This has been on their mind from the beginning: Carnage from the sky: Experts warn of new terrorist drone threat to U.S. after New Orleans | Just The News
Piehota, the retired FBI executive assistant director, told the John Solomon Reports podcast that drones can cause far more lethal consequences than just the explosive payload they drop if they target a concert hall or stadium.
“If you have a stadium full of people, and even if the area is considered a no drone zone, you have someone fly in a group of drones, and they start dropping explosives, or they you could even set up drones to fire guns into a crowd. … the problem is going to be the massive disruption in a stadium.
The quickest and simplest way for them to remove recreational drone pilots will be to add licensing, drug testing, criminal background checks – and Federal licensing – for all drone pilots. Flying that toy aircraft will soon cost $500 in licensing and background check fees and will then be limited primarily to business activities.
They know they cannot ban drones – there are numerous business functions including real estate and utility inspections, future package delivery, agriculture (especially) – and more. But they can make it too expensive for recreational users – thereby thinning out the drone services.
Update: A Canadian “Super Scoooper” firefighting aircraft is alleged to have struck a drone while flying over southern California wildfires. A search of X found numerous drone videos of the fire scene, most of which were shot for or by media outlets. I do not believe media outlets have a waiver to fly drones within the TFR, particularly since some of the drone video showed active fires a short distance away. I would not be surprised if this was a collision with a media drone, likely operated illegally.
