Recently Simple Flying interviewed James McDanolds the Program Chair of Sonoran Desert Institute’s School of Uncrewed Technology about some future expectations of drone technology. Among other things discussed was Beyond Visual Line Of Sight or BVLOS technologies for drones , implications for air taxis , and US domestic manufacturing of drone components. Discussing Beyond Visual Line Of Sight or BVLOS Beyond Visual Line of Sight or BVLOS is critical to using drones in serious capacities.
BVLOS is defined as where a drone can be safely operated beyond the line of sight of the operator by using sattelites or another means to relay visual and position signals back to the operator. Otherwise it's just a remote control airplane without much merit to the world's armed forces. Currently the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires that drones operated under Part 107 are operated under line-of-sight only where the operator can always see the drone, which means only one drone per operator.
However, remote operation, according to McDanolds, allows for one drone operator to operate multiple drones remotely. This can be useful when checking out wind farms on the civilian side or multiple targets on the military side. To McDanolds, “[BVLOS] makes it so now you don't necessarily have to worry about having that operator on site flying one drone at a time.
You could have one operator flying one drone at different locations throughout the day, and have it be a more effective and .
