What happens if you shoot down a delivery drone?
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Something that I think would be nice is an op out process for personal/commercial drone flights under a reasonable altitude over one's house. Even without the privacy concern getting buzzed by multiple delivery drones a day wouldn't be fun.
Not that anyone with any sense would actually do this. Shooting at things that have cameras, and always know their exact location, is a spectacularly bad idea to me. But anonymous internet tough guys gonna type what they type.
My VTOL is just under 7' wide, flies at about 50mph. Once it transitions to fixed wing after take off its silent and at 300' just a tiny dot.
My quad is not silent but at 300' you can't really hear it unless you are listening for it. It's flying about 25mph and is just under 3' in diameter. It's impossible to see.
Please don't try to shoot at drones, it's dangerous and incredibly unlikely you'd hit the target.
If you want to take down a drone interrupt the control channel, intercept it with another drone, hit it with an EMP, take out the pilot. Be smart.
So amusing, to hear the advice that it's a better idea to take out the pilot than the drone. Haven't heard that one before.
Consider a fleet of much smaller drones “guarding” one’s airspace (putting aside that we do not own it, which IMO is a byproduct of past legislative lack of imagination), that simply get in the way of a large delivery drone. With some level of aggressiveness.
Shooting down aircraft means you'll face FAA-related charges, and they will be hefty.
Under federal law, willfully shooting down an aircraft (including drones) is a felony that may lead to imprisonment (18 U.S.C. § 32)—not to mention other potential liability tied to discharging a firearm into the sky.
see also: https://slate.com/technology/2016/04/faa-confirms-it-s-a-fed...
Or you can have your done jam the other drone and try to confuse it into aborting its mission and doing an emergency landing.
Or you could try to "swallow" the target drone and then deploy some safe-landing chute or chemically inflate a balloon to make a controlled fall.
I assume there are some property damage or theft charges, but getting around faa current regulations should be doable.
Also a crime, the same way as shining a laser at a plane to mess with the pilot is a crime.
> Or you could try to "swallow" the target drone and then deploy some safe-landing chute or chemically inflate a balloon to make a controlled fall.
Interfering with aircraft operations.
> I assume there are some property damage or theft charges, but getting around faa current regulations should be doable.
You'd assume incorrectly in the above examples.
also true for jamming. and keep in mind the ham radio "elmers" plus the FCC -- who are very good at triangulation -- will be on your ass for trying something like that, on top of the FAA chasing you. See also: https://www.fcc.gov/general/jammer-enforcement
all of the techniques you mentioned work for a combat zone -- e.g. Ukraine, or Sudan -- but if you try those in the US you will have federal agencies on you, and they do not mess around when it comes to anything related to aircraft. source: former EW guy, work in train/aircraft/drone control systems.
The FAA, despite their behaviour with Boeing, will absolutely make an example of people who do stupid things.
I'm also pretty sure people have already gone to jail for shooting down drones.
There is a small carve out that drones under 250g can be flown recreationally by anyone, but most drone flights are being done by pilots who have remote pilot licenses from the FAA. Their drones are aircrafts with all the same legal protections as a plane.
Commerical drones like deliveries would definitely not be considered an RC toy.
Aircraft under a certain size, like 250g -- yes, 250 grams -- are toys, and generally don't require a license.
Above 250g are Drones, and require FAA-related certifications to operate. They are aircraft, and are covered by laws protecting aircraft (18 U.S.C. § 32).
Messing with those will catch you Federal (felony) charges, and could get you in prison.
federal =/= felony
Also drones under 250g are still considered aircraft and protected by law.
For some thought experiments, imagine somebody building a large dome over your property, only ever intersecting the airspace. Or if you built a tall building on your own land intersecting with the airspace low-flying planes used to use. Both scenarios would definitely be found in your favor; the FAA won't be the body preventing your tall building, and you'd have no trouble getting a court to remove the trespassing dome.
Separately, the FAA's powers aren't absolute. A drone operator's restrictions when operating as a backyard nuisance are all those which the FAA inflicts _in addition to_ any other applicable laws, regulations, and common law. Even if the FAA classifies that airspace as class G, and even if the FAA doesn't prevent hovering an inch over the ground, you'll be in hot water with the rest of the court system if you do it too long, too often, or for the wrong reasons. Even the FAA would be on your ass if you were reckless with your drone in a residential area (mentioning for completeness; your hypothetical didn't imply recklessness).
Highlighting one way things can get messy, suppose you do that hovering trick and a homeowner doesn't like it. They're free to place a net over your drone (for the sake of argument, suppose it has some sort of rigid supports so it doesn't fall into your drone blades and cause damage). What befalls the drone will likely boil down to "unclaimed property" laws -- you'll likely get it back unharmed, eventually (if you take the right steps), but your day of flying is ruined.
More generally, as I said, the homeowner owns the airspace above their home, and there exists a presumed right of way for certain activities in that airspace. The further you tread from the idea of "when flying you have to pass over _somebody's_ home," the murkier the legal waters get.
Maybe one last idea for now: even in that presumed right of way, not even commercial flights are exempt from the fact they're infringing on your rights. Just the existence of noise and turbulance from an excessive number of nearby planes can suffice (and has sufficed) for landowners to be compensated for the fact that they can't reasonably use their land anymore (and usually the land is condemned and goes through some other unimportant details). The compensation comes, transitively, from the infringing flights (usually more directly from whichever airport or municipality caused the problem, but that incidental cost is _slightly_ trickled down to the rest of the system).