China ahead of US in drone use

[jwilson]

I just watched this segment about drones on Fareed Zakaria on CNN. He said the main reason China is way ahead of the US in commercial drone use, is the US has too many drone regulations. He mentioned that we just relaxed the LOS rule a little. China is delivering packages, fertilizing fields, and doing many other commercial applications. Pretty soon they will be using them for transportation. But the US is way behind because of the FAA.

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[jaja6009]

Thanks for sharing!

Hopefully we get to where we need to be soon, but safely.

We do some of what the tweet says. We do spray crops (With a somewhat pain to get Part 137 and some state certs) and we do have drones saves lives (COAs and waivers allow public safety to now fly BVLOS and over people pretty easily).

Our package delivery is just getting started and is active in some areas, but Part 108 should supercharge this when it finally comes out.

We are also behind on American companies offering lower cost drones that can do a lot of these things as well as companies such as DJI and Autel (To an extent), but there are some companies that have decent but higher costing products.

Our "flying cars" are also about to become more mainstream. Joby and other companies have prototypes out.

It's an exciting time in drones and I love reading, watching and being a part of it.

 

[jwilson]

Thanks for sharing!

Hopefully we get to where we need to be soon, but safely.

We do some of what the tweet says. We do spray crops (With a somewhat pain to get Part 137 and some state certs) and we do have drones saves lives (COAs and waivers allow public safety to now fly BVLOS and over people pretty easily).

Our package delivery is just getting started and is active in some areas, but Part 108 should supercharge this when it finally comes out.

We are also behind on American companies offering lower cost drones that can do a lot of these things as well as companies such as DJI and Autel (To an extent), but there are some companies that have decent but higher costing products.

Our "flying cars" are also about to become more mainstream. Joby and other companies have prototypes out.

It's an exciting time in drones and I love reading, watching and being a part of it.

If you watch the video, you see Fareed Zakaria says the US might ban DJI drones by the end of the month on national security grounds. It's hard for American companies to match China's low cost of labor making small drones.

 

[Cafguy]

We are also behind on American companies offering lower cost drones that can do a lot of these things as well as companies such as DJI and Autel (To an extent), but there are some companies that have decent but higher costing products.

Its not possible to build a Drone in the U.S. that could match the price of a DJI. we cant get the raw materials to produce them in great numbers and if we could these Drones would cost a fortune! American workers are EXPENSIVE and thanks to the U.S. Government not only must you pay a fair wage, You are on the hook for healthcare. I think the very fact that DJI has pulled out of selling Drones in the U.S. will set the flying car thing back about 10 years!

 

[hank970]

Its not possible to build a Drone in the U.S. that could match the price of a DJI. we cant get the raw materials to produce them in great numbers and if we could these Drones would cost a fortune! American workers are EXPENSIVE and thanks to the U.S. Government not only must you pay a fair wage, You are on the hook for healthcare. I think the very fact that DJI has pulled out of selling Drones in the U.S. will set the flying car thing back about 10 years!

Flying cars weren't a good idea back in the 1950s when Popular Mechanics (or whomever) predicted the advent of flying cars, and the idea hasn't improved with age. We should hope that such contrivances never become common. Try to imagine the skies over Los Angeles or any other major city if every cowboy with money to burn bought one and took to the air. Even with safeguards such as built-in strategic deconfliction (an obtuse term borrowed from the draft of Part 108), air traffic would be a nightmare, and I suspect that large, heavy things and their precious human cargo would be falling out of the skies with monotonous regularity.

 

[Prospect62]

The CCP also gives no f**ks about the safety of their citizenry.

Now, could the FAA relax a little while at the same time getting their act together with this stuff? Yes.

But safety and responsible flight comes first. Hank touched on it. Commercial and military air traffic safety is paramount and regulating what some goofball on the ground can do is key. Unfortunately, like everything else, there's too many cooks in the sUAS kitchen in Washington.