Drone crashes mount at civilian airports

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/drone-crashes-mount-at-civilian-airports-overseas/2012/11/30/e75a13e4-3a39-11e2-83f9-fb7ac9b29fad_story.html

by stfu • 14 years ago

103 54 14 years ago

washingtonpost.com

Tyrant505• 14 years ago

Obviously not a gamer..

smoyer• 14 years ago

But what about the shorts and tee-shirt? Everyone knows you can only fly a drone properly if dressed in a complete flight-suit.

tangue2• 14 years ago

I was thinking the same thing but then I asked myself if the guys killing people at the other side of the world were dressed like that, and feel ill at ease.

barrkel3• 14 years ago

The BBC used to have a policy of requiring evening dress for their radio announcers. There's something to be said for an inflexible and rules-bound mindset when operating critical machinery - making sure checklists are followed, etc. More fluid application of smarts may be necessary in an emergency, but not as a matter of routine.

cstross2• 14 years ago

The most worrying angles seem to be human factors issues: the lack of coordination between drone crews and airport ATC, and the apparent deficits in training/qualification of pilots.

"Similar accident rate to F-16s at a similar time in their development" doesn't fill me with joy either; combat aircraft can expect a crash or major incident on the order of once per 10,000 flying hours, whereas for airliners the equivalent rate is roughly one crash or major incident per 10^7 hours -- three orders of magnitude safer! It's like comparing over-powered motorbikes in the hands of reckless teenagers with school buses.

The original justification for deploying drones over manned aircraft was that the drones could be built cheaper -- no expensive aircrew to risk in event of a crash, so less need for complex safety systems and multiple redundancy. Now put this cheap, cheerful, and not terribly safe device in the hands of a lowest-bidder contractor's hired help, who may or may not have been hired because they were cheap rather than able to do the job ...

And now imagine the bikers in this metaphor are riding on a stretch of road used by buses, are ignoring the traffic signs, and that a crash will kill everyone involved (including the full bus), and you've got a grasp of the picture we're looking at here.

sebcat2• 14 years ago

They should make the UI user safe. If it goes point-and-click, they could hire almost anyone to operate it. Easier said than done, I guess.

sami36• 14 years ago

In civilian airports equipped with ILS navigation support. Modern commercial aircraft can literally land themselves without human input. As long as runways are properly equipped with the right beacons, automatic landings of drones are not far fetched.

harryf• 14 years ago

To me the most worrying part of this article is this part;

> In a Nov. 20 speech in Washington, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said the Pentagon would expand its use of the unmanned attack planes “outside declared combat zones” as it pursues al-Qaeda supporters in Africa and the Middle East.

pstuart• 14 years ago

The military has to keep engaged to justify its existence, and the blowback from this will give it an unending stream of future "customers".

lostlogin• 14 years ago

Any idea how the International Criminal Court would view a signatory nation doing such things?

greyboy4• 14 years ago

It's a bit unfair, I'd say, to compare a single military fighter jet incident rate to (all?, matured?) civilian aircraft incident rates, as such:

"It's like comparing over-powered motorbikes in the hands of reckless teenagers with school buses."

I'm not excusing the error rate, but civilian aircraft have a faily simple set of operations: fill aircraft with people and/or cargo, fly a pre-determined route at a relatively stable airspeed, and land. Also, what was the error rate of civilian aircraft during development (as the F-16 number reflects)?

Outside of the Concorde, I don't think they have to worry about supersonic speeds. Also, nor are they concerned high angles of attack, or reduced aerodynamics at low altitudes, or low/near surface flying, and a plethora of other uses and scenarios.

Unless I misinterpreted your statement, then disregard this reply.

SoftwareMaven2• 14 years ago

Your parent isn't complaining about the incident rates of military aircraft. He's complaining about putting something with the that high of an incident rate in the same airspace with civilian traffic (not to mention housing). It drastically increases the risk of the civilian aircraft being involved in one of those much-more-numerous incidents, and, when an aircraft has an "incident", the passengers and crew (and people standing under said incident) tend to not come out of it well.

Convenient for the military aircraft causing the incidents in this hypothetical situation, they have no passengers or crew to worry about. And I absolutely believe that will increase the number of risks they (the Air Force or its shoddy contractors) will be willing to take, further increasing the risk to civilians around.

mhb• 14 years ago

And that the crash kills everyone involved except the biker.

arjn• 14 years ago

This is very strange. Why are military "contractors" flying these things ? Should they be trained military personnel piloting the drones ?

nnq• 14 years ago

...contractors + buggy software + hackable systems that could even allow a hacker to take control of the drone = 99% unaccountability

you can do everything with these things and get away with it ...and if you do something really genocidally horrible you can always blame "terrorist hackers" or "criminally incompetent" contractors ...bone chilling scary shit (oh, and I can even start to imagine the international situations provoked by doing stupid things with drones outside the USA - "oh, no, it wasn't an act of war against you country, we just had a software bug - now take please take this money for the damages and don't mention anything to the press" :) )

irishcoffee2• 14 years ago

I can assure you, the communication links between the ground and the drone was not an afterthought. There is an extensive amount of regulation/standardization surrounding this.

UnoriginalGuy• 14 years ago

I am somewhat reading between the lines but from the article it sounds like military contractors handle the local take-off and landing then hand over the drone to the military for the actual combat missions.

I'm guessing they are using microwave communication locally for a more reliable link (than satellite). Since you need twitch responsive communications for take-off and landing.

Once the drone is in the air if it loses communications with the ground then it just either flies it predetermined route or at least flies straight and level until communications are re-established.

The problem here seems to be that people both on the military side and contractor side are cutting tons of corners and we are starting to see the fallout from that here.

I think failure to communicate with ATC (e.g. taking off without permission) is a massive concern. If a traditional pilot did that then they would soon have their licence ripped up, not sure why drone pilots aren't held to the same standard.

Avshalom• 14 years ago

Mercenary groups like Academi (nee XE (nee Blackwater)) count as contractors.

greyboy4• 14 years ago

It's common to give contractors a bad wrap, and certainly some deserve it. But, many DOD contractors are ex-military persons, either retired, discharged, physically unable to remain in service, or simply choose to work "on the other side of the desk" (as they say).

Almost all the contractors I know were in the Air Force, Marines, Navy or Army for some period time. (It's usually very helpful as they still have the necessary clearances and don't need to be sponsored to get one.)

Evbn5• 14 years ago

Yeah it's not an operational failure to use contractors, but it is an accountability failure, because both sides of the table use the contracting relationship as an excuse to break the law and commit treason, as there is no legal culture in place to handle these "organizational" crimes vs traditional mutiny or war crimes committed by a unit in the hierarchical military.

blhack2• 14 years ago

They're used for a lot more than the military, and contractors have the flight time to qualify as pilots for them.

Why should military pilots be flying them? Lots of them are on non-military missions.

SoftwareMaven2• 14 years ago

These[1] are military aircraft flying military missions. I think it is pretty self evident why the military should be flying them. My guess is that having contractors flying them introduces a level of "indirection" reducing any one organization's responsibility and, therefor, its accountability.

1. Of course there are other, non-military drones out there, but they aren't what we are discussing here.

codeonfire2• 14 years ago

The 2000s were the era of military privatization. Military personnel pay rates are set by law. The point is that private corporations can't take a cut when military personnel to do the work, therefore everything except shooting has to be privatized.

codeonfire2• 14 years ago

The 2000s were the era of military privatization. Military personnel pay rates are set by law and are paid by the government to the employee/soldier. Private corporations can't take a cut when military personnel do the work, therefore everything except shooting has to be privatized.

AYBABTME• 14 years ago

"Please sign in to access this article and other exclusive content."

That's not very convenient.

eli• 14 years ago

Strange, I didn't get that message. Try this http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonp...

ivany• 14 years ago

A bit off-topic but per the NYU/Stanford "Living Under Drones" report[1], the use of military drones for "fighting terrorism" has been frightening, to say the least. It turns out that only about 2% of the people killed in Pakistan by drones are high-level terrorists, and collateral damage including women and children is a extremely common. Furthermore, "double-strike" standard operating procedure specifically targets first responders by hitting a target a second time minutes or hours after the first strike. The whole thing is pretty sick and based on the accounts in the report, drone activities terrorize the population as simply being near a terrorist (or someone profiled as a terrorist based on their behavior) can get you killed.

[1] http://livingunderdrones.org/

Evbn5• 14 years ago

This is exactly the sort of misbehavior that the IDF explicitly claims to avoid, to minimize collateral damage.

IDF may not be following its own claimed standards either, but everyone should.

NelsonMinar• 14 years ago

You won't see unmanned drones flying at US civilian airports. Nor, in most cases, anywhere in US civilian airspace. Drones aren't allowed here because we don't know how to safely integrate them into civilian airspace. There's a controversial effort inside FAA to come up with rules for UAVs and it's going very slowly and carefully. The arrogance of us flying drones in Djibouti and Seychelles civilian airspace when we won't let them in our own airspace is pretty amazing.

Evbn5• 14 years ago

I don't know about Djibouti or Seychelles, but depending on their air traffic level, it may be similar to certain testing areas in the US, less dense and intense than something like LAX.

Not saying the drone operators are playing fair and safe, just making room.

SEJeff2• 14 years ago

The Shadow 200 TUAV has been flying in AZ near and all around Ft Huachuca, AZ since before 2001, when I was flying them there. It has an "experimental" FAA designation and we would frequently hold for civi aircraft. Look it up if you don't believe me :)

pilsetnieks• 14 years ago

The mention of software bugs seems worrying - I mean, isn't avionics supposed to be second only to NASA in code quality and being bug-free? Or do they just not care that much since there's not a pilot involved?

Dronator• 14 years ago

Where do drone OPERATORs get their pilots license...?

Radio shack.

lol

Drone crashes mount at civilian airports

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