NYPD: Drone Came Within 800 Feet Of Police Chopper

So how big was this drone? Was an NYPD helicopter threatened by something smaller than a chicken? This looks like a cop who wanted to create an incident, not any kind of threat.

The FAA is dragging it’s feet in a big way.

They are talking 10 years, now!

In 2012 Congress decided to prod the agency with the FAA Modernization and Reform Act, ordering it to “safely accelerate” its rulemaking process and setting a September 2015 deadline for release of a plan. Although rule-making for small, unmanned devices could begin before the close of this year, even the inspector general of the Transportation Department has concluded that the FAA “will not meet the September 2015 deadline for safe (drone) integration and it is uncertain when this will be achieved.”

Meanwhile, an agency official reportedly has warned that the entire rulemaking process could take up to a decade.

“The fact that they’re saying that full-blown integration with complete regulations will take another 10 years is kind of frustrating,” says professor Matt Waite, founder of the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Meanwhile, in other countries around the world, multicopters are being used for all sorts of useful civilian applications in agriculture, real estate, SAR, etc. The USA is way behind on this front.