USAF Drone Program Crash Rate Problem

[SASless]

Good article on the US Air Force Drone Program and problems associated with its Aircraft and manning.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/01/19/more-u-s-military-drones-are-crashing-than-ever-as-new-problems-emerge/

[GlobalNav]

Bummer. But no fatalities?

[ShotOne]

This at least highlights the idiocy of the muppets who claim "accidents are mostly caused by pilots, let's make it safer by getting rid of them".

In fact every jump in technology has seen a spike in accidents; witness the eye-watering crash rate of early jets!

[SASless]

I question the thinking that put a single Start/Gen on the aircraft. It would seem plain old commonsense would have dictated such a single point failure as common as a Generator failing would been thought through and a backup source of Electrical Power would have been installed....say like a Ram Air Turbine?

For an aircraft that is so dependent upon electrical power and designed for a Thirty Hour fuel endurance....having an equal amount of electrical power endurance would have made sense.

Or as usual....am I missing something?

[Tourist]

This at least highlights the idiocy of the muppets who claim "accidents are mostly caused by pilots, let's make it safer by getting rid of them".

In fact every jump in technology has seen a spike in accidents; witness the eye-watering crash rate of early jets!

I think there are two points to mention about your post.

1. You correctly point out that new tech tends to have a spike in accidents. You have not followed the argument through to point out that despite this, new tech such as jets have been well worth the investment and end up saving lives.


2. If you build an aircraft without backups of critical systems like is done with most/all UAVs, then it is no surprise that they will have higher loss rates than manned aircraft which have redundancies.
This is not the fault of the "pilot" merely the simple reality that no back-ups means more losses.
Total electrical failure will crash most manned fighters too....
What exactly do you think a human pilot would have done if he had been sitting in the Reapers to bring them home with the same failure?

If required, it is perfectly possible to build UAVs with the same level of redundancies as manned aircraft. (or more, because a manned fighter is never going to have more than one pilot. With the size of modern computer systems, there is nothing to stop you fitting 2 or 10 "pilots" as backup.)

As with all aircraft, everything is a trade-off.
UAV's give you the option of an extra trade-off, ie weight against likelihood of aircraft loss without having to worry about body-bags. This is why they tend to be single engine/ no de-ice / single generator / single hyd / singe control run etc
People have been happy up to now to accept the resultant loss rate to gain the payload/loiter time.

These things are a choice, not an inherent issue with UAVs.

[Trim Stab]

Why are the USAF having such difficulties training and retaining personnel for their UAVs?

Is the job not seen as attractive to potential recruits? Are there issues with job satisfaction (or lack thereof?).

[ShotOne]

You seem to have concluded I'm anti-drone, tourist when in fact I'm a fan and agree with both your points. The level of coverage they give us would need gigantic resources with manned aircraft. SASless, as tourist points out, we can have as much redundancy as we want to pay for. Clearly the Reaper gen issue needs sorting but my own view is we'll move in the other direction -with less expensive drones with less redundancy and (hopefully) more of them. Ps how come back to zero posts??

[Tourist]

My apologies!
Missunderstood.

[AR1]

It figures really. Systems redundancy improves safety and reliability. But without the key drivers of human cargo and against the canvas of improved single system failure rates the requirement for redundancy reduces.

And everyone walks home after the crash.

[Engines]

Tourist,

Good post. The issue of drone crash rates is a real one, and will need to be addressed. Operating over essentially empty deserts in completely unopposed airspace has allowed the design tradeoffs to focus on endurance at the expense of reliability (so no back up generators, reciprocating engines, etc).

The fact that the US has (by comparison with any other nation) an essentially unlimited defence budget has also allowed them to tolerate the expense of these loss rates.

That will need to change as drones move out to other nations, and need to operate in more congested or challenging areas. While pilots aren't at risk, those on the ground most certainly are.

I would offer the opinion that designing more usual levels of redundancy into drones won't be straightforward, especially at the smaller end of the market. They are built more like powered gliders, with small weight margins, limited electrical capacity and very limited internal space. They have little margin for inserting additional systems. Further up the line, it's still not easy. The Global Hawk programme suffered simply epic increases in cost and delays as the original design concept had to be recast to reflect the very high cost and sensitive payloads being carried. (And there were still a number of losses).

To be clear, I'm not 'anti-drone'. They have, and will continue to have, huge military utility. But I do feel (it's just my opinion) that the initial optimism about drones taking over the world will be tempered by the real world difficulties of building reliable and effective flying machines - that's a challenge whether the vehicle manned or unmanned.

Best regards as ever to those getting the beasts in the air and keeping them there,

Engines

[ShotOne]

"Everyone walks home after the crash" There have been a number of cases where a drone has ended up in a different bit of the sky to where it should have been. Not a problem in Afganistan but a major issue when they're asking to integrate them into the air traffic system.

[GlobalNav]

The newspaper says that Amazon predicts delivery drones "soon". Weighing 55 lbs, up to 5 lb payload, with a ten mile range, operating between 200-400 ft AGL except for the ascent and descent phases.

60lbs of something going haywire could give someone a bad day, especially if it suddenly descends out of control from 300 ft.

FAA will likely be criticized for applying too much or too little regulatory authority. Hindering free enterprise or disregarding public safety. That FAA!