UAVS IN CIVILIAN LIFE: It’s not just the military that’s using unmanned aircraft, as Noah Shachtman reports in The New York Times. It sounds, though, as if the bureaucracy is having trouble keeping up with the technology:

Jim Brass, a colleague of Mr. Herwitz at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., sought to use a drone last November to look at a forest fire in the San Gabriel Mountains, north of Los Angeles.

But the Federal Aviation Administration refused to let the drone fly. Getting to the fire, a “controlled burn” begun by the Forest Service to thin trees, would have involved flying through the approach to the suburban airport in Ontario, Calif., and the F.A.A. did not want a drone in crowded airspace.

It is a common problem for civilian drones. A small, piloted airplane can operate pretty much anywhere with little or no notification. But flying a drone means filing for a certificate of authorization, a narrowly drawn permission slip from the F.A.A. to roam a small strip of the skies. Getting the certificate takes months.

“We aren’t pursuing commercial applications over America because U.A.V. flights are so restricted by the F.A.A.,” Mr. Sliwa said, reflecting a common approach in the industry. The agency has yet to issue minimum standards for the drones’ hardware and software. There are no guidelines on how the drones’ human operators should be trained.

The fact that the pilot of a small plane is likely to share the fate of his/her craft is, of course, an added spur to responsibility — and one that isn’t present with unmanned aircraft. But nonetheless, it seems as if the FAA needs to catch up with the times.