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This is the FAA's decision that FEMA seems to be (perhaps over-zealously) enforcing. The reason they give is "to provide a safe environment for larimer county f

This is the FAA's decision that FEMA seems to be (perhaps over-zealously) enforcing. The reason they give is "to provide a safe environment for larimer county flooding SAR" (search and rescue). http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_3_4481.html http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_3_4481.html Essentially they're trying to clear the air for SAR vehicles; the idea is to allow SAR teams to coordinate efforts without risking collision with private jets. We don't know what the motivation was behind the UAV response, nor do we know to what extent the story is true. Until we know, we can only speculate. Let's wait until someone does some fact checking to speculate.

mikeash 13y ago
And it should be noted that TFRs like this are extremely common around any sort of disaster where aircraft are involved, so this is nothing unusual.
lamontcg 13y ago
Yeah, as usual it seems the internet is going off half-cocked about this. Looks like the FAA is grounding all aircraft below 3,000 feet at the request of the (state) national guard to conduct SAR with helicopters. Complaining about FEMA looks like its just shooting the messenger in this case. And the state (i.e. local) National Guard is just executing on their own emergency plans and they don't have the ability right now to coordinate air traffic control with anything other than their own helicopters in the air, so everyone else is grounded with no exceptions. That's actually pretty reasonable triage of resources in an emergency. The UAVs might be useful, but they're outside of the scope of the emergency plans right now. Best thing that Falcon could be doing would not be throwing FEMA under the bus, but lining up sales with the National Guard so that the next time this happens the Guard will have their own UAVs in the air under their own command and control structure (and civilians will again all be grounded, no matter how helpful they might want to be).

mikeash 13y ago

And it should be noted that TFRs like this are extremely common around any sort of disaster where aircraft are involved, so this is nothing unusual.

lamontcg 13y ago

Yeah, as usual it seems the internet is going off half-cocked about this. Looks like the FAA is grounding all aircraft below 3,000 feet at the request of the (state) national guard to conduct SAR with helicopters. Complaining about FEMA looks like its just shooting the messenger in this case. And the state (i.e. local) National Guard is just executing on their own emergency plans and they don't have the ability right now to coordinate air traffic control with anything other than their own helicopters in the air, so everyone else is grounded with no exceptions. That's actually pretty reasonable triage of resources in an emergency. The UAVs might be useful, but they're outside of the scope of the emergency plans right now. Best thing that Falcon could be doing would not be throwing FEMA under the bus, but lining up sales with the National Guard so that the next time this happens the Guard will have their own UAVs in the air under their own command and control structure (and civilians will again all be grounded, no matter how helpful they might want to be).