I believe the LAX airspace to which you refer includes my little piece, up in the high desert, the old George AFB. The Guard have a uav/uas whatever here. ALL the flights to and from had manned chase planes. Right said Fred, thats enough of that, these ere little planes can do it all on their lonesome.
Problem was they had a problem, and back to manned chase planes.
Don't get me wrong, I was involved way back when, before GPS, still am to a degree.
They can be really useful little bits of kit, but when, not if, when they go off the reservation there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that can be done to mitigate whatever is going to happen. Tis the nature of the beast.
Note the helo that destroyed the GCS and a couple of folks inside it. Some say the GPS signal was fiddled with, doesn't matter, folks died.
The point about manned aviation safety record vis a vis doesn't really cut it. When the manned aviating attempt fails, in the interests of self preservation, one trys to return to earth in a somewhat controlled manner if at all possible, picking spots that are, hell you all know the deal.
UAV quits listening, internally it has absolutely no idea anything has gone wrong. It may, but a lot of the time it does not, initiate a pre programmed RTB/climb to acquire and a host of other actions. But if it doesn't it will serenely motor on until it runs into an obstacle or out of fuel.
The latter is currently the most disconcerting, a modern day V2 perhaps. The former will be if operating in controlled airspace.
Hell I'm old, what do I know.
Last edited by fltlt; 11th Jun 2012 at 23:52.