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Can Drones Really Get National Airspace Access?
coondoggie writes "There is a push by a variety of proponents to give unmanned aircraft more free rein in US airspace, but safety is a major hitch in that effort. The Federal Aviation Administration said this week that data from the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, which flies unmanned systems on border patrols, shows a total of 5,688 flight hours from Fiscal Year 2006 to July 13, 2010. The CBP accident rate is 52.7 accidents per 100,000 flight hours. This accident rate is more than seven times the general aviation accident rate (7.11 accidents/100,000 flight hours) and 353 times the commercial aviation accident rate (0.149 accidents/100,000 flight hours)."
An FAA executive noted that an "accident" refers to a situation in which "the aircraft has done something unplanned or unexpected and violates an airspace regulation."
The CPB isn't answerable to the FAA; nothing will happen to them if they violate airspace regulations. So of course they will have a much higher rate of violation than anyone who does.
I talked about some of the reasons behind the push for a desire to fly in commercial airspace after my visit to Creech AFB a couple of years ago. Also some discussion on why there might be a higher accident rate in the drones (pilots want haptic feedback, and they do not have it with current platforms).
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Just because there's nobody in the cockpit doesn't mean there isn't somebody wanking a joystick with malicious intent somewhere.
...is firing a hellfire missile a airspace regulation violation?
In ten years, most of the unmanned aircraft in domestic airspace will not be from the military, but from private enterprise which (by definition) doesn't have an allegiance to any nation or state. As is the case in most situations (I believe) there's a bigger threat to our security, our privacy, our way of life and our freedom from transnational corporations than from "big government".
You are welcome on my lawn.
You might say "Hey, how about all those Al Qaeda and Taliban guys! That's a lot of deaths!" But remember, we aren't smashing the planes into them. Deaths per hour flight time of hellfire missile is another story. 2x10^6 deaths /100,000 hours flight time?
Running the numbers, that means they're looking at 3 incidents in 4 years. That seems like a pretty meaningless exercise to me, especially then comparing that number to commercial flight with millions of hours logged.
have these threats?
Yours In Moscow,
Kilgore Trout
What the "Authorities" will do is to restrict the airspace around the drones in the "national interest". This way a bunch of donut eating policemen can fly million dollar drones to hunt some dirtbags slinging $10 bags of weed.
shows a total of 5,688 flight hours from Fiscal Year 2006 to July 13, 2010. The CBP accident rate is 52.7 accidents per 100,000 flight hours
Wait - so they haven't logged 100,000 flight hours, under 6,000 - and you are extrapolating up to 100,000?
This reminds me of an XKCD
...unaircrafted men (flying superheroes)? You know that will be coming eventually. Either through sophisticated jet-boots, or (my personal favorite) spontaneous emergence of superpowers.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Anybody know of similar stats for driving?
Quick look-up gives 1.25 fatalities/100 million miles traveled for 2008. Haphazard calculating gives 60 accidents/100,000 hours driving (50mph, 1 fatality in 1000 accidents).
Hard to compare, though.
A few hundred thousand in political donations from drone manufacturers is all it will take to get it done.
http://nwbagpipes.com/
*Warning* tangential rant below:
I'm impressed. They managed to get a worse safety record than General Aviation (GA). Kind of hard to believe considering how many terrible pilots I've seen out there. Radio calls? optional. Pattern? Straight in, screw everyone else. Traffic Frequency? For chatting. Maintenance? That's too expensive. Checklists? I'm good at remembering stuff. Etc. Safety is always stressed in aviation but yet we see people regularly getting themselves into tough spots and crashing. It's the constant struggle.
It doesn't help that a lot of the public thinks we shouldn't even be flying general aviation, and flying should only be done by "professionals" with commercial carriers and large airplanes. So we strive to maintain a safety-conscious mindset and try to educate the public on our efforts.
Now , let me just get down off this soap box. Oh yeah, UAVs. Those are cool! Except when they crash.
The national airspace system relies heavily on "See and Avoid". Even in Class A airspace, "see and avoid" overrules all other clearances. How are UAVs going to accomplish that?
Drones are not as capable as human pilots in many situations, but they have their own strengths, pre-defined flying patterns come to mind.
You want to do a search grid, a human pilot can get the job done, but a drone, properly programmed, can do so much more precisely and predictably.
Weather surveys, un-armed patrols, surveillance, search-and-rescue operations, whether or not the drone is actively under remote control or flying itself.
There are uses for these things besides carrying weapons.
I am a military Helicopter pilot and I have literally come back with a UAV sticking out of the side of my aircraft after a mid-air with a small drone. There are lots of growing pains with these things, and they are no where ready for integration in the national airspace system. A growing conflict with military use of UAVs is that they are often being operated by non-pilots(cheaper to train). In many cases the smallest drones are operated by infantrymen who throw these things into the air and rely on big sky theory to separate them from the aircraft providing Close Air Support. Non-pilots typically have less diversity of experience and a lot less air-sense when it comes to situational awareness.
The most likely user of this technology is Law Enforcement. The last thing civil aviation needs is some jack-hole beat cop throwing these things into the air to look for a guy on a stolen bicycle and have a mid-air with an airliner on approach because he dose not understand what is going on above him, or have any responsibility for his actions because his personal safety is not directly tied to the operation of his aircraft. They cant be trusted to use tazers, why the heck would we give them UAVs?
I'm a pilot, paramedic and software engineer. My flying is personal but I try to take a "professional" approach. I agree that there are a lot of not so great pilots out there but the most basic pilot has had a bunch more training than 99.99% of the drivers out there. A typical "commercial" pilot with a commercial certification and an instrument rating (and typically multi-engine in both) has about 3-5 times the training typically required for a CDL.
Pilots and the flying industry are one of the most regulated endeavors in modern society. A good chunk of those regulations are "written in blood" from past accidents. Besides a few thousand pages of official FAA regulations there are thousdand more in ACs, TSOs and even industry standards like SAE, Milstd, ASTM, RTCC, etc. One big part of the problem is there are no standards for UAVs or UAV operators.
Flying is still heavily dependent on "see and avoid". The reality is we probably still avoid as many or more crashes from "big sky theory" than "see and avoid". The people who want to fly UAVs mostly want to fly them where the risk is highest - down low and over population areas. Also the UAV accident rate isn't as sparse as it sounds. There are well over 100,000 hours factoring in overseas usage. Even if you subtract out combat or unknown losses the accident rate of the UAV business is abysmal. Remember this is the industry that gave us unencrypted classified combat video. Check out http://www.homeland1.com/homeland-security-products/unmanned-aerial-vehicles-uav/articles/847069-accident-reports-show-us-drone-aircraft-plagued-with-problems/.
The argument that there is no pilot so the risk is minimal is disturbing. A predator is almost 30' long and a 48' wingspan - 1200# empty and over a ton fully loaded. This is comparable to most 4 seat trainers. Several of the private drones are smaller but have even less QA and little to no redundancy.
The first and only NSTB report on a drone crash is at http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_id=20060509X00531&ntsbno=CHI06MA121&akey=1. It cites the typical chain of errors as well as a series of poor design decisions. It also notes the wreckage path indicated a flat approach and a wreckage path of almost 100' with jet fuel scattered around the crash site (there was no ignition). The operations console being used had suffered approximately 16 lockups in the 4 months prior to the crash and suck lockups were viewed as normal and acceptable. The normal "lost link" procedure normally keeps the aircraft flying a predetermined route over unpopulated areas until control was restablished but improper recovery on the crash failure caused the engine to be turned off.
The lost link route procedure was called out in the NTSB report: "Another contractor, Organizational Strategies, Inc. (OSI), provided the coordinates for the lost-link waypoints to CBP. OSI reported that it developed the waypoints using an Internet satellite website. CBP reported that it also used the same Internet satellite website to verify the location of the waypoints. According to this website, some of the website's imagery is 1 to 3 years old. Neither OSI nor CBP used additional methods to confirm that the waypoints were not located over populated areas." No indication of the resolution of the satellite imagry used - and no requirement for direct verification.
In fairness the CBP is actually one of the more rigourous operators of UAVs. Their pilots are required to be certificated pilots with at least 200 hours of actualy flying time and 200 hours of UAS flying time. They also use specific TFRs to provide seperation and maintain contact and obtain clearances from ATC. Not all FAA "Certificates of Authority" require this level of coordination or training. Many smaller operators operate close enough to the ground or restricted terrain or existing restricted airspace viewed to not interfere with existing flight activity.
The simple reality is the UAV industry is about where manned flight was in the 30s. They hav
Stating a rate of occurrence in per 100,000 or PPM or PPB (using a standard denominator) when you have not looked at a million or a billion things is a standard practice.
But keeping three sig figs for the numerator is pretty dubious.
The fact that these are merely regulations violations is no excuse; when violations are high, the chances of real accidents is raised - this is being underscored as we learn more about the corporate culture of BP and also Massey Mining.
...if that were possible
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Back in 2001/2002 or somewhere thereabouts, I got to attend a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) meeting. This was the same meeting where I saw the most amazing presentation I've ever seen, Brad Edwards presenting his work on the Space Elevator. (It's also where I ended up with up Buzz Aldrin's name badge as a souvenir, but that's another story).
One of the other presenters though was these guys from Sikorsky:
http://www.niac.usra.edu/studies/516Keith.html
Presenting their study "on the potential for the use of autonomous vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicles for affordable package delivery.", which is to say A fleet of autonomous vehicles which would fly to your house and land in the driveway and drop off your latest purchases from Amazon.com, or pick up packages for delivery elsewhere.
Honestly the whole idea was clearly madness, but they were very serious and had put a lot of thought into it. Their final report (at the link above) is worthwhile browsing for anyone interested in the issues involved.
I don't think they had considered things like kids using the system to take joy-rides for example.
G.
An FAA executive noted that an "accident" refers to a situation in which "the aircraft has done something unplanned or unexpected and violates an airspace regulation."
So, deviating from the flight plan is considered an accident?
If the drone operator changes the course in a way that is not inline with the plan, that's considered an accident?
There were 5,688 flight hours in the past 4 years, and only 3 accidents. Claiming that the CBP is 52.7 accidents per 100,000 years is preposterous. They might as well just say 52.742616. I'm not a statistician, but like the GP said, it is absurd to use three significant figures here. It is very unlikely that the accident rate will scale up with standard use. It is much more likely that these accidents happen more often as the system is first used and the kinks are worked out.
Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
Could it be your a hypocrite?
your != you're
"your" is the second person possessive.
"you're" is a contraction of "you are". Note that the apostrophe substitutes for missing letters and sounds.
Not just some of them to make your point.
This is the correct usage, even if this isn't a complete sentence.
Soon there will be smaller type drones, like those flying around in Half Life 2 that snap pictures and reveal your location.
"There is a push by a variety of proponents to give SKYNET more free rein in US airspace"
Fixed that for you....
When the elected leader of Sparta stepped down after his term he was put on trial for abuse of power. The burden was upon the former leader to prove that he had not abused the power he had been given over the last year. A guilty verdict was death.
That might be a bit much. However, if a candidate vowed that if elected he would donate all of his future wages over the poverty line, to charity such and such for the rest of his life, and then did it? If the next person to win did similarly and the string held for a few, then the first person to do otherwise would face significant pressure. It might become law, as did presidential term limits. Can you imagine a nation where all people capable of manipulating policy towards their own ends were required to make life-long vows of poverty, and got biannual IRS audits to make sure they didn't receive "gifts" or were living outside their means? There would still be bad apples, but I suspect the type of people who would run for office would be different.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Nova Queen Pilot: Keldan Control, Keldan Control, this is Nova Queen on primary approach zero-four-zero. Request orbital entry clearance. [com-beep]
Keldon Traffic Controller: Nova Queen, Nova Queen, this is Keldan Control. Maintain zero-four-zero. Orbital entry is clear. [com-beep]
Nova Queen Pilot: Keldan Control, this is Nova Queen. I have an unidentified trace on zero-four-zero. [com-beep]
Keldon Traffic Controller: Nova Queen, this is Keldan Control. Maintain zero-four-zero and switch to Computer Flight Coordination. [com-beep]
Nova Queen Pilot: Switching to CFC, maintaining zero-four-zero. [com-beep]
Nova Queen Pilot: [after a pause] That ship is still coming at us. [com-beep]
Keldon Traffic Controller: Nova Queen, this is Keldan Control. The ship is an unmanned ore carrier on Computer Flight Coordination. [com-beep]
Nova Queen Pilot: I hope you're sure about that, Keldan. It's still on zero-four-zero. [com-beep]
Keldon Traffic Controller: Nova Queen, computer control is confirmed. No problem. [com-beep]
Nova Queen Pilot: You know that and I know that, but does the computer know that? [com-beep]
Keldon Traffic Controller: It'll switch vectors any time now. Relax. [com-beep]
Nova Queen Pilot: I'll relax when it gets that ship off zero-four-zero. [com-beep]
Keldon Traffic Controller: It will. [com-beep]
Nova Queen Pilot: Keldan Control, I have four thousand passengers on this ship and that ore carrier is still on zero-four-zero! [com-beep]
Keldon Traffic Controller: [calmly] Computer Flight Coordination doesn't make errors. [com-beep]
Nova Queen Pilot: To hell with that! Do something, Keldan; that thing is coming straight at us! [com-beep]
Nova Queen Pilot: Keldan Control! [com-beep]
Keldon Traffic Controller: [with sudden urgency] Nova Queen! Switch to manual control! Engage emergency boosters and abort zero-four-zero! Confirm, please! [com-beep]
Nova Queen Pilot: I can see it! My God, it's too late!
Keldon Traffic Controller: Nova Queen, Nova Queen, this is Keldan Control, do you copy? [com-beep]
Keldon Traffic Controller: Nova Queen, Nova Queen, come in please! [com-beep]
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Above 50kft, airspace is unregulated. If you can get there, you can do whatever you want.