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Footage Reveals Drone Aircraft Nearly Downed Passenger Plane in 2004
Newly released footage, writes reader Wowsers, shows that in 2004 "A German drone aircraft was within meters of bringing down a passenger aircraft with 100 people on board. The link shows stills from onboard the drone. The incident had been hushed up for nine years, and is creating waves in Germany now the footage has been leaked out."
I have searched for this in german web pages. Beside aero.de and spiegel.de there is next to NO german web pages mentionning this and a lot of english pages. In fact it isn't even on google news in german...
No it's not a Photoshop. The drone is not equiped with an automatic preventation system against collisions. The accident nearly happened in Afghanistan. The whole discussion came up by the mistakes which were made and the money which was spend on the Eurohawk project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_RQ-4_Global_Hawk)
As best I can tell, the footage is from the forward-facing camera, whose view is slightly obscured by the nose-antenna-harpoon-thing(technical term) visible on the front of the drone in this shot.
That would presumably also be present in competent fake footage; but it is consistent with the line of sight that you'd infer from the drone's layout, and from the shots on the manufacturer's puff page.
The video on YouTube is dated Dec 2006...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NOar22TX2k
In the second frame it's another plane which is taking off in the opposite direction by the looks of it.
I'd say if this is declassified footage, and the Germans are up in arms about it, it likely isn't a photoshop job.
And it also suggests to me that all of the claims they're perfectly safe and won't ever interfere with civilian aviation is probably optimistic. I suspect this isn't the only near miss from a drone.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The only way flying cars for people will work is with massive computerized control, which is being built into ground cars, too. Best get on with it.
Of course, this one being military grade could probably shut it off anyway, if it had it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I wonder if it's merely a coincidence that this...became available... at roughly the same time that Euro Hawk's ICAO-togetherness issues became insurmountable(it certainly would be a convenient one, if somebody wanted to twist that particular knife, very good footage at a very good time), or whether photogenic leaks and procurement debacles are both more or less continuous phenomena and so necessarily overlap from time to time?
It has occurred to me, thus it has occurred to government, that a drone-related 'accident' is a statistical certainty if their use continues to grow. It will be peddled through the news outlets as an unfortunate sacrifice for your national security. "Think of all the lives it's saved", "Piloted planes collide too", and maybe "Casualties in the War on Terror" may be used to church it up.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The video exists on YouTube since December 2006
For fuck's sake, the SUBJECT BOX is for a SUBJECT, not the start of your god damned sentence.
Current technology won't separate the aircraft well enough. The drones are not about to see and avoid like people. Think of control delays (speed of light seems pretty fast until you realize the pilot is thousands of miles away, you have to get the video image to them, and then the pilot has to react, then the reaction command has to get back to the aircraft, it isn't seconds, but certainly many milliseconds).
Then you can also see how fast the two aircraft are converging. It was easy to miss the little dot, and it was really darn big by the time the drone could make it out. Of course by then, there wasn't much either could do. And what is with that big antenna or whatever blocking the view?
One day a drone will hit a passenger carrying aircraft. Who is gonna scream then? Lets let the technology catch up, and not put these things in civilian airspace.
It was "leaked" to youtube in 2006 and now has been viewed 217,648 times. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NOar22TX2k The Daily Wail makes its money from people that don't have anything significant to worry about in their lives - The Wail gives them something to worry about. A standard modus operandi is to find something that is dangerous in excess, write a scare story, and completely ignore that it was made illegal several years previously.
It's the drone's genitalia, it was trying to mate with that big sexy mama.
They never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Alarmist headline - check
Photo completely irrelevant to the story (32,250lb Eurohawk instead of this photo) - check
Incorrect description of events - check
Nonsensical sentence - "The drone passes under the left wing of the engine" - check
If you insist on reading a mindless tabloid, at least read one with T&A
I only wonder if there is anything like ACAS / TCAS on the drone and is the drone allowed to maneuver away from collision on its own?
According to the article, anti-collision technology was deemed to expensive. Which is kind of bullshit since a mode S transponder (which will help passenger jets detect the drones using TCAS) is less than $2000.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
sooty flue
It's quite treatable these days.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Giving away your location to other objects occupying the same airspace may be reasonable from a safety viewpoint. But would pretty much defeat a "secret" recon mission.
Now guess what's valued more by the military....
bickerdyke
people don't agree with their opinions on what is the "correct" way to do things?
Footage Reveals Drone Aircraft Neatly Avoids Passenger Plane in 2004, Testament To Drone Technology.
Fixed.
From TFA:
The 88lb German 'Luna' drone was caught in air turbulence created by the Ariana passenger plane, before losing control and crash landing near the Afghan capital, Kabul.
Uh, yea, not really "neatly avoid[ing]" when the damn thing crashes as a result.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You do realize that the frontal area of an airplane consists largely of the cockpit and engines, right? And that many areas of the plane's wing and body are slightly thicker than a soda can? Those "NO STEP" warnings are there for a reason. Have you seen what a single goose, about 6-7lb, can do to a passenger airliner? This thing weighs more than ten times that, and is substantially larger. If you think 88lb of hard material traveling at several hundred miles per hour won't cause serious-to-catastrophic damage to a passenger airliner, you're an idiot.
Please help metamoderate.
Did you ever witness the top-post vs. bottom-post Usenet battles? Those were fun. I'm a bottom poster though I snip. Well, no... I haven't engaged in Usenet activity in years.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
So it's not like the drone is a robot that decides where and when to fly on its own, this is not hugely different from just 2 normal large passengers jets being directed at each other by ground control.
Of course it is different. Pilots of an aircraft being directed by flight control still have a responsibility to "see and avoid" and may turn down an ATC command if necessary to protect the safety of the flight. Pilots in a plane also have at least 180 degrees of visual available to them with a quick turn of the neck. There are also two pilots available to be scanning for traffic. Further, the view to the pilot is instantaneous and analog allowing for much finer detail and easier detection of traffic.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
This was a small, 88lb (40kg) drone, not a Global Hawk. $2000 would be a significant chunk of its cost.
But a small cost considering the danger of airborne vehicles prone to turbulence. If a flock of geese can bring down an airliner, a human constructed chuck of metal can do the same. Geese don't have transponders, but we can include them in our devices. Your argument is flawed. Even if the cost of the transponder would double the cost of the drone, it would still be worth it, considering the potential loss of life (and the associated liability costs).
Furthermore, if I'm not mistaken, mode S transponders are mandatory in all EU airspace at this time, but I'm sure some AC will be able to comment on that. It's been a while since I've touched the controls of an aircraft in the USSEU.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
I'm not sure Kabul counts as EU airspace, though...
Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?
not an automatic "bring down" though.
It's wouldn't necessarily not bring it down either. Seagulls can bring down an airliner (only survivable if you have a pilot good enough to bring it down safely in the Hudson). You can always cite cases of people falling out of airplanes without parachutes and surviving, or an F-15 landing with one wing sheared off with one wing sheared off, but for the sake of safety you might want to avoid those things.
Ugh.
1. Canada Geese, not seagulls
2. Both engines were hit, otherwise the aircraft would have still been flyable
I'm not sure Kabul counts as EU airspace, though...
It does not. But if you would be familiar with the topic of Airlaw and Regulations, you would be informed about the fact that according to standard aviation rules, a German aircraft (when flying in Afghanistan), must be compliant with German regulations (and thus EASA), ICAO and local (in casu Afghani) regulations.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
It must be the only incident. No other ones have been reported.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
* It's not really; a near-collision with an out-of-control flying machine can happen from any flying machine that can go out of control (ps: that's all of them). It's just the cost of doing business.