There are mentions of drone requests that were either dropped or rejected. One Air Force unit gave up a request to use a drone for fire season training due to an "onerous approval process." In another case, the Marines shot down a mayor's desire to use a drone for spotting potholes. That just didn't "make operational sense," inspectors say.

While it sounds from the report as if officials respected the law, there are reasons for concern. It warns that policies about military drone use for civil roles are sometimes ambiguous, and that there's no standard process for it. For instance, no Defense Secretary has ever delegated someone to vet these missions -- if they didn't handle it themselves, there's a problem. The military will likely have to tighten its procedures if it wants to eliminate the chance that someone will misuse combat drones over American soil.