The Feds Accidentally Mailed Part of A $350K Drone To Some College Kid

Jason Koebler (3528235) writes "A Redditor got more than he bargained for in the mail today: He was accidentally mailed parts to a $350,000 environment and wildlife monitoring drone owned by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration. 'We sent a set of about eight boxes for this one aircraft system, and one was misdelivered by UPS. We're working with UPS to find it,' the federal agency says."

Comments

wait... what???

[Virtucon]

$350,000 for a drone!?!?! I realize that this is durable and has good RF systems in it, but still that strikes me as a bit pricey for what it is. I mean for a few bucks more they could just buy Predators right?

Re:wait... what???

[jklovanc]

According to this the $350K is for a complete system and not a single aircraft.

A complete system (controller, spare parts, and three UAVs) costs $250,000 for the Raven and over $400,000 for Puma.

The price for a single aircraft is much closer to $100k.
Take a look at the capabilities of the Puma. The optics, communications, and autonomous navigation features are not cheap.

Re:wait... what???

[pete6677]

It's military pricing. Nothing costs less than $100k. Hell, it costs the vendor $10k just to process the required government paperwork.

Re:wait... what???

[BitZtream]

automous navigation features cost you less than $500 for a fully working system controller including required accelerometers, gyros, GPS, compass and a short range telemetry system (only short range due to low output power). The flight controller doesn't have to be any different on a tiny little RC model all the way up to the the largest aircraft in service. The OSS software doesn't yet support orbiting but I suspect it will soon. The only hardware difference is the servos to drive the control surfaces and power output of the engines.

Oh, and its open source ... and it probably does more than anything the UAVs you mention do as far as flight control.

If you want the cheap asian knock off, its less than $200 from hobby king.

UAV controllers are an essentially solved problem, its just refinement at this stage, and the hardware to do the actual flight management is dirty cheap.

Communications are also a solved problem, the hardware is available already and is available to anyone, though it requires a operator license ... which doesn't come with the UAV, you have to get it yourself from the FCC.

Optics are a little tricker, but nothing to justify the cost of these systems unless you're ordering optics like used in the U-2 spy plane, which your drone isn't going to be capable of taking advantage of anyway. For anything other than what the NSA wants, a gimble to deal with pan/tilt/stabilization and vibration dampening isn't that expensive either, though gimble and camera are likely to be the most expensive bits if you want high quality but that may just be my misperception as thats the area I know least about. Low end stuff that works as well as anything you've actually seen footage from (i.e. not secret stuff) is less than 5k and it will shoot as good as most movie cameras ... from thousands of feet up where you can't hear it at all.

$100k is a ridiculous price. The communications/control system is a freaking PC with a high power transmitter, nothing special.

Re:wait... what???

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't just the cost of the base hardware that could theoretically function in that capacity, it's fitting it all together, custom designing and building components where necessary then going through the necessary testing (range, quality, flight control, durability, etc) and refinement processes. You could build Google Glass for $100 too if you don't care about having a horribly clunky, heavy, unreliable device with a cumbersome user experience.

Just because you can come up with a cheap parts list to theoretically cobble the functionality together doesn't mean it is going to result in a product that will be fit-for-purpose.

Re:wait... what???

[jittles]

automous navigation features cost you less than $500 for a fully working system controller including required accelerometers, gyros, GPS, compass and a short range telemetry system (only short range due to low output power).

Just stop right there and think about it. NOAA and the USG are not hobbyists. Perhaps this platform does leverage open source but they probably need FAA certified equipment so that they can fly above the limits placed on hobbyists. Not to mention the potential liability to the government if they rolled out a $1000 drone and it crashed and killed someone. If they tried to explain that one away then some enterprise would leverage that to say that the USG should have dropped $2M on a predator (whatever its price is). They aren't doing this as a hobby. Maybe the $300+k comes from the sensor package also? Just because you can do something similar out of your garage doesn't mean that is what the government should be doing.

I'm all for cutting out pork, but you have not revealed any pork so far.

Re:wait... what???

[TheCarp]

> You are doing it wrong

No they are doing it right. Their customer has a nearly unlimited budget which needs to be spent and which they prefer to overspend because it gives them a way to expand their budget in the next cycle.

If they want to pay $20,000 for a hammer that is individually serial numbered, and wrapped, then you are an idiot for not stamping serial numbers on each one, bagging them up, and charging them 20k.

Stupid headline

[jklovanc]

The Feds Accidentally Mailed Part of A $350K Drone To Some College Kid

More like "UPS Unloads Extra Box containing Drone Parts at Some College Kid's House". The box was not addressed to him by the Feds. They do enough stupid things without ascribing UPS mistakes to them.

Re:Stupid headline

[Charliemopps]

I hope the feds paid for insurance. Otherwise all they're getting is $100. No exceptions, no matter what, I was told.

Re:Stupid headline

[Great Big Bird]

I love that: you have to pay for insurance in case they screw up. It should be them paying for that.

Re:Stupid headline

[SJHillman]

If theft is what you're worried about, I'd take USPS over UPS or FedEx any day. The Post Office consider mail theft to be Serious Business.

Re:Stupid headline

[digitalhermit]

Yes, that is true. Except for the insurance part. UPS doesn't really provide "insurance", per se.

Don't be fooled by the optional 'high value' stamp, which allows you to declare a higher value. Rightfully so, it's not "insurance" but just allows you to claim the proper value if it is lost or damaged.

If it's really important, ship it via a UPS customer counter or Mailboxes facility.

I used to work there a couple decades ago. One of my roles was to process computer claims. Considering that many items can fall from belts and "Fragile" means "Throw me hard, please!" in UPS-ese, I'd make sure to ship any critical items through their desk with a proper declared value.

Not that FedEx is much better. I think at one point they were but if you've seen what goes on behind the scenes it's a wonder that anything gets to its destination in one piece.

Might as well talk about the USPS too. (BTW, UPS is not USPS; some are not aware.) I shipped a display stand once. It was a fairly sturdy unit, cube shaped, of some expensive teak wood with brass corners. It could easily bear my weight (and I am not a slender dude). When the first piece arrived, my aunt asked what it was. "It's a stand," I said.

    "How do you put it together?" she said.

Eh?

Apparently they'd shipped a piece of my broken stand with a piece of someone else's broken furniture. The label from my box cut out and taped to this other box. I still don't know what happened to the rest of my display stand, but presumably someone is wondering what the heck happened to the rest of their chair.

Re:Stupid headline

[Trepidity]

Isn't "performing the service you accepted money to perform" a pretty basic level of liability? Can I accept a contract to write some C++ code for you, but if you don't buy insurance from me, sometimes I just deliver your code to some other guy instead, and fuck you if you want redress?

Other drone parts to follow!

[penguinoid]

If he doesn't return it, odds are he'll get other drone parts for free!

Re:Saw this on reddit, posted by Seventy_Seven

[SJHillman]

I wasn't aware that Republicans were in charge of UPS.

Re:I know, right?

[jklovanc]

Show me a model plane that has a 15 km radio range, autonomous GPS navigation, IR and visible light camera on a stabilized mount, designed to be reliable in hazardous environments while being handled by infantrymen, and can stay up for 3.5 hours. Then plan to build less than 30,000 of them. Complex systems and low quantities make these things very expensive. This is very different than a simple toy that takes a tens of thousands of dollars to design and hundreds of thousand are aircraft are made.

Sell them to the government at a 100,000% markup.

You even exaggerate or do you really think you can but an RC aircraft with remotely similar capabilities for $1. (The $350K is for the complete system which includes 3 aircraft plus spares).

Good Grief

[Frosty Piss]

This is a non-story: UPS mis-delivers a non-classified package from to government to some college student who decided to whore for 15 minutes of fame.

Done.

Next...

Re:Good Grief

[ArmoredDragon]

Both of you are wrong, actually.

He posted on Reddit because he was trying to get into contact with NOAA, which is apparently difficult to do (when he contacted them directly, they didn't provide any means for him to get it to them; perhaps not even aware of what he was talking about.)

Furthermore, it was addressed to him, even had his fucking name on it. That makes him well within his rights to open it, especially when he was actually EXPECTING a big package.

Working with UPS to find it?

[freak0fnature]

The last time UPS messed up a delivery for me, their automated phone system told me where it was. When I talked to a real person and explained that my package was not delivered, he had the address where it was delivered on the computer, and the address of where it was supposed to go as well. (It was a mile away on a completely different street...I'm assuming his next stop. I just went and got it myself, just asked about a package that wasn't theirs.)

The real question is, if they have the capability to know where it was really delivered, why would they not program the handhelds to make all sorts of noise when the delivery guy screws up?

Re:Working with UPS to find it?

[Obfuscant]

The real question is, if they have the capability to know where it was really delivered, why would they not program the handhelds to make all sorts of noise when the delivery guy screws up?

I've had both UPS and FedEx actually change the customer-supplied delivery address because they ... thought they knew better? The last time, the hand-written FedEx form was still on the outside of the box, but the computer-printed one said something different. They're deliberately delivering things to the wrong place. Why would the handheld scanner complain about that?

Re:I know, right?

[thegarbz]

Show me a model plane that has a 15 km radio range

$100 UHF transceiver. Even the cheap ones can do telemetry as well as instructional commands, failsafe detection etc.

autonomous GPS navigation

any $100 flight controller

IR and visible light camera on a

This one is expensive. Budget $5000 for it.

stabilized mount,

$1000 gets you a well made 3D gimbal for a heavy camera.

designed to be reliable in hazardous environments

define this. Is it raining acid up there? Are you wanting it bullet proof? Given the amazing footage of a cheap DJI quad flying through an erupting volcano without issue, how hazardous are we talking?

while being handled by infantrymen,

The aforementioned flight controllers have some really idiot proof modes.

and can stay up for 3.5 hours.

That's a function of size, battery and engine capacity. For a big hardened one carrying heavy reconnaissance equipment I'd budget $10k

Then plan to build less than 30,000 of them.

Hows plug and play kits sound?

Yes the grandparent exaggerates. But you do to. There's no reason a system like this costs what they are charging for it. Many hobbyists meet a lot of that criteria on a sub $1000. Much of the criteria you mention isn't different to the several manufacturers of commercial vehicles on the market today which come in no where near that price tag. Then maybe double or even triple the cost for hardening and you're still waaaaay under the $100k per plane.

The markup is not as high as 100000%, but it's no where near as low as 0% either.