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Lost Army Drone

little wing

Registered User
630 mile trek @ over 12,000', 20' wingspan, 450#s.

This is what Stars and Stripes has to say,
"As the use of unmanned aircraft rises, it’s important to re-examine beliefs and misconceptions about technology, Scharre said. Most people understand glitches and software failures occur just by using cell phones and computers, for instance, but often do not apply the same understanding to unmanned aircraft, he said."


[FONT=Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]When my cell phone doesn't work, it's nearly impossible to cause loss of life. Obviously many violations since it was operating at 12,000' over 630 miles. If a jet was lost, or just some schmuck in a cub, are we supposed to simply understand the glitches?

Be Safe Out There....others aren't.
[/FONT]

http://www.stripes.com/news/questions-hover-over-army-drone-s-630-mile-odyssey-across-western-us-1.456505#.WLeUMhiZPyk
 
Hopefully these things are lit up with strobes flashing away so at least a VFR pilot might see it.
 
Hopefully these things are lit up with strobes flashing away so at least a VFR pilot might see it.
Hopefully yes, but I seriously doubt it. They're designed to operate unseen.
I'd love to know what REALLY happened, but I'm almost certain that'll never occur. I would not be surprised if its comm link were intercepted/hacked. I would have to think it's programmed to orbit in the case of a simple signal loss.
 
There is an emergency mission that is supposed to be loaded before launch. The mission will kick in after a predetermined amount of time if the airplane loses link and will keep the plane in the restricted area. My guess is that step was missed on the checklist and the plane simply continued on its last heading when the link was lost.

Having worked at Huachuca in a parallel program I am also guessing most of this will be swept under the rug and the Army will claim the crew has received remedial training. I have doubts the Army will address the hazard to civilian traffic since they haven't with previous incidents I have observed

Chad
 
Are these ADS-B out compliant?

Griffiss in Rome NY is one of the largest drone testing bases in the country. It's only 50 miles from me and the Adirondacks. I was on floats 2 summers ago up on Stillwater Res up by Old Forge and ran into a Drone unit just back from a year in Afghanistan and on R&R up at Stillwater Inn with their base Commander. I asked if they could see me as we were both using the same playground. He said no and told me to look real hard out of the windows as I fly

Glenn
 
My employee was on the Hudson river up here north of Glens Falls last summer, and saw a "C-130 type" flying overhead northbound. The ramp door lowered down, what appeared to be a drone dropped/flew out of it, and then the C-130 turned away and the drone headed the other direction. Asked Jake about it, and he said the same thing - they do a lot of drone activity out of Griffiss, so might have been one of there's, but it wasn't one from Schenectady.

I wasn't there, didn't see it, but if they have air-deployed drones working that smoothly that's pretty cool. Just hope I never run into one.
 
Maybe I'll just slalom through the wind turbine farm and hope there aren't any down there.
 
Griffiss in Rome NY is one of the largest drone testing bases in the country. It's only 50 miles from me and the Adirondacks. I was on floats 2 summers ago up on Stillwater Res up by Old Forge and ran into a Drone unit just back from a year in Afghanistan and on R&R up at Stillwater Inn with their base Commander. I asked if they could see me as we were both using the same playground. He said no and told me to look real hard out of the windows as I fly

Glenn


Well isn't that special. Just when you think you're the only idiot out there
 
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