.

“There’s no way for a drone pilot to do that,” Beckman said. “He’s on the ground, and he’s looking through a small aperture. Yes, the camera can swivel a little bit, but it’s nothing like the panoramic view the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) envisioned when they expected pilots to maintain their own visual surveillance.”

Congress in February directed regulators to more rapidly establish guidelines for the wider embrace of drones, and a subsequent debate about them leaves the impression for many Americans that unmanned aircraft have rarely operated here. Yet experimental drone flights accompanied by their own set of rules have occurred for years and are described in thousands of pages of FAA experimental flight records obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting through the Freedom of Information Act.

Read more: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/faa-documents-raise-questi...