That “whoosh” sound you hear might be the sound of jobs and investment going overseas:

Amazon is now expanding its R&D operations in Cambridge – two years after buying Cambridge-based startup Evi Technologies – to take advantage of the talent pool of academics and researchers in the area. The lab will focus on Prime Air, Amazon’s name for its drones project, the blog TechCrunch reported.

Amazon has advertised a number of aviation-related UK jobs in recent weeks, such as a flight operations engineer for Amazon Prime Air: “Flight test experience, manned or unmanned, is preferred,” the advertisement stated. Other roles include a senior research scientist position and a site leader job.

It’s probably correct that Amazon Prime Air has been preparing to conduct testing in the UK for some time, and perhaps this project would have commenced regardless of regulatory progress, or the lack thereof, in the U.S. But one can’t help thinking that FAA foot-dragging is already costing us, dearly.