The Drone Threat Is Real—But So Is the Solution

By Tom Walker, Founder & CEO, DroneUp

The Associated Press recently published a story highlighting the growing risk drones pose to commercial airliners near major U.S. airports. It’s a much-needed spotlight—and long overdue. In fact, it’s precisely the kind of national spotlight we need right now.

This isn’t a critique. I’m glad the AP is covering it. However, as someone flying drones and building and deploying real-time drone coordination systems across the country, I want to offer a deeper operational perspective because the urgency is even greater than it sounds.

The threat is real—but so is the fix.

The Threat Isn’t Hypothetical—It’s Measured in Feet

The data is clear, and the AP is correct in raising the flag. Near-miss drone encounters, including confirmed cases within 50 feet of commercial aircraft, are being logged with increasing frequency.

A 50-foot margin at 150 knots isn’t "close." It’s untenable. And it’s happening in the most neglected layer of our national airspace — below 500 feet, near airports — where there's no oversight, no coordination, and no one managing the traffic.

The Surge Is Real—And What’s Reported Barely Scratches the Surface

From January to September 2024, there were 200 drone sightings near U.S. airports, with six requiring pilots to take evasive action. That should have triggered national urgency. It hasn’t.

A study by Embry-Riddle found 24 unreported near-misses at a single airport—not logged, not acted on, not even seen. Multiply that by every uncontrolled airspace around a U.S. airport, and it’s clear: our data gap is our risk gap.

There’s no nationwide tracking. No shared situational awareness. And without it, agencies are making airspace decisions with incomplete and dangerously outdated information.

Traditional ATC Doesn’t Reach the Airspace Where the Risk Lives

The FAA’s legacy ATC system wasn’t built for drones, and it shows. It manages jets at 30,000 feet and close to airports with rigid procedures. But below 400 feet? There is a potential for chaos.

No radar. No live oversight. No traffic management. Just a growing number of autonomous aircraft and zero infrastructure to coordinate them.

The reality is that the existing air traffic workforce is already stretched thin when managing general aviation and commercial flights. Without digital solutions, there’s no path to safely scaling unmanned operations—only growing risk.

While some measures have been taken to address and authorize flights around airports, even these measures aren't enough, and we’re crossing our fingers, turning a blind eye, and hoping it works out.

Concern Is Growing in D.C.—But Concern Doesn’t Clear Airspace

We’ve briefed Members of Congress. We’ve sat with the FAA, DOT, and DHS. The concern is genuine—and growing. But concern alone doesn’t coordinate airspace.

Concern doesn’t deconflict flights. It doesn’t prevent a drone from closing in on an airliner.
It’s a good start—but it’s not a system.

Until concern becomes funding, infrastructure, and accountability, it’s just noise between close calls.

A Collision Isn’t Just Possible—It’s Predictable

The AP quotes experts who say a mid-air collision is inevitable. They’re not wrong—the biggest danger is the everyday operator flying with no tools, no data, and no coordination. We can’t keep treating this as tomorrow’s problem.

We’ve already had drones force MedEvac diversions. A drone collided with a firefighting aircraft in active operations. We’ve had firefighting planes grounded mid-mission. And commercial aircraft have flown final approach with uncoordinated drones in their path.

These aren’t simply one-offs. They’re warning signs. And they’ve been showing up for years.

We’ve delivered these warnings to agencies, legislators, and industry leaders. The data is there. The telemetry is there. The risk is on record.

What’s missing is action. And without it, the next incident won’t be a near miss. It’ll be a headline.

No Infrastructure, No Control—And Everyone Knows It

The AP is correct—there is no national system for real-time unmanned airspace coordination. No unified infrastructure. No shared operating picture. No rules of the road.

Right now, every city, agency, and integrator is improvising—and duplicating each other in the process. Just this week, a local drone initiative was funded in Virginia that overlaps almost exactly with a program the state is already running. That’s not innovation. That’s inefficiency disguised as momentum.

That’s why we’ve proposed the Unmanned Systems Integration Framework (USIF)—a scalable, standards-based solution designed for federal adoption and local execution.
It creates the foundation everyone says we need, but no one has delivered.

Until that framework is deployed, we’re not managing unmanned traffic—we’re gambling with it.

What the AP Missed: The Solution Isn’t Theoretical—It’s Operational

Let me be clear: this isn’t a critique of the AP’s article. It’s a significant contribution, and I’m encouraged to see national attention finally catching up to the urgency.

But the idea that solutions are still in development? That’s just a small part of the problem.

The technology to coordinate low-altitude airspace is advancing rapidly. We’ve been building, testing, and fielding solutions to these specific challenges, and the industry has been proposing real solutions to this exact problem for years.

Uncrew™ is one example. It may not be the only available platform, but it proves the point: the technical challenges are being addressed..

What we don’t have is a national strategy, a policy framework, or the authorization to deploy at scale. That’s not a technology problem. That’s a leadership one.

This isn’t about waiting for the proper legislation.
It’s about using what we already have to fix what we already know is broken.

The Bottom Line

The AP got a lot right. But the most important headline is the one they didn’t write:

The solutions exist. They work. The only thing missing is the will to implement them.