Gov. John Carney (DE) signed legislation at Vaughn Correctional Center that increases the penalties for individuals trying to use a drone to drop contraband into any of the state’s prisons.

The FAA in partnership with Kittyhawk relaunched its B4UFLY mobile application that allows recreational drone flyers know where they can and cannot fly in the national airspace system.

The Trump administration urged Congress this week to give it new powers to disable or destroy threatening drones. According to Reuters, written testimony from David Glawe, undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at DHS, and Hayley Chang, DHS deputy general counsel, said that “terrorist groups overseas use drones to conduct attacks on the battlefield and continue to plot to use them in terrorist attacks elsewhere. This is a very serious, looming threat that we are currently underprepared to confront.”

There are a number of legislative committees and groups working on counter drone legislation, evaluating existing technology and supporting the development of new technology. Here are some of the major highlights in counter drone research and legislation since the early 2000s.

Legislation has been introduced to protect individual privacy from the growing number of government and commercial drones in use.

The FAA projects a 30x growth of commercial drone use to 600,000 over the next year, which could pose a significant threat to physical security and critical infrastructure. 

As drone popularity, function and capabilities rise, it becomes increasingly apparent that unmanned aerial vehicles will have a hand in transforming campus security.