I can order a very wide variety of quadcopters online, or build my own - including a camera gimbals with zero interference from any governmental agency.
As long as you maintain line of sight to them, then yes, but calling these "drones" betrays the word "drone".
If you want a true "done", that is: something that flys autonomously, that you don't have to watch, you need to apply for a Certificate of Authorization (COA) from the FAA.
The people who are allowed to apply for these are major universities, and government contractors.
Awesome - thanks for the info and the clarification.
I guess you're correct that we should be careful about the lexicon we use to describe these things. Personally, I don't even like the term Drone.
I see it as an attempt to obfuscate the human element, especially when talking about military operations: i.e. they have a pilot who pulls the trigger - he is just not physically in the weapons delivery platform.
This is a very important, yet very delicate, area that needs to be extremely well deliberated over in the next short while.
I am not confident that politicians have the foresight and testicular fortitude to really make appropriate choices in this matter - especially given the vultures poised on the sidelines with watering mouths over the potential to sell such systems for domestic spying, control and TIA.
>I see it as an attempt to obfuscate the human element, especially when talking about military operations: i.e. they have a pilot who pulls the trigger - he is just not physically in the weapons delivery platform.
Completely agree. I don't know if there are any weaponized UAVs that are capable of fully-autonomous flight, (or if fully[1] autonomous strikes would even be allowed), but I do know that there are fully-autonomous surveillance "drones". Being pilot-less, to me, fulfills the term "drone".
[1]:Practically fully autonomous in the way that a guided missile is. Tell it where to go, and it figures out how to get there.
The same physical quadcopters available online are perfectly capable of flying autonomously beyond line of sight (for example, following preset GPS-waypoints) - some may need extra software for that, some can do it out of the box.
De facto, many people are already flying "true drones" without any authorization, as it's practically available not to "major universities and government contractors" but as a hobby for a teenager.
What is their crime and the currently prescribed punishment for doing this without government authorization?
This is already 100% in place and has been for a long time.