The recoil impulse of a firearm discharging is a little bit different than a paintball gun. It would probably take a more robust flying drone to fire a weapon and not fall apart, let alone remain controllable. But it's probably doable, at least initially for smaller-caliber weapons.
The other thing is that if that guy is trying to remain anonymous, he's doing a shitty job of it. It is possible to identify people by the shapes of their ears, provided, of course, you have photos of people to compare with that of the unknown person. That's probably why the Feds would like it when they can see the ears of people who were photographed for visas and green cards.
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It raises some interesting enforcement questions. For a while, it may seem like a good, traceless way of murdering someone.
Then, there's paparazzi uses. Industrial espionage. Old fashioned trespassing and vandalism.
The sky is going to get much more dangerous for GA.
We, as a society, will get used to accepting some number of airline accidents each year caused by drones. That number will not be zero. Some number of airliner accidents will cause stricter drone laws, but won't reduce the growing number of drones.
We, as a society, will be willing to accept a vastly higher number of GA disasters. When outcry happens, it will be against manned vehicles being flown, not unmanned.
It'll be a bit more dangerous. I think the small drones (like that one) are going to be flying in the 10-200' AGL ranges. I don't see them flying up in the FLIB altitudes.
On the other hand, I tend to fly at least 2,000' AGL, both for "what if the engine quits" and "where the hell did that radio tower come from" reasons. A lot of guys do fly lower.
Yeah, there's not a lot of overlap in altitudes, I guess. But I'll bet these yahoos will almost never notice that they're near runways, when they are.
I see the need for a recoilless .22.
When I was a kid they had a trigger crank for semi autos. Like the cap gun I had as a little kid.
Do they still make those? A servo would operate that just fine!
w3ski
That's a common hobby toy (a.k.a. children's toy for big boys) outfitted with pieces from another common hobby toy. One of my bosses flew one around the inside of our building back when we actually had a building (sigh!). Needless to say this thing is not capable of reaching GA altitudes. It's barely capable of flying higher than a typical Silicon Valley tilt-up. It also has no camera, meaning that the pilot has to be in visual range. If you have visual, doing a James Earl Ray is a lot easier than flying this thing and getting an accurate shot off (it is quite challenging to fly it).
That said, better drones are certainly possible. The biggest lack this thing has is a camera. But I can think of several ways to get a decent camera on a slightly larger variant of this thing, and then I could fly it without being line of sight...
Well, yeah. I was assuming a technological progression.
About 1990, a guy came into the sailing school where I worked to show, and try to sell to us photos he'd taken of some of our boats. Aerial shots. Taken with a "spy" camera he'd fastened to a RC helicopter.
My first thought? How cool. Aerial photos done on the cheap.
My second thought? How dangerous. Not from a GA standpoint, but from a privacy one.
But I'm ashamed to admit that it didn't occur to me then that it was also potentially a weapons delivery system.
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