tiny perceived risk
from that Washington Post article that Mark in CA quoted;
Since June 1, commercial airlines, private pilots and air-traffic controllers have alerted the FAA to 25 episodes in which small drones came within a few seconds or a few feet of crashing into much larger aircraft, the records show. Many of the close calls occurred during takeoffs and landings at the nation’s busiest airports, presenting a new threat to aviation safety after decades of steady improvement in air travel.
Many of the previously unreported incident reports — released Wednesday by the FAA in response to long-standing public-records requests from The Washington Post and other news organizations — occurred near New York and Washington.
The FAA data indicates that drones are posing a much greater hazard to air traffic than previously recognized. Until Wednesday, the FAA had publicly disclosed only one other near-collision between a drone and a passenger aircraft: a March 22 incident involving a US Airways regional airliner near Tallahassee, Fla.
I should clarify that a lot of work is going on in ICAO and a number of States, to develop UAS DAA (Detect and Avoid) requirements, regulations and potential solutions, for RPAS (Remotely Piloted Air Systems) operating BLOS (Beyond Line of Sight). I thought you would like those shiny new acronyms. (RAeS Members may recognise that sentence.) This is late in the day, but will probably achieve its objectives in time. But it is about large commercial and military RPAS who expect to operate responsibly in a controlled environment (not necessarily controlled airspace) and do not represent a threat to safety or security (at least not until they are used against a State or organisation such as IS.)
The danger I'm on about is the idiot or rogue with something bought in a model shop that has the capability, intentional or otherwise to bring down an airliner, to whose operator/owner regulations will be a closed book, or a joke. And I do not think the perceived risk is tiny. I think we are sleep-walking to a major disaster, or terrorist attack, using these things within 1 - 2 years at the most.