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More Drones Set To Use US Air Space
Dupple writes with a quote from the BBC about more testing of Predator drones in U.S. air space: "Tests have been carried out to see whether military drones can mix safely in the air with passenger planes. The tests involved a Predator B drone fitted with radio location systems found on domestic aircraft that help them spot and avoid other planes. The tests will help to pave the way for greater use of drones in America's domestic airspace."
Say farewell forever to even the concept of posse comitatus, limited as it was. Now it is just a Latin phrase you never heard of.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Take that fourth amendment!
Eventually other countries will have drone capability, and will be flying them over US soil. It's important that we develop the technology to do it safely. ;)
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
This will create a huge burden on hunters aiming for fowl.
I am starting to really hate my country. This is crap.
AlphaA
they get hacked or something?
The Plain View Doctrine (or is it "Plane View"?) probably applies here unfortunately.
You should sit in on a tasking meeting
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
It's weird how "Drone" has become the word of choice among the general public. Maybe this was the inevitable backlash against the acronym politics. UAV, UAS, RPA, etc.
3 acronyms for essentially the same thing for no other reason than cultural acceptance by the audience. UAV seemed like it was gaining traction and then the switch was made to UAS in order to get the focus away from the flashy air-frames and on to the total system as an integrated package. This distinction at first seems to undermine the push for platform agnostic inter-operable systems. Maybe it has streamlined purchase of ground control station equipment with monies appropriated for the Unmaned Aerial Vehicles?
Where they have been flying hasn't had passenger airplanes?
Home of the brave.
tell us more
The "radio location system" they mention is probably ADS-B, which emits the position, speed, heading, etc... of planes every second.
Interestingly enough, you can listen in on those with a 20$ tv tuner (software defined radio):
http://www.irrational.net/2012/08/06/tracking-planes-for-20-or-less/
So I guess the good news is at least that we'll be able to tell when and where the drones are flying... if this is abused enough, once could also imagine taking them done with DIY drones.
This type of thing won't happen when Barack Obama is president!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
You should sit in on a tasking meeting
Oh, we know. It's just that we don't agree with it. Is that so hard to understand?
They told me if I voted for McCain, we'd see drones blanket our domestic airspace... and they were right.
If domestic drones will be allowed in domestic civilian airspace as long as they carry active ADS-B transponders, then there are a number of receiver+software packages that would enable them to be tracked by anyone with some tech skills.
Google "ADS-B receiver", one example: http://www.scannermaster.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=28-661518
But are they using them?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/10/12/223208/seattle-police-want-more-drones-even-while-two-sit-unused
Reminding us all how kooky we are, because the military and police have already been flying these things around us for years, and we're tinfoil-hat nutters if we don't like it.
It's like saying that since I've already been punching you in the face for twenty minutes, I've established that it's OK and I shouldn't be compelled by any assault laws to stop it. Don't your knees hurt yet?
JOE: Ask the cop on the corner...
DC: Ask the cop in the grocery store...
JOE: Ask the cop in the woodpile...
DC: Ask the cop on the rooftop...
JOE: Ask that cop that's knockin' at your back door...
SOUND: Knocking.
DC: Ask him!
--
BMO
http://www.flightradar24.com/
where will they fit?
Make no mistake. As soon as the body of safety data gets large enough we will see the elimination of pilots on commercial air craft. Once it is established that the bots drones are safer than human pilots another trade will vanish. Commercial trucking is on the edge of eliminating human drivers already. The safty record looks good and computized drivers do not break rules, speed, or go mental from the boredom.
The purpose of technology has always been to eliminate human labor. The catch is that we have no social structure at hand to take care of the many millions being displaced by job losses due to better technologies.
Not every plane is equipped to receive those signals and not every plane is required to transmit those signals. I have friends whose planes don't even have a battery / electrical system (they use magnetic compass and vacuum gauges). So long as the drones stay above say 30,000 feet and takeoff / land only at certain airports I suppose they might not interfere.
Pro: A drone could deliver you a pizza from your favorite joint across town during rush hour in five minutes.
Con: It could also deliver hellfire missiles if you don't tip the operator.
Am I the only person who is surprised that this story hasn't been tagged with "skynet"?
Partially, but many if not most aircraft dont implement it yet. Its especially unlikely that any general aviation aircraft (think cessna 172 and similar) will have it, and these are the aircraft that are most likely to be flying in the same airspace as a drone.
ADS_B is part of FAA's Nexgen project. They will only require most aircraft to carry it by 2020.
Personally I think this test will be a foregone conclusion for political reasons regardless of how actually safe it is.
Ballons, gliders, hang gliders, paragliders, antique airplanes, light sport aircraft... lawnchairs... weatherballoons.
No need for skillz, there are websites [flightradar24.com] that track stuff for you. (At least their coverage for non-US flights is ADS-B based, real time, and collected from private contributing scanners AFAIK, US flights go through FAA)
Personally I think this test will be a foregone conclusion for political reasons that drones will be deemed useable (even over cities) regardless of how actually safe it is.
Its especially ironic considering the current air law prohibits pilots flying 'experimental' class aircraft or ultralights over cities or any built-up area.
If I were the military, then I would argue that the drones are able to avoid any aircraft, and therefore do not need to carry a transponder themselves.
Logically local and county law enforcement agencies will not be able to deploy high altitude, costly drones and will likely deploy lower cost, low altitude drones. I wonder how long before a collision with a private aircraft occurs? I fly and it scares me that someone, who has little actual flight time, could pilot a drone where he shouldn't and cause a fatality. I am hoping they stay away from incoming and outgoing paths and stay BELOW private airspace. They should be required to follow a similar avoidance protocol that small aircraft abide by for airports. Basically the forbidden space looks like an upside down tiered cake. It's all about the training and I pray they don't skimp on training the local blue boys.
Who's fault will it be? How many people will it kill?
Nevermind the whole 4th amendment and all the other privacy implications, these are dangerous!
They say "once ADS-B is widely deployed", unless ADS-B is 100% deployed and 100% reliable, these things will run into other aircraft. I know there is a mandate by the FAA to have the whole fleet of aircraft in the US be ADS-B out by 2020, but that won't happen. Some aircraft don't have any electrical system (IE sailplanes), so they will be exempted from the mandate, while flying outside of controlled airspace and won't have ADS-B out. See and avoid will work for manned aircraft, but not for drones (who is seeing).
See and avoid doesn't work for manned aircraft 100%, automated systems don't work 100%. There is no good reason to put unmanned aircraft in civilian airspace. The cost argument fails, since they cost as much or more than light aircraft. The danger argument fails, since they are dangerous to everyone but the pilot (when they crash where do they land?).
Spookey times we live in.
Around Lake St. Clair, from SANG
http://www.127wg.ang.af.mil/
Get up!
Because we TOTALLY need drones in domestic airspace to protect us against ______________.
Anyone up for building an anti-drone that homes in on ADS-B transponder signals? Takes a drone to kill a drone!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I would imagine that if this evolves it will end up having constraints attached to it along the lines of the prohibitions on retransmitting or relaying information from other protected radio frequencies. While there are useful reasons to translate and distribute general flight tracking information, I'd be willing to bet that either these services are forced to omit law enforcement transponders altogether, or there will be automated gag orders on such sites regarding to drones under certain circumstances such as pending activity (selective availability on drone tracking data?)
In any case, I would imagine that if you want accurate local drone data you'll have to collect it yourself.
As others have now posted this is possible on the cheap: RTL-SDR software over DVB-T dongles based on Realtek RTL2832U (supposedly as cheap as $20) provide a receiver, and GNU Radio with gr-air-modes gives you decoded ADS-B data streams on a decent PC.
Remember the ever present police hover craft in the dystopian future of Jessica Alba's backside?
Sure mine won't be as classy as the military grade drones. But I'll still be able to do some cool stuff...
- Follow the police around and see what they are up to all day
- Follow the local politicians around to see who's working and who's dicking around all day
- Watch fireworks from above
- Drop politically motivated leaflets
- Provide a roving 3g/4g hotspot anywhere I want
Possibilities for this are endless.... Go Forth my Drone Army!!!!!
I want my Way Back machine to go back and vote for Ross Perot. Seemingly a nut case at the time, we have all heard the giant "sucking sound", he warned of, on the US economy.
THERE IS NO PREDATOR B!
IT'S AN MQ-9 REAPER!
Calling it "Predator B" just leads to confusion, as the production model of the Predator is the MQ-1B, the follow-on to the prototype RQ-1A.
This causes no end of frustration on an almost daily basis at work...
Besides all this, the aircraft in the article was a Guardian, which makes calling it a "Predator B" even more inane.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
For IFR traffic, the traffic management system is supposed to keep them apart anyway.
For VFR traffic, the required sensor is visual, not everything out there has electronic markers on it.
Spot and avoid sounds like visually see and avoid, which is not what they have.
Seems like if they were proud of the new system they are suggesting,
then they would not choose words to make it sound like they support the current system.
Air traffic is supposed to use both visual and electronic means to avoid
Exactly. Far more than ADS-B is required to prevent air collisions. Furthermore, this is squarely setting up to blame pilots for deaths caused by drones. Pilots are required to "see and avoid." Many drones are small, hard to see, and damn near invisible in the air. Expect that to continue in the future; meaning smaller and harder to see. Even with ADS-B, pilots are now 50% more likely to have a mid air event.
A 50% decrease is air safety is by no means a step in the right direction. Yet, that's where corporations, police enforncement, and the DoD want to push things.
If you believe innocent people have the right to not be murdered by law enforcement, corporations, and the DoD, then you are against drones in most US airspace. ...off soap box...
how long until the first drone is shot down over some ranch in west Texas?
No one is mentioning this declared fact. It's testing PREDATOR drones.
George Orwell could have never imagined the implications, but it does not take a genius to figure out;
We will be stopping our fleeing suspects with an airstrike.
What will the warning sound like? Stop or you're toast!
There will be some sort of "security reason" for the operation.
Investors are scrambling. What a world we have built.
Scare the people, then sell them "protection."
Drones brought democracy to Afghanistan, what's not to like?
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
n/t
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class
Anyone reading your list can see that the Police Protective Guild or some SuperPAC will ensure that our Fearless Leaders will close all the pertinent loopholes in the law so as to felonize any civilian uses.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
...all we need now is Skynet and Romney's eyes to start glowing red!
^ sanity
All pedantry aside, the "Guardian" (...Reminds me of "To Protect and Serve", brilliant connotation!) is an unarmed(?) model of the "MQ-1B".
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Waterboarding specifically attempts to avoid water entering the nose, mouth, and airways.
Waterboarding can be done without water entering the victims body, but it can also include procedures where a funnel or syringe is used to dribble water into the back of the victims throat.
Many years ago I went through SERE training, and I was waterboarded as part of the training. The instructors used the less severe method of pouring water onto a cloth covering my mouth and nose. We were given two small dumbells, one to hold in each hand, and told that when it became "unbearable" to just drop the weights and the cloth would be removed. We had a mixture of Navy and Marine personnel, and to give us an extra incentive to last as long as possible they did us one-at-a-time in front of the whole class. I didn't care if I held out longer than the other jarheads, but I was determined not to let any of the "squids" outlast me.
I tried to resist as long as I could, but soon it felt like someone was shooting a blowtorch into my lungs. I would have done anything to make it stop. I was single at the time, but today I have two kids. If I the only way to make it stop was a button that would kill my kids, I think I would push that button. It was that bad. It was certainly enough to make me betray my country and comrades, and no one who hasn't been through it should judge that.
Is it torture? I think it depends on your definition. I had no permanent harm or injury. I think the best answer is to ask if we would consider it torture if it was done to a captured American soldier.
Also, torture can and does result in useful information. Its just not reliable information. There is a difference.
Very true. Anyone who says "torture doesn't work" is clueless. The whole point of our training was to show that it works very well, and expecting anyone to "tough it out" is futile. Instead we need to compartmentalize information on a "need-to-know" basis, and assume that when someone is captured, everything they know is compromised.
There are plenty of methods for getting reliable information. If you have partial information, you can check extracted info against that. Some extracted info can be quickly verified against existing intelligence. If you capture three people, separate them, and continue to torture all three until their stories match up. You can use drugs to help break down resistance, and cloud the detainee's mind so it is difficult to keep the lies consistent. Sodium barbital works well, and can be combined with pain enhancers such as naloxone. If you don't have the drugs available, waterboarding a detainee who is severely sleep deprived works almost as well, but takes more time.
You sure? I though the Guardian is a maritime version of the MQ-9 deployed by Customs & Border Patrol out of Cape Canaveral. At least, all the articles I can find about it refer to it as an MQ-9.
And yeah, it's supposedly unarmed, which would make it an RQ-9, unless it still has the mounting brackets to carry weapons... Which would be kinda disturbing...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
I have sat on a tasking meeting, my local cops dont.
Be carful what you say. The powers that be are more focused on taking your 1st and 4th amendment rights away. Its so sad that we the people let it get this far... And all we can do is continue to argue and post comments about these kinds of things. Where is the accountability? In the election? Didn't fix it last time or the time before that.
Or at least enough information to build one? The first person who brings down a domestic drone will become an instant hero and a legendary patriot.
Civilian aircraft carry transponders that use the same signals, you might want to re-think that one.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Actually, you were correct and I wasn't.
This causes no end of frustration on an almost daily basis at work...
Others were falsely linking the A with the B, and I went ahead and bollixed them up 'cause they were 9s.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Drone hunt!
Reminds me those flying crap cameras in City 17. They always made me blind for a second.
I live in Blue Ridge GA about 100 miles away from Atlanta and Dobbins AFB and NAS. The area I live in is a pratice air space and its common to see low flying jets for time to time (tree top). About a month ago I was outside and heard and incoming jet and looked up and there was a drone hauling ass at tree top level. It then made a turn that would make any pilot pass out and took off the the North. There REALLY friggin big!
Really scary shit.
Be afraid... be very afraid.