Ok. This sounds .... weird. Story from Russia Times...
An American drone has malfunctioned and crashed into a guided missile cruiser off the coast of Southern California, causing two injuries, say officials. The incident happened while the vessel was testing a combat weapons system.
Lt. Lenaya Rotklein of the US Third Fleet told AP the two sailors injured in the crash were being treated for minor burns. The remotely-controlled craft reportedly veered out of control during an operation to test the USS Chancellorsville’s combat weapons system on Saturday afternoon. Rotklein said the drone was being used to test the ship's radar.
The guided missile carrier is now heading back to the San Diego Naval Base, where officials will assess the extent of the damage. In response to the accident, the Navy says it is opening an investigation to examine the possible causes.
This is the second drone crash to occur this week in the US after an unmanned craft malfunctioned andcame down over Lake Ontario on Tuesday, prompting the suspension of all drone flights in the Central New York area.
The military was unable to say why the $4 million Reaper drone lost control and crashed, but reported there was no damage to civilian property or injuries.
Anti-drones activists have slammed the US government’s use of the unmanned craft on American soil, citing the increasing number of accidents.
“One of the notorious things about drones and Reapers is their high accident rate,” Ed Kinane a Syracuse-based peace activist told syracuse.com on Tuesday. “A general concern is that because the military is so in love with drones and the Reaper, it appears they have rushed these things into production.”
Bloomberg calculated in a 2012 survey that on average there were 9.31 accidents for every 100,000 hours of drone flight.
Nevertheless the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has resolved to push ahead with a plan to expand the use of drones in American airspace by 2015.
Hmm, the reporting that I've seen has not mentioned the type, only that it was being used to test the ship's radar. The stories had various pictures attached - MQ-4, MQ-1 - but it could equally have been a Scan Eagle.
ReplyDeletei can't see a scan eagle causing injuries or much if any damage to a ship.
DeleteMaybe it was a BQM-74 target drone that went a little crazy...?
DeleteOh, and I'm one of those pilots that don't like sharing airspace with drones - particularly in my case where we almost always fly low and slow... It's the civilians operators that I'm most worried about - any yahoo can buy a quadcopter and a GoPro. At the very least, the operators should have a license to prove they have knowledge of airspace rules, and the drones should be painted in a hi-viz scheme, altitude limited (<400 AGL) and transponder equipped to enable anti-collision systems to id them.
ReplyDeletei totally get where you're coming from but model airplanes have been around long before they were militarized for govt use. some of those models are as big as a scan eagle and many are more sophisticated/powerful. i just see trouble ahead and manned aviation is going to be in the target zone for a while...
DeleteAgreed, BTW I'm including LE organizations in "civilian." Maybe I should have said non-military.
Deleteno, consider me impressed. i have long wondered how LE got placed into the military category. biggest mistake that the military in the US has made with regards to military/civilian relations in a long time....of course its one of many but definitely up there.
DeleteWhether this was the case or not, (and I do not think it was), it got me thinking about the RQ-170 Sentinel that Iran claimed to have controlled.
ReplyDeleteWhat if someone could hack our drones and turn them against our own assets? We launch drones at a technologically sophisticated enemy and they hack it, send back against our own forces. It wouldn't need to drop hellfires, you could just steer at a command post or the bridge of a ship or fuel tanker.
It was a BQM-74
ReplyDeletehttp://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/nov/16/sailors-drone-chancellorsville/
Has Cyberdyne Systems done any work on the drone? And are we seeing the start of the "Rise of the Machines"
ReplyDelete