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When Drones Fall From the Sky
schwit1 sends this report on the perils of imperfect drone technology:
"More than 400 large U.S. military drones have crashed in major accidents around the world since 2001, a record of calamity that exposes the potential dangers of throwing open American skies to drone traffic, according to a year-long Washington Post investigation. Since the outbreak of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military drones have malfunctioned in myriad ways, plummeting from the sky because of mechanical breakdowns, human error, bad weather and other reasons, according to more than 50,000 pages of accident investigation reports and other records obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act.
Commercial drone flights are set to become a widespread reality in the United States, starting next year, under a 2012 law passed by Congress. Drone flights by law enforcement agencies and the military, which already occur on a limited basis, are projected to surge. The documents obtained by The Post detail scores of previously unreported crashes involving remotely controlled aircraft, challenging the federal government’s assurances that drones will be able to fly safely over populated areas and in the same airspace as passenger planes."
Commercial drone flights are set to become a widespread reality in the United States, starting next year, under a 2012 law passed by Congress. Drone flights by law enforcement agencies and the military, which already occur on a limited basis, are projected to surge. The documents obtained by The Post detail scores of previously unreported crashes involving remotely controlled aircraft, challenging the federal government’s assurances that drones will be able to fly safely over populated areas and in the same airspace as passenger planes."
More BS from people against the emerging corporate police state. They are just desperate to go back to the days of freedom and privacy. Those days are OVER and are never coming back.
It is important to regulate drones, not stop them. From what I'm reading drone related problems are being misdiagnosed as an issue with the hardware. It seems obvious that it's more due to the irresponsible nature of how they are deployed.
Drone related problems that are mechanical in nature is related to carelessness of the producers and owners based on the conditions which they are deployed. Without humans aboard, drones are being deployed without thorough safety regulations being enforced since there is no risk of fatality to the passengers. In addition, since we lose drones in areas such as Afghanistan, it seems obvious that since we see them as unfriendly or as enemies, we don't take the safety measures to ensure that the people below aren't at risk of major failures. This is terrible and disgusting behavior. Drones are also deployed under irresonsible flying conditions. Small aircraft with human pilots should never be in the air in these conditions, yet we send drones because there is no one on board.
In short, the issue isn't specifically with drones, it should be identified as issues with the people deploying them. When deploy in them at home, drones should be heavily regulated to ensure responsible deployment and operation.
It just needs to kill someone once for the tide to be reversed. Hopefully it doesn't come to that. Will being injured be enough to outlaw them though?
Papers please, comrade.
Congratulations, America, you have created Big Brother.
Assholes.
See! We still have FREEDOM OF SPEECH. I will never be modded down for this post!
Big deal. I'm sure the ones soon to be used by businesses and local law enforcement will be much more safe & reliable, because they will be produced in a competitive market environment (instead of by government contract) by 3D printers.
A 50,000 page report packs a whallop. Whether it is read or not. Keep these people away from hadoop, they might crash the cluster.
I feel a little embarrassed by being shocked by this. Did anyone else have a wtf moment? Or should i go back to my lawn chair?
...THEY'RE MINE!
Those drones cost a lot more than my cheap vanilla toy drones from the local hobby store, so if they dare enter MY territory, and they fall down on my property - they become MY property! Bring'em on!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
The problem I have with 'drone' is there isn't a clear definition of what a 'drone' is.
A thousand-kilogram General Atomics MQ-1 Predator raining freedom (via Hellfire missiles) down upon terrorists is a 'drone' as is one-kilo quadcopter taking webcam pictures of some housing development.
Back in my day, the former was a 'drone' and the latter was a 'remote controlled plane.'
While drone activists and commercial drone aircraft operators/manufacturers have tried to downplay the numerous problems with drone aircraft use, the facts remain:
--most of today's drone aircraft are hobbyist-grade devices without significant, controlled testing;
--major issues remain unresolved (and will worsen if usage increases) related to radio interference;
--many "hobbist" drones use crowded, common radio spectrum for control (some drones are semi-autonomous or may have basic loss-of-signal processors but again these are largely untested in controlled envionments);
--it is unclear whether insurers (especially in commercial uses as an insurer defines commercial) will cover the damages from drone aircraft, damages which can be significant including death or property destruction (fires from overheated motors hot enough to melt solder, etc.);
--with no licensing or registration of drones, it is hard to hold the drone aircraft operator accountable when problems that arise (after all, it's your kid who lost an eye from a drone strike over a playground but hey, the drone operator got away the police say); and
--the willful violation of the long-standing R/C model aircraft guidelines places R/C model aircraft operator privileges in jeopardy (which is a shame because these hobbyists have decades of responsible operation AWAY from populated areas, AWAY from noise sensitive areas, and AWAY from other aircraft).
This does not even account for the numerous privacy issues which are equally pressing.
Thus, looking at the issues posed by drone aircraft (and especially for commercial uses) and failure of the drone aircraft industry / drone aircraft activists) to take a meaningful lead on these issues, fair and practical regulations of drones are needed from both the FAA and the FCC such as testing of drone aircraft and components, radio spectrum limits, licensing of pilots, required training, mandatory liability coverage, drone aircraft inspections and certifications, and drone aircraft registration. No one says drones cannot be operated at all; but if operated, people need adequate protections and assurances just as with any other aircraft. That is common sense.
If the state of some roadside signs (some look like Swiss Cheese) in the US is anything to go by, Once more Drones start appearing in the sky, they will simply be shot at.
and when a drones crashes into an airplane the FAA will come down so hard and then the airlines will sue all party's who owned and controlled that drone and if they any thing left other people hurt / killed in the crash will have people sue as well.
At the rate we are going, we are right on target for Dark Angel's hover drones to be science fiction become real (and in the correct year).
This story proves how "Skynet" is wise to wait until there are enough robust robotic vehicles to take out all humans, before taking over the world. Another prerequisite is sufficiently autonomous repair systems for energy production etc. So I think the humans still have a few decades to enjoy life, before the inevitable robot apocalypse, and being strafed by military aerial drones, crushed by their own Google cars, electrocuted by their own Google glasses with neural interface, and strangled by their own Google neckties.
Can add "shot down" to that list once they carry packages to customers. I think at best drones would be used for a customer needing an item ASAP and pay a high price to be delivered by drone. I can't imagine a way it would be cost effective to deliver low profit items.
One of the things that keeps traditional aircraft pretty safe is that the pilot is inside the plane and is highly motivated not to crash. Perhaps to keep drones safe as well, we should keep the risk with the pilot -- if you crash a drone, the penalty is the same as if you were inside the plane you were remotely piloting (penalty up to and including death).
The range of penalties would of course need to be scaled to the size of the drone -- a toy quad-copter is not the same as a Predator, but the point is the legal infrastructure needs to ensure responsibility for those piloting drones. Note that I emphasized the pilot. The pilot needs to be on the hook, not the company employing the pilot, the manufacturer of the drone, or anyone else.
"a record of calamity that exposes the potential dangers of throwing open American skies to drone traffic,"
And not a calamity in other countries?
Weapons of war are not operated nor expected to have the same safety features as drones for civilian uses. There is also no mention of the size or weight of drones that have crashed. Many of these four hundred might have been a few ounces and fallen at very low speeds or fallen while being under heavy fire. I'll bet that in the US people flying hobby drones inside their homes have suffered some minor injuries as it is a common hobby. But is there even a single incident within the US of any drone of size causing injury to a human being by "falling out of the sky"? There has been a commercial drone making deliveries from the US into Mexico that has been in operation for some time. We also fail to note that drones save lives. Drones have prevented our war fighters from suffering wounds or death in numerous cases. Drones are being used to locate lost children and hikers and to spot poachers and thieves. Drones are also being used to inspect bridges and places that are risky for humans to reach. I would rather a twenty pound drone working for the local news channel crash than a six thousand pound copter with a pilot and newsman crash doing the same task. And as far as urban and suburban crime detection and prevention we may live in a far nicer world when drones can record numerous events. And the guy that causes that wreck in his car may well want to think really hard before telling lies on the witness stand. He might turn that greedy law suit into a twenty year prison sentence for perjury.
I just want to see a video from a drone that got too close to a tornado.
[...] A thousand-kilogram General Atomics MQ-1 Predator raining freedom (via Hellfire missiles) down upon terrorists is a 'drone' as is one-kilo quadcopter taking webcam pictures of some housing development.
Back in my day, the former was a 'drone' and the latter was a 'remote controlled plane.'
A 504 kg Cessna 150 is an "airplane" and a 402,000 kg Airbus A380 is an "airplane".
The general working definition I'm going with: an "RC device" needs constant operator input to keep it under control A "drone" has some element of intelligence/computation that allows autonomous operation: auto-hover (countering wind drift), GPS waypoints, return-to-home, etc. The more fully automated a device is the more it can be considered "100% drone", and the less automated the more "100% RC", with gradations of automation to ease control.
Even airplanes now are getting drone-ish, with auto-pilots and auto-landing (ILS Cat II+). Just like cars are getting "self-drive-ish", with auto-braking and lane changing detection, without being fully autonomous.
Certainly not black/white but a few shades of grey between "RC" and "drone".
I can go buy that old Soviet era S-75 system and put it in my front yard. The only question is can I attach it to my garden hose? Wait, I wonder if I have to get my HOA to approve that first?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I wonder if the rate of crashes has changed since 2001. I'll betcha the technology and pilot skills have increased significantly since then. For sure, there are different models of UAVs flying now than there were in 2001.
I read the article, and I don't see any mention of how many drones were shot down or hit by gunfire. I don't know for sure, but I bet the drones in Afghanistan get shot at a lot, and I admit that will continue to be a problem in the United States.
The article says the US military has about 10,000 drones and 400 from 2001 through 2013 means about 40 or less a year are lost. And that's while being shot at. What would be the failure rate of a Lexus if they were shot at every day while driving around?
It said about a quarter of these are lost in the USA, but it doesn't mention if these are lost in product testing or training - situations known to cause high losses.
Good point. Also - without knowing how many flights? There are hundreds of thousands of car crashes every year - but there are millions upon millions of miles traveled by car every year, so crashes are relatively rare. If there were 1000 drone flights and 400 crashes the article would have a point, but there were probable hundreds of thousands of military drone flights in the last 10 years.
Also, Military aircraft do tend to crash very often around the world. see Wikipedia List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (2010–present). Note the string of fatalities caused by those crashes.
My homebuilt quadcopter weighs in at 2.1 lbs I decided to take advantage of the AMA liability insurance. $45/year to belong and get the insurance is worth it to me. I would never fly my quad over a crowd. .. or anyone's property. I fly in my yard.. I have just about an acre and my neighbors are not right next door.... there is 3,000ft distance from my property to them. no house directly across from mine. I also have the ok to fly in a local high school baseball and football field when it's not in use and no one is at the school. mostly early in the morning or 1hr before dusk. I obey the FAA flight ceiling and have my flight controllers set to a ceiling of 4000ft. With the AMA membership you have access to all the approved modeling fields in the USA. There are some snobs that only allow sailplanes or fixed wing. but most allow anything. including rockets. I am into quadcopters, tricopters, and rocket powered gliders.
There are a lot of "yahoos" that are ruining the hobby for us. #1 idiots who fly an aircraft that utilizes 2.4Ghz spread spectrum for control and they enable wifi on a gopro to get a video downlink and then go for a max altitude or higher. that is just asking for trouble. especially if you are depending on automated RTL. automated RTL will fail if there is strong radio interference with certain radios. What is needed is a heartbeat between the radio control and the aircraft. if the heartbeat is missed twice in a 20 second interval then drop to RTL.
A drone can run out of battery, fuel, break a prop, jammed by radio interference... the list goes on.
A while back I heard an answer to the important question: why don't have flying cars yet? The answer was, if you put 1,000,000 commuting over a major city each day, even 99% less accidents than ground vehicles...
Prediction: eventually a drone and a large passenger plane will collide. The what?
You can go back to screeching now.
They either need to be designed to not fail (triple redundant, etc) or designed so that when they fail that they are not a hazard to innocent bystanders.
Or when they fail, they could access a map of insurgents living close by.
Drone engine failure, crashing in 2 minutes, list of possible crash sites:
playground: -100
unoccupied garage of elderly lady: 0
vegetable garden: -10
guy who posted anti-NSA stuff on slashdot: +20
Big deal. I'm sure the ones soon to be used by businesses and local law enforcement will be much more safe & reliable, because they will be produced in a competitive market environment (instead of by government contract) by 3D printers.
Oh gosh, it took me a second to detect the sarcasm in that statement. At first I thought, "no way - local law enforcement and safe. - LAPD drones???" But then there was that bold marker for pure sarcasm: competitive market environment hehehehe
Rain
Drone fall from sky.
Hit Obama, as he butt fucks 1 year old child in rose garden.
Obama bloody mess, No more president.
Good for all.
and?
I have significant experience working with military drones/UAVs. UAVs do not come close to the systems engineering rigor that is applied to manned aircraft. The most prevalent unmanned aircraft family out there, the General Atomics MQ-1/MQ-9 Predator/Reaper started life as a JCTD (tech demo) that were rushed to the battlefield. As a tech demo they are fine, but as a fielded system they are only "good enough" if you have active combat ops, which we did at the time. The smaller UAs are worse. When I asked questions about containment, that is to say how we keep this thing from flying away to east bejeezus if it loses link, the answer is "the autopilot has a multi-layered lost-link protocol bla bla bla" which of course begs the follow-on question "what happens if the autopilot fails or malfunctions?" to which the answer was usually a blank stare.
Unfortunately at the highest level a lot of Generals and Admirals have drank the marketing cool-aid from the UAV makers. Drones are cheaper, faster, easier because we don't have to put a man in it. There are appropriate applications for drones, but the real reason they are faster, cheaper, easier is because they are crappier and smaller and has nothing to do with manned vs unmanned. If you are OK crashing a bunch, then that might be a reasonable trade-off, but don't fool yourself. A Reaper is cheaper than an F-15/16/18 because it is a less capable and less safe aircraft, not because it is unmanned. It is more expensive than a comparable manned aircraft (combat Supertucano or similar single engine turboprop).
I'm not anti-UAV per se, but people are making entirely the wrong arguments to support them. UAVs of similar capability will almost certainly be MORE expensive than comparable manned aircraft to develop, build, field and operate. UAVs are ideal for aircraft too small for human operators, or with performance (endurance) which exceeds human operators, or for missions where you don't mind if it doesn't come back.
I claim the airspace over my property up to the FAA minimums, which is just about out of range of my 12 gage. Anything lower than the minimum altitude is nothing but a target. A 12 gage using #4 heavy field shot will bring down one of those quad copters just fine. Bring on the targets idiots!!!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!