As reported by Reuters with further coverage at PetaPixel, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), essentially the United Nations’ aviation agency, is endorsing the creation of a single international drone registry. Drone manufacturers have been pushing for a single standard so as not to be burdened by differing regulations in different countries.

The hobbyist community is likely to push back after successfully defeating the establishment of just such a registry in the United States.

I was recently interviewed regarding drone regulations and the reporter asked why regulations were needed for a small drone that couldn’t do much damage. It’s a reasonable question and it reveals the difficulty in differentiating between potentially-harmful and harmless drones. A toy quadcopter that easily fits in the palm of your hand will likely do no more harm than giving you a nasty cut. However, U.S. regulations permit recreational drones to weigh as much as 55 pounds. Such a drone falling on someone’s head could well be fatal. Where is the threshold in between? The answer depends partially on the speed of drone (recall that linear momentum is the product of mass and velocity).

In the end, law enforcement needs better tools to identify and interdict drones being operated in an unsafe manner. Anti-drone technologies are being developed but their efficacy is still an open question.