18 April 2016 – At least 12 different drones have been shot from the sky in the United States, including drone shootings in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Virginia, Kentucky, and New Jersey.
\Now the FAA is confirming that drone shooting is a federal offense, citing regulations against aircraft sabotage. An aviation attorney (teaching drone law at New York’s Vaughn College of Aeonautics) says this means penalties of up to 20 years in prison for interfering with the “authorized” operation of an aircraft, while threatening a drone or a drone operator would also be a federal crime subject to five years in prison.
The Slate linked above notes this is bad news if you were planning to invest in the DroneDefender, a goofy-looking gun that promised to disrupt intrusive drones by bombarding them with radio waves that disrupt their remote control and GPS signals.
And Popular Science adds that “It also poses a complication for some local and state laws, like Utah’s proposed HB 420, which would let police shoot down drones in emergency situations.”
Meanwhile, police in the Netherlands are actually training eagles to attack drones. And last week in South Africa, a drone crashed through the window of an office building and hit an office worker on the head.
It will be interesting to see how courts rule on the intersection between state laws which were passed by the legislature and explicitly address the situation and FCC regulations which are an interpretation of laws which were written before the situation existed.
Considering it took the FAA this long to come to this conclusion, I think judges should take a careful look at the logic they used in reaching their decision before agreeing with them. That being said, I would need to spend more time than I care to at this time to determine if the laws support the FAA or not.