Monday, March 31, 2014

The Import-Export Bank



The Export Import Bank of the United States is a lending institution created to support companies that need loans for various business deals where private lenders will not accept the financial risk.  It could be because the risk is too high, political reasons, or other reasons, but the bottom line is these businesses will not be able to continue operate without financing from the Export-Import bank.

Aviation companies play a huge role in the exporting industry of the U.S. Boeing is a global leader of aircraft manufacturing and plays a central role in trade between the U.S. and other countries.  This Article goes into detail about how Aircraft manufacturers are affected by the Ex-Im bank.  It states that 1/3 of the orders annually delivered are financed through Ex-Im financing.  Without the Ex-Im bank, many jobs would be lost because of a lack of financing for large orders of aircraft.

Companies and advocacy groups (Aerospace Industries Association) in the U.S. like the Export Import bank.  It creates and sustains jobs, it costs the tax payers nothing to operate, it allows companies to maintain competitiveness in a market struggling to come back from recession, it allows for deals to be made that would otherwise fall through, and it keeps us on an even playing field with other countries who also use government loan guarantors to help finance projects for companies such as Boeing.

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or alternatively Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) used to seem like future tech that was unreasonable and didn't really have an application everyday life. That time has come to pass.  Amazon announced last year plans to start same-day drone delivery within a certain radius of a distribution center within a few years. And this story showcases five current uses of drones that are purely civilian in nature.  The coolest one is search and rescue operations.  FAA regulations are scarce for UAS operations at the present moment, but the FAA does have a published fact sheet of information.  The fact sheet explains current rules for operating a UAV in U.S. airspace:

"Obtaining an experimental airworthiness certificate for a particular UAS is currently the only way civil operators of unmanned aircraft are accessing the NAS. Experimental certificate regulations preclude carrying people or property for compensation or hire, but do allow operations for research and development, flight and sales demonstrations and crew training...COAs are available to public entities that want to fly a UAS in civil airspace. Common uses today include law enforcement, firefighting, border patrol, disaster relief, search and rescue, military training, and other government operational missions. 
Applicants make their request through an online process and the FAA evaluates the proposed operation to see if it can be conducted safely.
The COA allows an operator to use a defined block of airspace and includes special provisions unique to the proposed operation. For instance, a COA may require flying only under Visual Flight Rules (VFR) and/or only during daylight hours. COAs usually are issued for a specific period—up to two years in many cases.
Most COAs require coordination with an appropriate air traffic control facility and may require a transponder on the UAS to operate in certain types of airspace.
Because UAS technology cannot currently comply with “see and avoid” rules that apply to all aircraft, a visual observer or an accompanying “chase plane” must maintain visual contact with the UAS and serve as its “eyes” when operating outside airspace restricted from other users.
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This is, frankly, a lack of comprehensive regulation.  The NAS must grow to accommodate UAS operations.  The same FAA fact sheet also talks about working them into NextGen as the FAA researches the appropriate way to regulate UAS in the United States, "The FAA is working with civilian operators to collect technical and operational data that will help refine the UAS airworthiness certification process.  The agency is currently developing a future path for safe integration of civil UAS into the NAS as part of NextGen implementation."

As for the military application of UAVs, they have revolutionized military strategy.  Now the military can run an entire strike operation without using a-10's, bombers, or the personnel it takes to man them.  That saves resources and lives. The most glaring problems seem to be the ease and willingness to use them.  The large amount of drone strikes that have taken place have allegedly killed a lot of unarmed civilians, which could be classified as war crimes. If the government is using drones to spy on its citizens, that would also be cause for alarm. The drones can be a great asset to our government, but there has to be a limit to what we let the government do.

Future civilian UAV jobs would likely include a pilot, ground crew, Chase plane pilots, operations department, research team etc. for what ever the UAV is and if your amazon, a fleet of ground crews and a tech department that runs the computers that fly the drones.