View from Washington [News Comment]

IT HAS TO be among the stranger ironies of aviation history. The US???s military deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) against what it claims are terrorists is driving much wider interest in drones and seeding the growth of a multi-billion dollar civilian market. Yet when it comes to commercial R&D, the US is a laggard. Despite high-profile projects at Google and Amazon, the global civilian UAV business is more active in countries like Israel and even the UK. The latest example of US ambivalence about drones concerns, appropriately enough, Washington DC itself. At least two drone manufacturers ??? DJI, maker of the Phantom, and Ehang, maker of the Ghost ??? have recently announced firmware updates that will prevent their products working within an approximate 15-mile radius of the White House by suppressing access to the area???s GPS data.