UAS News Podcast — 2012-12-06
Transcript
All right. Hello everyone and welcome to this week's install man in the series of podcasts where we discuss the issues and news that are relevant to the global unmanned technologies community. This is episode 30. Today our topic is drone journalism.
Let's see. I'm your program host Patrick Egan and let's say hello to our special guest host Marcus Min. Marcus. Hello Patrick.
Thank you very much for this honor and thank you Gene for not being around. I appreciate that. Gene's out actually flying some aircraft. He's out in the field as we speak.
He may check in again. It's a comms deal. They're trying to set up a satellite and so they'll call in and we may have hopefully their satellite will be better than my satellite was at White Sands. So maybe we'll have him come in.
We had Marcus on last week but you had some problems with transportation issues but you're on this time. We're going to talk about this week. We're going to talk about the drone journalism.org, their Twitter drone chat with Matthew Scheller and that ought to be interesting. But I wanted to talk before we get into that, I want to talk about a couple of the things that you're doing and I want to talk about the Technology Trading Corporation's Next Generation ISR conference in D.C.
And I know you were on the show this week. But before we get into that, Marcus, you've been on the show a couple of times. Could you please give the listeners a short bio of who you are and what you do?
Basically I work for Technology Trading Corporation. We do symposiums and summits, conferences on the unmanned aircraft system, cybersecurity, ISR, full motion video, big data for government and military, federal government, infrastructure protection, things like that. We try to help educate industry as well as give opportunities for industry to come up with solutions for military, defense and federal government on those key issues that they have pertaining to whatever specific topic that they're looking into.
I've been doing that for about four years, business development and marketing, do a lot of research on hot topics, who's who, what's what, and then trying to get speakers and vendors to come check it out. Right. Right. Well, I do, I mean, it's kind of funny that we're talking about symposium season 2013, but it will be here before you know it.
And the TTC shows are that one of the shows that I try to make every year is your show. It's good. It's top-tier, folks. You know, next week is the Next Generation ISR Conference in DC, and maybe you could give us a high-altitude overview of what that conference is going to be about.
Well, that conference is basically going to cover what's going on in the ISR and slash FMV world. There's a lot of different things out there. You know, there's more increasing roles for ISR assets necessary across, you know, a broad range of needed missions out there, you know, not just persistent global surveillance, global strike, counterintelligence, counterterrorism. But you got to remember that, you know, now with China, North Korea, there's the maritime domain awareness, the air sea or anti-access air denial out there.
And then, you know, we have to even go broader into the sense of space defense. So this is what it's basically covering, you know, and it's going to answer questions like what are the latest OSD and service strategies, road maps and new initiatives?
What roles will DCGS and other major initiatives play? What's the new cutting technology from ISR technologies, including FMV?
Where and how do space, air, ground, sea and cyberspace, now C5 ISR, how does that work? And that's basically what it's going to be about. We're fortunate to have some great opening keynote is Robert Bo Marlin, Deputy Director of ISR Capabilities for the headquarters for the United States Air Force. And he's going to be addressing Air Force ISR needs and initiatives.
Another great person that we'll have is Mr. Michael Sedd, Assistant Deputy for Test and Evaluation for Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Mr. Terry Mitchell, Director for Department of Army Intelligence, Intelligence Futures Directorate.
And Keith Barber, Senior Advisor for Agile Acquisition Initiative Office for the NGA. Those are the first four speakers of the morning. Yeah, that's pretty good. I think I'm going to have to hit that one next year because that's exactly where I'm at.
I'm at the, I'm definitely the C5 ISR level space. The capabilities now for ISR and the different sensors that are out there and the software packages and whatever else are, it's really starting to get pretty amazing. And if you're right out there on the cutting edge, lots is going on. I'm personally getting more into the space thing and I'm pretty excited about that.
So that's pretty good. Again, that's one thing I was kind of saying about the TTC shows. Top tier folks and obviously the people that you have on the roster are top tier folks. You have goods or services that you want to, let's say, have showcased or have people that really are in decision making capabilities see and talk about those shows or the place to go.
So that's my endorsement of those shows. But I know you came back from another one or you were at one this week. What was that one?
That was the Counter-Axis Anti-Axis Aerial Denier or A2D2. Some of us at the office refer to it as R2D2 because it's just a tongue twister of an acronym. Right. And one of the biggest arguments that came out of there, and I read the prep I was asking you, is that we had a debate between whether manned aircraft should be controlling the airspace or unmanned aircraft should be controlling the airspace, anti-Axis Aerial Denial.
Well, I think that battle is going to be fought in the future. And that's common. But I'm kind of of the school that the unmanned is the future of aviation. And as we were talking before the show, we've had guests on the show.
One of them was Ted Wierszmanowski who was an X-29 pilot. He's kind of thrown it out there that there are people out there that believe that the last generation of fighter pilots has been born. And the capabilities, I think when the unmanned thing really blows open and you have more competition, even international competition, which you're going to see, I don't know if you guys have seen some of the stuff that came on from the Chinese. It's looking pretty high tech.
I think it's only going to be a matter of time where you have different countries have unmanned aircraft flying around in international airspace all the time. And that, you know, another thing is that that might come back to minus two with the weaponized platforms. You know, I think that the days of being able to just fly around and whack people and other people's countries come into a close personally. I agree.
And, you know, just, you know, not to go into different tangents, but as you were talking about 2013, one of the biggest things that we have is the Unmanned Aircraft Systems West Symposium. That's one of the big discussions out there is what does, what do the, what do the international countries have available?
What are their payloads? What are their sensors?
What are their weaponized unmanned aircraft systems have? And I know, I believe, I'm not 100% sure, but if we have people like Major General Michael Nagata from the U.S. Army, Deputy Director for Special Operations, pretty sure he's going to address something about that. Well, I think the capabilities are there.
I think that, you know, as far as the U.S. perception of what's coming, I mean, the pictures that I've seen of aircraft in China are getting, I mean, they're knocking off our, you know, global hawks and things like that. But I think that you're going to see them come on stronger. You know, we gave the gift to the Iranians, the RQ-170, and I'm sure that that is, I'm sure everybody's eyeballing that.
The Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, everybody, you know, it's probably like a roundtable of the, let's say, the people that aren't really our friends or have the potential not to be our friends. So I think we'll see that coming on in the not-too-distant future. Well, while I was in D.C., there was already the argument that came up of which drone got shot down over Iran. Oh, really?
Which drone? Was it the U.S.?
Was it Israel? Whose drone came down?
Oh, you mean the ScanEagle? Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's people, it's actually kind of prolific.
And I think that one thing, too, is we lose more of these aircraft and, you know, they get something intact and they can kind of see, oh, okay, here's what it does. This is the configuration. You know, we can make this. It's not that complicated.
And the only things that really are kind of complicated are the autopilots and the code. But even that, I mean, look what's coming on in the hobby world. What you can buy in the hobby world, you can buy autopilots that'll hit waypoints with on-screen display. You know, you can fly them far away or doing it FPV, which is first-person video.
I mean, the capabilities that are out there for a couple of hundred dollars are, I think, good enough to do the job, especially in, let's say, the Middle East and whatnot. Hamas and the other people that are ramps up line. So I think we'll be seeing more and more of that. I think the days of the United States kind of, you know, dominating the skies with unmanned aircrafts coming to a close.
But that's another show. If I may, do you believe that all this new cross-platform across the board will have some kind of interference with each other?
What do you mean, as far as frequencies or? Yeah. They could. I mean, you know, they're trying to work all of that out, but, you know, that's some of the things that I also work on on my night job.
I don't know. I don't want to go into that too much either right now, but I'm looking forward to UAS West. I spoke at it last year, and hopefully I'll be at it this year. And I mean, just real fast, some of the people that will be there, Colonel Phil Stewart, like I said before, I'm sorry, Major General Michael Nagata, U.S.
Army Deputy Director for Special Operations. We have Colonel Phil Stewart, United States Air Force Commander, 9th reconnaissance wing at Abil Air Force Base, Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Becker, U.S. Army Commander, 2nd Battalion, 82nd Aviation Regiment, Commander Al Antran, United States Coast Guard Air Domain, you know, for the Coast Guard. And then, you know, we have Mr.
Paul Schaefer, Airborne Sense and Avoid Lead, United States Air Force. We have the program manager for NASA. You mentioned space. Chuck Johnson is going to be there.
And then we have the President and CEO of Institute, Steve Morrow is going to be there. We have the great Patrick Egan going to be there. Hey, that guy's good. And there's many more, and that's one of the best things we're going to have in that.
It's going to be in San Diego on March 12th through the 14th, so mark the calendars. It's going to be in San Diego March 12th through the 14th. And if you want more information on that, just go to www.ttcus.com or you can call me personally, 310-320-8128. I'd love to give you more information on that.
All right, well, that sounds good. Go check the website out. These guys, I get on the mailing list. I get you guys mailers all the time.
Although I think I might have fallen off the list because I don't get them as regularly as I used to. And this Next Generation ISR show I think is something that I would have probably been interested in. I think next year I may want to check that out because I'm all over that C5 ISR thing. Yeah, it's going to be great.
Yeah, that sounds really interesting. All right, well, I want to move into the next segment where we've got a 45-minute show today. And as always, when we're down at the two-minute warning, it's just kind of like, man, I can't believe we're here already. So I want to kind of move forward.
And I'm going to bring on our guest. He's also at susnews.com contributor. He just wrote a story, Matthew Schreuer. He wrote a piece recently about a drone shoot down.
And I guess that was an animal or some hunting thing or whatever. But we're going to bring Matthew on. Matthew, could you please give the listeners the 411 on what you've been up to and how you got here?
Thanks for having me on, Patrick. I am a journalist and, as you said, a sometimes contributor of susnews.com. I'm also the founder of a website and an organization called dronejournalism.org that's trying to bring together unmanned systems and journalists to aid in reporting and investigative reporting. I kind of come from a mixed background in terms of where journalists typically come from.
I started out as an undergraduate studying mechanical engineering and have kind of a mechanical and computer background. But somehow ended up with a bachelor's in journalism and worked in newspapers. And I had a freelance writer for some news weeklies and some websites. And now I'm here at the University of Illinois.
I work at a grant that's trying to improve science education, STEM education, which is science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. And we also bring unmanned systems into classrooms and try to get students to learn something about engineering and aeronautics and all this stuff. But it is kind of nontraditional, but it's also been very fun and very rewarding. Oh yeah, well, you know, and that STEM thing that you're talking about, we're all about that here too.
Although I don't know if you've heard me espouse this, but I like to call it STEAM and throw the A in there for arts. And I believe that the left-wing people can really add a lot to this as far as design and applications. And to give credit where credit's due, we got that from, I can't remember his name, but it was the Boken Bearings guy. I think his name was Josh.
And I do go out there and talk about adding the art to that. I think it's a good thing. That's all really interesting, Matthew. You know, I think we've talked a little offline about this, and I agree with a lot of the things that you say.
And we'll march right on through here because I want to get into the drone chat and all the rest of that. Let's talk about, like in your view, and I know you kind of touched on it a little bit, what is drone journalism in the way that you view it?
Well, I kind of view it in two different ways. It all revolves around journalists using unmanned systems. But there's kind of two different tiers in looking at this. And one is a very simple approach, which is using the unmanned systems as a platform for aerial photography and video.
And that can bring a new perspective to news stories. And we're looking really honestly at drone journalists for a replacement for the news helicopter, something that's cheap and that can be transported in a backpack and something that's even at the reach of freelancers and independent journalists and people like that. But another more complicated, more technical application for these unmanned systems, as
you know, is mapping, aerial mapping and also collecting sensor data of an area. So you can imagine a journalist trying to detect changes in a landscape over time to understand kind of the scope of a natural or maybe a man-made disaster such as an oil spill, you know, fire, these kinds of things that can actually really enhance an investigation or move it along.
We're not really looking for a replacement for a reporter. I mean, there's a lot of interviewing that has to go on in the background. But as far as approaching an investigation, these systems can be very useful for journalists, we think. Well, yeah, and I would agree with that, that story that we ran at the SUAS News about the meatpacking plant where they were dumping the blood into the river.
I mean, that story went worldwide and one of the kickers on that is that photography was provided by a small unmanned aircraft. And not one of these $50,000 deals, too. It was something that somebody had put together themselves or it was a low cost. And so it really reinforces what you're saying.
I mean, that made the story. If you wrote a story, oh, you know, they're dumping blood into the river, yada yada, oh, okay, yeah, it sounds great. You go back there the next day, it's gone. You know, what's that old, you know, I don't think it was really Confucius said that a picture's worth a thousand words, but some wise guy said that.
And I think that that kind of bolsters what you just said right there. Yeah, and I think that that's actually a textbook example of how we want this new field to work with unmanned systems. I mean, it's interesting because it seems as if this has been a problem that had been going on for a while at that meatpacking plant. People living around that river complained of the stench of whatever was happening in that direction.
But it really wasn't uncovered or discovered until someone was just, you know, a hobbyist was just taking the photos. And he called the Coast Guard and that launched an investigation. Last thing I heard was that the meatpacking plant was closed down by some kind of city ordinance or it's in city council. But it made big waves and I think that journalists can learn a lot by that example.
Well, you know, another good point. And, you know, we discussed this offline too, but the, you know, where journalism is going, you know, and people have to realize that journalism has kind of changed a little bit. But it would be the same thing if I was a freelancer and I was doing that meatpacking plant story. And I said, well, you know, I'm going to try and get some aerial photography and I want to catch them doing this or whatever.
The cost of doing that, setting up with the pilot and the company that owns the airplane to get a time when we could fly out there and take the pictures is still relevant. Is it going to be happening?
Am I going to gamble all that money and, you know, the resources and time to do all that? You know, if you look at that, you go, no, I probably wouldn't do that. Now, I had a small unmanned aircraft that was, you know, fifteen hundred dollars or two thousand dollars. And I had that in my photo journalism toolbox.
Yes, I would go out there and take that picture. And what would be the result that you saw in that article?
And then, you know, what's the downstream result of that? You know, I kind of believe that the journalist is really on the side of the public. You know, do you agree with that, Matthew?
Yeah, yeah, they should be. I mean, all this is about is about data collection ultimately. And there's been a lot of criticism, understandably, about the news media lately, not concentrating on the facts, but concentrating on pundits and spin in this sort of issue. And as you know, newspapers and the media in general financially have been in hot water for a while.
So something like this, the whole drone journalism field, hopefully would bring some credibility back to the field, bring some data, bring some hard evidence, as opposed to relying on sources who have their own motives, for instance. Exactly. I think it adds a level of independence to the field. I definitely, like I was saying, with the downstream thing, you're helping out this community with a low-cost technology.
And I think that can go into other fields too. You know, I want to talk about how you did get alluded to the dronejournalism.org. And I think we talked about this when you were first forming. I think it's a good idea.
I think professional guilds and whatnot for different fields are a good thing, and especially here with this technology. So maybe you could kind of elucidate on what dronejournalism.org is. Sure. Well, it was actually formed one year ago today.
So today is actually the one-year anniversary for dronejournalism.org. And I set up the Web site in hopes of starting just as you said, a professional organization, to hopefully bring some credibility to this. So we would help educate journalists. We have examples of unmanned systems on there, a lot of DJI systems.
Our journalists like to use those. And also we do some of that hobby stuff that you're talking about, because that can be really, it can be a nice entry level. You don't even need to learn programming to be able to work these systems anymore. So part of it's educational, establishing a technological framework.
But part of it's also the ethics, because understandably there's privacy concerns about unmanned systems invading people's privacy. And of course the low opinion rating of journalists right now with the News Corporation hacking scandal, Kate Middleton photos, and all this horrible stuff. I mean combining something that might already have a low public opinion with journalism at this point could be troublesome. So we try to bring some ethics into it.
So we have on our website a kind of template for a rough draft of a code of ethics that we hope journalists will follow. But it's also a wiki in that if you're a journalist and you're interested in pursuing this field and you come on board, you can have a say in shaping this code of ethics. But all that's on the website. And it's grown in the past year, but I have to tell you most of the development in this stuff is not really coming from journalists, although there have been some developments in the Nebraska's drone journalism lab.
Got a $50,000 grant to pursue drone journalism. And the University of Missouri Columbia recently announced that there are some journalists there who are starting sort of a program between engineers and computer scientists and journalists to do the same thing. But most of the work is being done by activists, by activists, people who have a political goal and also have a technical ability to produce unmanned systems. I think the most recent example comes out of Argentina where the government actually shut down the airspace ahead of a protest on the 8th of November.
It was called the 8th protest. But some enterprising activists cobbled together a quadcopter and were able to take some aerial photos that helped illustrate the kind of scope of the unrest there. So again, I think it's a matter of journalists learning from these examples. And I post a lot of these things on the website that hopefully journalists can draw inspiration from for their own development.
I like that. And I like the idea that that was the same reason we started the RCAP, the Remote Control Aerial Photography Association. Kind of a professional guild, best practices, code of ethics, some place you could come to and say, oh, well, these guys have done it before. We can kind of glean something from what they've done.
And we're not out here doing the old Yahoo thing. The other thing we wanted is to be able to get private liability insurance, which we were able to secure, yada, yada, yada. I've gone on about that ad nauseam, but I understand where you're going with that. And I like it.
One other thing I want to touch on, last week we talked about the TMZ drone. And it was kind of funny. They were like, oh, we would do something like that, which I thought was kind of a joke because they'll do anything. And then the other thing, talking about the ethics of these photographs, I mean, on one hand, people are down on the media.
Oh, how could they take these naked pictures of Kate Middleton and yada, yada, yada? Or how could they get these pictures of somebody's wedding or Brad and Angelina Jolie?
This photo will be worth millions of dollars. So you know what?
Maybe the media, is the media really the bad guy or maybe you shouldn't consume? Because obviously these photos are worth millions of dollars. Somebody's consuming it. Somebody's buying the People magazines, the US magazines, National Enquirer, yada, yada, yada.
You know, wherever these outlets are, people are going there and people are checking it out. So I mean, you know, if you're really that upset about it, maybe you should boycott those types of photos. I'm taking it, I guess, a step back for people to kind of maybe put their money where their mouth is with their outrage. But that's just insight from me personally.
Okay, well, the next I want to talk about now, I know you talked about the year anniversary of drone journalism. And last year you guys had a tweet chat. And you're going to have another one, an anniversary, a one year anniversary tweet chat. It's hard to put it in, it won't have a tongue twister.
The whole tweet thing, man, it's just got me befuddled. But anyway, maybe you should come in and talk about that. Sure, yeah. So for those not familiar with what Twitter is, it's a micro blogging platform.
And the closest analogy I can come to it is like Facebook. So you will type a status update and the whole world can see it. But you're limited to 140 characters. So you have to be brief, but that also has its benefits because then you have to stick to the point.
But there's a couple features that we are going to take advantage of on Twitter for this tweet chat. And one of them is this concept called hashtags. So if you're writing a status update or a tweet, as it were, on Twitter, and you include a string of characters that begins with the pound sign, which they call the hashtag, that string of characters then becomes a link that you can click on and you can see all the related posts to that subject, whatever is included in that hashtag. So for this tweet chat, we're going to use the hashtag pound drone J chat.
And if you click on that link, you should find search results, and that should bring you up to date on the conversation. Another way to do it is to just use the search bar on Twitter.com at the top. Type in drone J chat, and it should come up with the same results. But using the hashtag system is pretty efficient for creating these kinds of get togethers on Twitter.
So generally we're going to be trying to answer questions from journalists and non-journalists alike about what is drone journalism, how can you use unmanned systems and journalism, some very basic questions. But if people ask more complicated questions about kits or advice about how to put one together, we'll also try to accommodate that. What time is this?
It's 6 p.m. Pacific, I guess 9 p.m. Eastern. And so we'll probably be doing it for an hour, but you can always follow people and direct a message and continue the conversation afterwards.
That's great. And then also, you know, you can email us here. You can email me at patrick at suasnews.com, and I would be happy to forward all of that on to Matthews. You've got some questions about this, and you can't make the hashtag shindig tonight.
It doesn't sound good. I may monitor that, want to see what I'm doing. Actually, I do at that time, I'm probably going to be out having a couple of pints of cider. But you never know, I may be monitoring that too.
We'll have to see if we can do the multitasking. Okay, well, you know, that's a good idea, and I like that. And it sounds like this thing is kind of growing legs. So, you know, maybe you can talk a little bit more about what has happened in the last year with drone journalism.
Did you, I know when we first talked about this, you were like, yeah, you know, I think, what do you think? Yeah, this is great. And, you know, people get into this and they're kind of bright-eyed, excited, you know, they want to do things. What's this year been like for you, Matthew?
Oh, well, it's, there have been a number of crashes, I'll give you that. It's always a learning experience. I'm trying to fix up one right now. I actually have about three unmanned systems in my basement that need tending to.
But so far in the past year, I think we've made a lot of progress and we had the code of ethics that went up, which is really useful. And technically, though, we were able to produce some aerial photo mosaics, which is kind of the precursor to photo mapping. Photo mapping is a little more complicated in that you need to correct the photos for angles and you have a requirement for overlapping. You need to geotag and so it's a little more complicated.
But if you can make these aerial photo mosaics of the ground, it's just really the next step to creating a full-fledged photo map, which you can then use to observe change detection on the ground. We also connected with and brought several other journalists into the fold. One of them is a documentarian from Canada who did some unmanned work for the Toronto Star. He's got a really nice DJI setup and I think he's gone a long way.
Here in America, we have a journalist from Las Vegas who works for a major station, but it's still a station in the Las Vegas area that does not have a news helicopter. So the approach to his loss, his editor, with this question of should we pursue unmanned systems, and he got the green light and so now he's out and testing his equipment. And so it may not be long before you see news reports out of Las Vegas that use unmanned systems as opposed to manned news helicopters. But the registration is open for anyone with an interest in this.
We keep a running list of people who are actively developing systems or who are actively involved in writing and sort of developing the ethical background or the historic background of this stuff. But again, going back to kind of the broader expectations of drone journalism and where that's gone in the past year, I would have to defer to activists and hacktivists and even those fellows over in Pennsylvania who got their Ockacopter shot down because that's a lot of development right in there. And again, I just have to say that journalists should look to that for inspiration.
In the meantime, progress just keeps marching along. Hopefully by next year we'll have twice or three times as many journalists pursuing this and contributing to the body of work. Yeah, you know, I see it going nowhere but up, but we'll get more into that later. You know, the journalism, like you were saying with the news helicopter, you know, I mean, for those that may be unaware, it costs a lot of money to have a news helicopter.
News helicopter pilots and the maintenance and the fuel and everything else, it's really expensive. And, you know, as you kind of alluded to earlier, you know, budgets for news gathering have shrunk. So not everybody's going to have that. Now, it's the same with the police departments and the police use of unmanned aircraft.
Not every police department or sheriff's department can afford an air wing. You know, it's very pricey. So, you know, these are the type of capabilities that this small unmanned technology brings to the table. You know, even the kind of funny, the privacy thing, and I don't want to get too far off on track on that, but there was a story, a whistleblower from the NSA came on and said that basically everyone is under virtual surveillance.
All of your electronic, let's say, activity is being logged. And, you know, nobody's up in arms about it. I just don't get it. You know, I missed a boat on that one.
I guess maybe I'm aware of a bigger picture. I don't know. But, you know, that's another show. Well, you know, we'll have to have you back in the future.
Mostly guests that come on here, you know, I'd like to have them back, you know, a year's time or six months' time. But let's talk about some of those ethics and how important those are or could be to drone journalists. Yeah. I think the biggest ethical concern that a lot of people in the general public have is with general privacy.
Am I going to be spied on in my backyard doing something? And then is that going to be tabloid fodder?
So in the code of ethics that we have so far, we gear it so that if you are a journalist and you're using an unmanned system, we try to keep you in public spaces. We're primarily concerned about how our public spaces are affected by individuals. So, for instance, the Dallas Meatpacking Plant, perfect example. I'm sure that in that photograph you'll find private land that was a part of the photograph.
But the overarching theme is that it was a public waterway that was being contaminated and that was affecting, you know, the health and the well-being of anyone that was downstream of that river. So that's the kind of thing that we try to train our eyes on and stay away from the, you know, the paparazzi aspect of spying on, not celebrities and this, that and so forth. But also I don't think it would be worth a drone journalist's time to check up on what the Joneses are doing in their backyard because there's generally no news value in that.
So I honestly, unless they're Kate Middleton, but that's... I was going to say, you know, you've got like Ken Kardashians coming over for the barbecue or something. I mean, I don't think it would be worth your time. But you know, the one thing about this, we're talking about the privacy.
I mean, where's the big backlash of manned aviation? You know, how come you don't have ACLU going, well, that's it?
You know, we're grown in all assessments because they can carry cameras and get pictures, paparazzi photos or violate people's privacy. I mean, that happens every day. You don't hear anybody valiating about that. Personally, I think it's a hot topic and it's a way to get people to make donations.
That's me because it goes on every day. I keep pointing people to go on to YouTube and search for MX-59 and it's the... and I'm not just picking on L3. They make a very nice EOIR sensor.
You know, watch the video, look at how many nautical miles to target and you'll see that, you know, that people can... they can look at your face from several nautical miles away and these sensors are much better than the sensors that are going to be carried on small and mid aircraft. It's really a non-issue. I just think it's kind of...
it's just, let's say, issue to shore. Agree?
Disagree? Well, I've heard in the drone journals and community that I agree with the sentiment because many would argue that you can actually violate a person's privacy much more severely with a telephoto lens, a heavy telephoto lens that these may not be able to carry. And, you know, unmanned systems have definite limits as to the kind of environment they can operate in. You know, the weather, the wind, precipitation, all these things would affect the ability to launch a system.
So, at the end of the day, if it's a small system, you're likely not going to have a long duration flight. I mean, if you're talking about lithium polymer batteries, if that's the power source, you might be looking at conservatively maybe, you know, 10 minutes, depending on the configuration and the capacity of the battery. Nitro-powered or gas-powered helicopter systems, they can probably sail off for a lot longer time, but most of these systems that are small are not powered by those means. They're typically lithium polymer batteries, and those have a definite lifespan.
But, yeah, I think that, well, another issue that's important to the Code of Ethics revolves around safety because that's another big concern is this thing going to fall on my head. So, really, we look at safety as the most important issue in the Code of Ethics. Are you trained to handle this equipment?
Do you know it backwards and forwards? Can you troubleshoot a problem in the air?
Are you in an environment where you could land it safely? I mean, I think those are big concerns, but still, at the end of the day, if you compare it to other systems, in 2007, there was a horrible collision between two new helicopters that were Phoenix, Arizona, that were recording a chase. Yeah, please, please, please. Poor people died.
Two of them were astrophotographers. The other two were the pilots. That's not a situation you're going to have with a drone. And if a drone does fall out of the sky, it's got a much smaller footprint.
Even though its lithium polymer batteries could catch fire, I don't think you're going to have as big of a problem. So, in some respects, I think they're safer, and as you get into more complex systems, I mean, the algorithms and the competing technology is getting better every day along with the sensors to give it that sense of a way technology. So, these also, in the future, are not going to be making those kind of mistakes. You're going to know where each other are in the airspace, and they're going to avoid it.
So, safety will become even less of an issue in the future, I think. But it's still an important part of the code of ethics that drone journals should have to follow, I think. Right. And the other thing I want to add to that is the same thing with aerial photographers.
People are, it's not a willy-nilly thing. You don't want to lose your equipment. I've seen, I mean, I have seen some people in the RC community where they'll bring something out to the field, and you're like, you're going to fly that?
And they'll be like, yeah, you know, it's on the jump. Most people that want to use this stuff professionally, their stuff is all squared away, top notch, going to run. And again, I think you alluded to another thing, is it's not long distance, you know, like say point to point airport to airport type of missions. They're short missions, low altitude, close in tight.
I mean, you got to be close and in tight if you got shot down with a shotgun, you know. And the thing that kind of bugs me about that is, you know, I don't know what happened to the guy with the shotgun, but, you know, if you're shooting a gun in that close proximity to people, that would, to me, it suggests that you may not be the safest guy in town. And I may not want to go, you know, upland bird hunting with you. But I want to, you know, let's move on to the one, the last question, because we're down here to about three and a half minutes, like I said in the beginning, it happens quick.
Let's just talk about the regulatory effect on news reporting. We just had this big slowdown with the test centers. I wrote an article about it. It's on the homepage at susnews.com now.
Kind of goes into this a little bit, but what do you think the regulations, how do you think they're going to affect the news reporting from your view? Well, if you're a member of the Fourth Estate, if you're a reporter and you're trying to obtain information, anything that gets in the way of that I think might threaten democracy, because we run on a democratic system and that depends on the kind of knowledge that you can obtain from news media. So I think the effects would obviously, of harsh regulations, would be very negative on the field.
It would prevent it from proliferating. It would prevent it from becoming a legitimate field as opposed to something that's operating in a gray market. But at the end of the day, journalists should attempt to serve the public, and that's one of the larger points of dronejournalism.org, trying to educate and inform journalists so that they can in turn educate the public. So it's not just the journalists or the news media or news corporations that get harmed by the regulations.
Ultimately, it's going to be the average citizen that misses out on important information. I agree with that, and I'm sensing a change or an error of idealism there, Matthew. Yeah, well, a lot of journalists start out idealistic, and media is a brutal place. So some people have that beaten out of them, not me just yet.
Well, I agree with that. I totally agree with what you're talking about. I think that's one of the big, let's say, the goals with the SUAS news. Some people say, oh, well, you should just beat up on the FAA.
But as a journalist, if that's what we're going to do, we have to bring the reality and the facts and the other side of the story to the public so they can make their own, read it and make up their own mind and decide for them what they believe and what they don't believe. Either that or we live in a totalitarian state where you're being dictated to. So I share the idealism there with you. And again, I tell people, you know, I'm an idealist, and there's a fine line between idealist and village idiot.
But for now, I think I got one foot over there in the idealist column. We're down to about 40 seconds. I think today's show was pretty informative. Talking about news, talking about the FAA.
We did make contact with the public affairs people over there at the FAA. We are going to be able to submit some questions to the UASIO. So if anyone has some questions they would like me to ask the FAA, please email me, Patrick, at suasnews.com. Hopefully I'll get that together for the end of the year, end of the year wrap up.
I'd like to thank my guest today, Matthew. Thanks for coming on. I think that was very informative. And Marcus, as always, I look forward to seeing you in March.
Thanks for all the information. You guys have a good day. Good luck with the drone chat, and we'll talk to you later. Thank you, Patrick.
Have a good one. Take care. Bye-bye.