San Diego Refuses To Answer FOIA Requests About Drones

Re:San Diego Refuses To Answer FOIA Requests About Drones by AngryParsley on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @09:13PM (#4812434)

I realize there are other ways to disable or destroy a drone and that you're curious about the legalities. But if you did literally shoot a drone, you'd probably go to jail. If you miss you'll send a bullet miles away, endangering others. If you hit the drone, you'll rain shrapnel on the anyone below. Even then, I doubt a hit would disappate the bullet's kinetic energy safely.

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Re:San Diego Refuses To Answer FOIA Requests About Drones by ChuckMcM on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @12:13AM (#4812928)

See that is the nice thing about shotguns, they spray a pattern of pellets, lethal out to 50 maybe 60 yards and harmless to people down range. I've been duck hunting in fields where the next blind over was close enough to see the pellets land in the water between us.

The other interesting question which has yet to be answered is whether laser damage to video sensors in an unmanned vehicle in the landowner's "airspace" is actionable.

The final interesting question is whether or not its actionable if your R/C plane that you were flying around on your land and it happened to run into a drone and both fell out of the sky is a problem for you or for them. (I'd start that one off by suing them to replace your airplane)

I don't doubt though that all of these will be tested in court though.

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Re:San Diego Refuses To Answer FOIA Requests About Drones by JoeAltmaier on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @09:16PM (#4812438)

A bullet expends its kinetic energy via air friction. Unless it richochets off the drone, it'll fall harmlessly some miles away.

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Re:San Diego Refuses To Answer FOIA Requests About Drones by AngryParsley on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @09:40PM (#4812501)

Only if the trajectory is almost vertical and the bullet is a small caliber. People get killed by celebratory gunfire all the time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire

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Re:San Diego Refuses To Answer FOIA Requests About Drones by JoeAltmaier on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @10:20AM (#4814529)

Bullets fired at any verticle angle will fall 'ballistically' which is a fore-shortened sort-of-parabolic curve due to air friction. If the angle is large, then the fall is essentially at terminal velocity. A shot at a drone is likely to be at a large angle.

The reports of 'celebratory gunfire' deaths are all necessarily speculative - the angle of the shot is impossible to measure. We can resort to physics to get a better answer than that derived from headlines.

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Re:San Diego Refuses To Answer FOIA Requests About Drones by asynchronous13 on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @02:29AM (#4813263)

Harmlessly? I know this is off topic, but....

A close friend of mine was killed by a stray bullet this year at a 4th of July celebration. She was in a crowd of thousands of people gathered to watch some local fireworks. The shooter was miles away and probably has no idea that they murdered someone.

http://statenews.com/index.php/article/2012/07/student_shot_...

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Re:San Diego Refuses To Answer FOIA Requests About Drones by JoeAltmaier on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @10:14AM (#4814500)

I'm so sorry for your loss.

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Re:San Diego Refuses To Answer FOIA Requests About Drones by notdrunkatall on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @03:46AM (#4813422)

How horrifyingly random.

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