AirMap provided an announcement on Sept. 18 with an article containing the attached diagram on how at least the initial phase of Remote ID on drones will work. They did a live Demo in Silicon Valley and in Switzerland.
As you can see, the Sport/Recreational drone pilot, being non-commercial is not in the picture, literally. So the full launch would only be for identifying commercial drones. There are all kinds of flaws in their logic.
• Commercial Drones will need to have a flight plan filed on record for every flight anywhere in the USA. If you are not a registered drone with a registered flight plan you are invisible to the system.
• This program is not a Radar Tracking monitor system so a drone with a filed flight plan will be represented as being in a general area from start to finish with no way of knowing the exact position of the drone at any given moment in time for a distance of perhaps many miles. Think about that and how accurate it will be with a dozen commercial drones criss-crossing that same common area at the same time.
• Commercial Drones for the most part are going to adhere to the letter of the laws when it comes to operating in public air space and therefore are highly unlikely to be breaking the rules, endangering the public, or engaged in other hazardous actions. This control approach is like preaching to the choir.
• The concept of pulling out your cell phone, launching the ID app with your location on, pointing at a drone flying by at 45 miles per hour at 400 feet altitude against a bright sky to get the ID is completely laughable. Like trying to photograph the license plate of a red light runner with your cell phone starting in your pocket with you being 5 blocks away. Reaction time of the app user vs the speed at which commercial drones will be doing their business as they go by makes this approach a failure from the start unless the drone is equipped with an actual TRANSPONDER. (Phase II?)
• The concerns about public safety, illegal or suspicious activities, public nuisance, and invasion of privacy to name a few
are most frequently related to sport/recreational drones and pilots - a group that is not even recognized in this new ID program. So probably 90% of drone "concerns" will be associated with non-registered, non-participating drones and pilots who are not in the database and therefore increases the
RISK of Mistaken Identity bringing up an actual innocent commercial drone in the same area. FAA knows there isn't a computer big enough to handle every sport drone flight every minute of the day & night across all of America. The equivalent of the national airspace traffic controllers computer X100 or X1000. Not to mention only getting a fraction of the sport pilots to comply with such complications just for a spin around the neighborhood after dinner.
Government Bureaucracy at its finest. Government employees should be required to take a drug screening test before writing up this stuff. ?
Remote ID Readiness Live Demo Article