Originally Posted by
airsound
Mechta, you said
Quite so, and, although the erudite discussion on the thread about synthetic training is interesting, I'd like to know why these things keep crashing. Any ideas, anyone?
airsound
The absence of a pilot means that the aircraft needn't be designed to be as safe as a normal military aircraft. Quite a lot of the cost savings come from this decision. Unfortunately they then tend to crash a lot more often but this is regarded as an economic issue rather than a safety issue. The safety of the overflown population can be helped substantially by clever choice of the aircraft's course/operating area.
EAP