Remote ID (RID) as many have predicted is a complete and utter fail and DJI can’t seem to catch a break.
News outlets are reporting that Thomas Matthew Crooks, the Trump shooter had flown a DJI something over the campaign Pennsylvania rally site on the day or in the days beforehand.
This has every chance to become America’s Gatwick. By this I mean a stick the industry will be beaten with ad nauseum. With the the exception of there being proof for this one.
I meant to post something on Saturday when the news broke, thought about instead, did the same again yesterday, thought . It just leaves me angry watching folks leverage the event on Sunday on LinkedIn whilst I wait for a flood of CUAS press releases today Monday when everyone is back in the office.
Lets just look at the simple stuff.
If there had been a TFR (Temporary Flight Restriction) in place for the event the DJI drone would have stopped the flight without special permissions. If he had flown on the day.
It was a DJI drone so would have had RID enabled, all it would have taken to detect that would have been a smartphone and free app.
Let me just find some for the security services and police.
Drone Scanner
OpendroneID OSM (The one I use)
Dronetag
Any of those would have received RID on the day and of course you can place a few on chargers around and about and watch what they are seeing from afar. It’s not a huge tech challenge.
There is a box for $4k that you can put on a roof and leave and then have your officers look at TAK for updates whilst buying doughnuts AirTAK
Creating a rich synthetic vision of the sky is not hard now for compliant traffic.
But Thomas Crooks was a bad guy, no way would he have RID enabled, well it was a DJI system so the Aeroscope transmissions would still have been being sent.
But what will happen today is that we will hear an evil Chinese company was part of the plan to get Trump and that you must buy company ABC’s counter drone system and drone shoot down gun.
This incident will be pulled into counter drone marketing material until the end of time.
My guess is that Thomas thought there might be drone countermeasures on the day so flew at some stage beforehand.
As for Remote ID, it has been sold as a security silver bullet that will free up airspace and lead us to a brave new uncrewed world.
The reality is that it has handcuffed the model aircraft industry in America, fencing it into designated areas, added expense for modules and made another barrier to entry for youngsters.
RID is part of big Co’s attempt to own the sky and monetize every flight.
It does nothing for safety and security, nor aviation safety as aircraft can’t see it.
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