Drones becoming highly visible after White House incident, Colorado Springs crash
A toy drone shuts down airspace around the white house.
It comes just days after a Fort Carson drone crashed in a Colorado Springs neighborhood.
The secret service detained a man they say tried to fly a remote-controlled drone.
The White House was on lockdown while the incident is being investigated and the lockdown has since been lifted.
Drones can be purchased by everyone, they’re used by the military, city governments and even hobbyists, but regulating them is proving to be a challenge.
It’s a challenge which was on display at the White House Thursday.
“Saw something in the air and everyone yelled ‘get out! go to 8th Street! 8th Street!'”‘ said a man near the evacuation site.
Drones are also used for training and observation by the U.S. military, though in one case, a Fort Carson drone ended up crash landing.
“It had broken off of the main fuselage and the camera was laying in front of it and it was detached,” said Ronald Fisk, a Colorado Springs resident who found a drone in his yard earlier this week.
The military typically uses them to collect data.
“A drone would supplement that, so you could have a camera on the fence, but you might want to have a drone that was a roving patrol essentially,” said Steve Recca, a UCCS professor of human sciences who spent over 20 years working Naval Intelligence. “It fills a gap. How did we do it in the past? We had more people involved. Airplanes flying missions, helicopters, satellites collected that information. Now a drone fills that middle space.”
But where they can be flown by the public is still an issue.
The White House has now been locked down twice for drone flight, fearing it was a security threat.
The FAA restricts drone flights in congested cities.
But the Colorado Legislature killed a bill this month regulating where and how low they could fly.
They’re still used in military training and by civilians. Earlier this year a drone caught video of a fire in Teller County.
“The policy side is the boring side, but it has to keep up with technology,” said Recca.
The FAA says in just three years, they’re expecting 7,500 drones to be in airspace patrolling across the country.
