I'm fascinated by -- and don't quite know what to make of -- the FAA's decision to create a 30 mile no-fly zone for drones around the capital.
The FAA created the ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone) around Washington, D.C. back in 2003. The DC FRZ (Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area Flight Restricted Zone) is a smaller, even more restricted airspace that prohibits all but "governmental, certain scheduled commercial and a limited set of waivered flights."
The DC FRZ radius is 15-17 miles (13-15 nautical miles), but the new FAA rule doubles that radius for drones.
Am I reading this right? The FAA is more worried about something like a DJI Phantom 3 [B&H|Amazon] weighing a couple of pounds with a 20 minute roundtrip flight time than a plane or a helicopter capable of carrying people and weapons?
What do you make of this?