DRONE CRASH IN MARYLAND, USA

[BEagle]

Yet another drone bites the dust - this time close to a populated area...

Unmanned US Navy demonstrator crashes in Maryland (http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/unmanned-us-navy-demonstrator-crashes-in-maryland-372890/)

Hopefully the CAA won't relax its current rules on the flying of drones outside UK Restricted Areas for a few more years yet.....

[ratty1]

this time close to a populated area...


So it didn't actually crash onto a populated area then? Just a made up daily mailesque line by you?

I wonder, when the pilot actually lost contact with his aircraft if he jumped up out of his seat to simulate an ejection?
Nah.... probably just logged out of dii, turned his monitor off and went home for the day.

complete non story.

[fltlt]

Indeed a non story, except everybody and their dog wanting to fly them in, around and over large concentrations of folks. That plus the enduring/endearing tendency for the last 28 years that I personally know of, to wander off on their own, time and situation indeterminate.

One needs a rather heavy duty tin foil hat to withstand BAMS on the loose.

And no, after the usual expletives and frenetic button pushing everyone sits back, prays to whatever they believe in and if the video link is still up (you would be surprised at the %) watch the end. A sigh of relief or a giant damn that was close usually ends the process.

Some things just never change.

[The B Word]

When you said "Drone" I thought you were talking about a target facilitating unmanned aircraft - that is the correct use for the word "Drone" and not for the RQ-4 in the article. That is a common etymology mistake expected from an ill-informed journo or ill-educated individual?

Now the RQ-4 can autonomously land, so I'm surprised the article states the Pilot lost comms with it? When it comes to safety the CAA are getting it wrong and making our country lag well behind the rest of the world; in years to come we may well compare this blinkered attitude to the introduction to the locomotive, automobile, heavier-than-air aircraft and the jet engine.

Burn the Spinning Jenny, eh, Beags...:ok:

[fltlt]

B word,

Drone is just as acceptable as RPV/UAV/UAS and whatever comes out of the latest Project Office when someone is bored.

I personally think that it is more appropriate at times, as one watches the uncommanded deviation from flightpath and the (insert acronym here) drones off into the distance.

Don't you think?

[BEagle]

'Drone' has become the normal terminology in the US and UK media.

Apart from the drone operators, no-one else can be bothered to keep up with whatever TLA has been invented this week.....

They have their place, but clearly are not yet sufficiently safe to operate near friendly populated areas.

[ratty1]

Of course manned aircraft never crash onto populated areas do they? Oh wait.

[The B Word]

The De Havilland DH 82B ‘Queen Bee’ was developed to the 1933 Air Ministry Specification 18/33. It combined the fuselage of the D.H.60G III Moth Major with all other components from the DH 82 ‘Tiger Moth’. It could be flown by a pilot from the first cockpit, while the radio equipment was fitted in the rear cockpit.

First conventional flight was on January 5, 1935, the radio control development started in June 1935 from HMS Orion. The Air Ministry ordered a total of 420 Queen Bee to Specification 20/35, 320 were contracted to De Havilland and 100 to Scottish Aviation Ltd (SAL - who later went on to build the Bulldog and Jetstream aircraft), deliveries were completed in July 1944. The RAF operated the Queen Bee from RAF Farnborough’s No 1 Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Unit (11 Apr 1938 - 1 Oct 1942). This unit operated Pilotless Aircraft Sections (‘A’ to ‘Z’ Flt) at various locations throughout the country for summer camps (such as RAF Cleave, Henlow, Hawkinge and Weyborne). These flights returned to Farnborough during the winter and often closed. It went on to form the Pilotless Aircraft Unit at RAF Manorbier (5 May 1942 - 15 Mar 1946). A senior US Navy Admiral witnessed the Queen Bee in operation in 1936 and found the concept very interesting. He set up a US Navy program under Lieutenant Commander Delmar S. Farnhey. By 1937, Farnhey's team had converted a number of light aircraft to radio-controlled targets and used them in exercises. It is said that Farnhey invented the term "drone" for robot aircraft as homage to the Queen Bee and the fixed-pitch drone they made when the RAF’s remote operators made so few throttle demands to produce a predictable gunnery target for training.

Friendly, populated, airspace? Try those that fly in the US every day including the ones that transit safely through LAX airsoace! :ugh:

[BEagle]

Perhaps the CAA is rather less convinced about drone safety than the FAA?

Single engined aeroplanes must always be able to glide clear of congested areas. But if some drone goes walkabout, no-one can be sure where the wretched thing will finally crash to earth.

So the drone operators can only watch their TV screens helplessly, whilst agonising over which doughnut to have....

Which of the UK's risk-averse RAF commanders would dare to approve the flying of a drone over a congested area.....?? One day, perhaps, when they have proved their reliability. But not just yet.......:\

[ratty1]

Baegle said



this time close to a populated area..


the US Navy said




Smoke was seen rising from brush fires in an unpopulated area near a tributary of the Nanticoke River shortly after 12.11pm on Monday.
There were no injuries or damage to property, a Navy spokeswoman said.

[The B Word]

Watchkeeper, about the size of a Cessna 150 is to fly in the following area:

http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/06/17/drone_airspace.jpg

Population of Salisbury is ~40,000 and the population of Wiltshire is ~460,000. So what is your definition of "congested area"...:confused:

Accident rates for Predator are better than that for single engined GA aircraft in the UK per 10,000 flying hours - so define "safe"...:confused:

Lots of US presentations online - see slide 7 for a GA comparison here: http://www.asma.org/asma2010_mp/pdfs/asma2010_present_018.pdf

[BEagle]

Very brave of Swanny to sign up to the approval at this stage...

Or rather, 2 years ago when the proposal was first mooted.

Minimum height over Salisbury will be FL80.

The first time a drone goes walkabout and spears in outside the segregated airspace will be the last time any such thing will be allowed for quite some time.

[fltlt]

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.

[SASless]

Drones.......NAV's???

[fltlt]

Yes, in my day they too tended to walk away droning on about something. Annoying little critters, until you needed them, every once in a great while.

[500N]

FltLt
"or out of fuel.

The latter is currently the most disconcerting, a modern day V2 perhaps."

Don't you mean a V1 ? (Doodlegug or Buzz Bomb ?)


Having those things coughing and spluttering above you certainly scared the living daylights out of my family.

[fltlt]

500N

You are quite correct. A somewhat gentle nose over versus the supersonic lawn dart.

[500N]

FltLt
All good. Only reason I know is my grand parents and mother used to talk about the long silent glide after the coughing and spluttering stopped. None of it was good but they used to watch them from the fruit trees in the back garden at Croydon and depending on if it did or when it started coughing a spluttering determined whether they shinned down the tree and made a run for the air raid shelter.

Anyway, my apologise for the thread drift.

[L J R]

When the First F-14 crashed near the same location on one of its early test flights, the F-14 program was not cancelled....

[PTT]

Beagle just feels threatened by these things, for some reason. And I don't mean in a "they may crash into me" way ;)

[green granite]

If contact with the drone has been lost, how is the pilot going to wrestle with the controls to avoid the school and hospital?

[Whenurhappy]

All good. Only reason I know is my grand parents and mother used to talk about the long silent glide after the coughing and spluttering stopped. None of it was good but they used to watch them from the fruit trees in the back garden at Croydon and depending on if it did or when it started coughing a spluttering determined whether they shinned down the tree and made a run for the air raid shelter.


500N - do you realise that your family in Croydon were deliberately targetted as a result of a clever misinformation campaign? Actually, I'm sure you are aware of the Double-X system run by John Mastermain from St James' Palace that ensured German agent reports from London stated that V1s had overshot the target (Charing cross) so the air logs were adjusted to allow them to fall short 'sarf of the wiver'. The Luftwaffe didn't even believe there own telemetry that indicated the MPI was Charing Cross - 'cos MI5 controlled all German assets in country by then. Churchill agreed - though with a heavy heart - that it was better for V1s to fall in slightly less-densly populated areas in South London than fall into teh middle of the vast machinery of war based in central London.

Cue thread drift. And please, please call them RPAs or UAVs, not Drones.

[500N]

Whenurhappy

Yes, I did know about the misinformation about where they "landed".
I am pretty sure that Croydon had the highest number of impacts
than any other suburb of London.

[TheInquisitor]

Nice to see the usual ill-informed twaddle from the usual ill-informed individuals rolling on and on, isn't it?

[ratty1]

Beagle just feels threatened by these things, for some reason.

Maybe they are following him about, watching his every move.

http://formerwhitehat.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/obama-drones-obama-drone-war-iran-iraq-politics-1324452091.jpg

They are watching you beagle, that's where they're at.

Doo dee doo doo, doo dee doo doo...........etc etc:eek:

[Ivan Rogov]

As it seems most of those who don't like the term drone seem to be operators it could be considered banter, therefore I believe we should all make a concerted effort to refer to all of these devilish contraptions a DRONES on any future thread!

Ref. the Global hawk, I understand that the USAF have cancelled the rest of the block 30s and will extend the U-2s service as the DRONES reliability, performance and efficiency was much less than was projected. It strikes me that this is history repeating itself and we are making the same mistakes as the 1957 White Paper did with missiles. DRONES :O are useful, very useful at the moment in AFG but they are not the answer to everything, despite the claims made by some that they are. Unfortunately some people at the top are also using these over optimistic claims as an excuse to cancel or remove real capability. :ugh:

[Lonewolf_50]

Have they ruled out pilot error yet? :}

[Brewster Buffalo]

From the report linked in #11

Human Factors present in most drone mishaps

 FY08: 92% attributed to HF

 FY09: 71% attributed to HF

[Lonewolf_50]

LJR:

I seem to recall that the first Tomcat mishap happened over Long Island (Tomcat #2) was due to a hydraulic failure that led to an ejection.

Did the first ever (Tomcat #1) crash in Maryland? :confused: I had not heard that.

[BEagle]

From Tales of the F-14 concerning the 'official' first flight of the F-14 on 30 Dec 1970:

Immediately after raising the gear handle, our A-6 chase pilot said we were venting fluid out of the right side of the airplane. At the same instant, the combined hydraulic system gauge went to zero. Twenty-one gallons of hydraulic fluid had just left the airplane.

We started back to home base at 180 knots, our limit airspeed because the flaps were still extended. In about ten minutes, we were lined up with our runway about three miles out when we blew our gear down with the nitrogen bottle, since our flight hydraulic system only powered the flight controls.

At this time, our chase said we were venting more fluid, and our flight hydraulic system gauge went to zero. The airplane then went through about two cycles of gentle but uncontrollable pitching, and then snapped violently nose down.

At this point we were about a half-mile short of the runway, about 25 feet above the trees. Bill quickly initiated the ejection sequence using his face curtain. A sensitive accelerometer on the nose strut recorded and telemetered back to the ground the little blips showing the firing of the canopy and then the ejection guns on the two seats in turn. That all took 0.9 seconds as advertised; 0.4 seconds later the nosewheel hit a tree!

My Martin-Baker seat sent me staight up about 150 feet, but when Bill’s fired a split second later, it sent him forward, only gaining about 10 feet vertically. Both chutes deployed nicely, and neither of us was injured. Thirty minutes later, when the fire caused by 10,000 pounds of fuel was put out, the ground crew found two fractured 5/16th-inch-inner-diameter titanium hydraulic lines, one in each wheel well.

The F-14 had an all-titanium hydraulic system with an 84-gallon-per-minute pump on each engine with no accumulators, all in the interest of saving weight. Each pump had nine pistons, which were varied in output by a swash plate. As it turned out, each time one of the nine pistons did its thing, it sent a 200-300-pounds-per-square-inch pulse down the basic 3,000-psi system.

Apparently, without accumulators to dampen the pulses, a resonance occurred which fatigued the lines. Engineering duplicated the failure on a full-scale mockup of the system in 1.2 minutes at just the right pump RPM. When the line was changed to stainless steel, the line failed in 23 minutes. The answer was not material, but proper forming and clamping of the line to prevent resonance. The second F-14 did not make its first flight until May 24, 1971. There were no hydraulic problems again on the F-14 program.

[TheInquisitor]

Those who do operate them have a truly realistic view of their capabilities AND limitations - in fact, it seems they're the ONLY ones who do!

GlobalHawk block-30 was cancelled on cost basis... They worked out that it was cheaper to keep the U-2s going than to procure and operate more RQ-4s. But in reality, the RQ-4 was never that capable anyway...

[Farm-for-sale]

Gents,

It is surprising how we attribute blame to these UAVs when the overriding evidence shows these accidents to be predominantly human factors based (pilot/operator and even programming error). They are all being rushed into service (pick an RQ/MQ number that has completed a full OT&E?) and then we all expect comparable performance to manned, and fully tested, platforms.

Remind me again how well the Oceana F-18D manoeuvered around that block of flats (or even the single-seat in Miramar)?

The GH Blk 30 could only ever carry 3000lbs vs the U-2s 5000lbs of sensors. Never a fair fight and a poor design match from the outset. Desperately poor program management (IMHO, but also very much a MANNED element) led to it finally (maybe) getting scrubbed, rightly so. Do we expect a manned replacement to the U-2 then? If you do, I would couch to not bet too much on it. Expect a GH Blk 50 with 4000lb payload and tech miniaturization to solve it eventually...

Pray rant away

FFS

[5 Forward 6 Back]

Most of those accidents with high HF involvement would be landing crashes, I'd have thought. Those seem to make up the vast majority of MQ-1/9 incidents that I've heard about.

I'm interested in fltlt's comment; I was under the impression that as soon as the drone stopped receiving inputs from home, it'd undertake a pre-planned flight to take it home. I'm yet to hear of one stop listening, but not realise it had stopped listening....?

That would result it in just carrying on doing what it was doing until running out of fuel, I guess, but surely that's as rare as a total hyd loss/catastrophic multiple birdstrike that would similarly leave a GR4's crew unable to influence its final position?

[Ivan Rogov]

I understand cost was an issue with the block 30, based on operating it for the next 5 years or so, but this was because it wasn't doing what the manufactures said it would.

http://pogoarchives.org/m/ns/pentagon-ot-and-e-eval-rq-4b-global-hawk-20110526.pdf

When I first saw this a few months ago I was surprised just how much detail the Spams put on the T'internet.

I agree that most the Operators (That I know anyway) have a very realistic understanding of what drones can and can't do, and what they could do. It is the manufactures, politicians, high ranks and some Ppruners that like to overestimate their utility for various reasons.

Farm I don't get your point about Human Factors or the fact that they have been rushed in to service. There will always be a high HF element to any incident, be it Operator, Maintainer, Engineer (design), Planner, etc. At some level there is a HF element to anything a human has been involved with, manned or unmanned.
The fact they have not been fully tested is not really a plus point. I understand the desire to rapidly field new capabilities, but the amount of equipment operating in AFG that is not properly tested or trailed is high, especially from the US. Our personnel on the ground and in the air could be at more risk from a piece of equipment doing something unexpected. I hope safety cases follow the equipment quickly and are robust rather than just ticking the box, we have already been there :sad:.

[langleybaston]

Doodlegug

............. sound of last swirl of water leaving washbasin?

............. first squawk from bagpipes?

..............first sound as port is decanted?

[Mechta]

U-xlttsfWn4&feature=related

A Dutch team used to bring a model with twin pulse jets to a show at Plumpton Racecourse in Sussex. That was definitely loud, and sounded like an air raid siren.

I met some Maltese model fliers who used to fly r/c pulse jet powered models at Ta'Qali in the 1960s using single channel (non-proportional) escapement control... :eek:

[fltlt]

Note the use of the word "mitigate" (my highlight) these are headlines from current p2v articles. No playing around guys, until the loss of link and failure to revert to, is truly sorted there is an 800lb gorrilla somewhere in the room. See below:

The Pentagon is developing a common set of airborne sense-and-avoid requirements for unmanned aircraft and plans to test the technology in a major demonstration this fall, according to an official leading the effort.

Mounted on unmanned aircraft systems, this technology is designed to help flying drones detect and avoid nearby planes. And through its autonomy feature, it is also designed to help mitigate the problems and concerns generated when a drone loses its link with the control station.
The Air Force is spearheading this effort to transition the airborne sense-and-avoid system (ABSAA) from science and technology to the acquisition and production phase, said Paul Schaeffer, the program manager. The transition of these technologies, which include the development of cooperative and non-cooperative sensors and collision-avoidance algorithms, is scheduled to occur this fall.
Related:


The Air Force needs greater access to the national airspace to support its developmental sense-and-avoid objectives and projected training requirements for drones, according to a recent report signed by Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall.
The April report delivered to Congress on future unmanned aircraft systems training, operations and sustainability states that the demand for airspace to test systems and train UAS operators exceeds current access.
Without improved national-airspace access and improved access to special-use airspace, the capabilities of the Air Force UAS force "will stagnate or degrade," reducing the Air Force's "overall mission effectiveness," the report stated.


The April 2012 Pentagon report to Congress "outlines planned force capability growth and forecasted attrition of [unmanned air system] aircraft through [fiscal year] 2017; Military Department personnel required for training and operations; personnel and aircraft basing intentions; and required military construction (MILCON) and airspace requirements for bases hosting UAS."

[fltlt]

For those who wish to know a little more:

UAVs, software, and security: an interview with Robert Dewar of AdaCore - Avionics Intelligence (http://www.avionics-intelligence.com/articles/2012/06/uavs-software.html)

[BEagle]

For commercial aircraft, and increasingly any military aircraft flying through commercial space, we have rigorous requirements for software in the form of the DO-178C standard. These standards do not guarantee 100 percent freedom from software errors, but in practice they are remarkably effective, as evidenced by the fact that we have never lost a life due to a software bug on a commercial aircraft in the entire history of commercial aviation.

Unfortunately, UAV software is written without any requirements for meeting this or any similar standard. Instead, it is typically written using normal industry practices for commercial software; but, we only have to look at news stories that come out every week, not to mention our own experiences with commercial software, to know that such industry practices are far from reliable. It is one thing to have to deal with your PC crashing, and quite another for a UAV to crash into your house from a similar bug.



http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a341/nw969/DSW.jpg

'Duck and Cover' time......??

[Milo Minderbinder]

It's always struck me that BAE flying its UAVs on test out of Walney Island was asking for problems given its closeness to Barrow.....
A friend on a microlight filming flight a couple of years ago asked permission to cross the airfield and was told in rather certain terms to get lost....it seemed there was a drone on the loose and they were worried about controllability

[fltlt]

I hope everybody who views this thread understands that yes, the thingy's up there are useful. But until the rush to integrate is tempered by a stringent design/build/test requirement equal to, but preferably more stringent than that for manned aircraft, I fear we will see headlines that will for a long, long time, possibly forever ban the use of unmanned air vehicles except in restricted airspace/combat zones.

Many issues will remain even if this one is solved. If the thingy does get away and hits/destroy's, god forbid kills folks, who is responsable, the builder, software designer/intergrator, operator?

In the ground side (and the air if the sense and avoid goes forward)the big problem with unmanned/manned interface is that you can program unmanned to work together, sort of. But what is extremely difficult is that you cannot program responses to us humans. Why because we react unpredictably. Again who is going to pay if something happens?

Long roads to travel methinks.

[Lima Juliet]

What a load of bolleaux over the past few posts about software (and that clown in the linked article from Adacorp who obviously knows nothing!).

There are lots of RPAS/UAV programs with T&E work either ongoing or complete that is comparable to manned aircraft - as an example, why do you think Watchkeeper is taking it's time?

Global Hawk, Watchkeeper, MQ-9, X-47 and even Taranis - ie. all the recent aircraft have been designed, built and tested with the most exacting standards in mind. You are right to criticise "sense and avoid", but it's not technology and testing that's letting it down, it's that the regulators (like the CAA, EASA, FAA, etc...) can't decide exactly what "sense and avoid" should be able to do - better than a man or the same as?

When it comes to rogue aircraft coming down on schools, hospitals and nurseries, the RPAS is no different to any heavier than air type. If it's a catastrophic fail (ie. wing falls off) it's exactly the same, if the engine quits then the RPAS pilot can "dead stick" and force land it exactly the same and if you lose link then it reverts to the emergency mission which is series of waypoints just like that programmed into the FMS of an airliner. For the RPAS the final part of the emergency mission is usually a hold over an unpopulated area so that when it runs out of juice it carries on flying the hold pattern until it pancakes in. Remember the 2005 Helios 737 airliner where the crew suffered hypoxia? Same deal - the 737 flew on it's pre-programmed FMS until it crashed. Or there's the 1999 Learjet that crashed in similar circumstances?

In fact, in the last 2 examples it could be argued that RPAS are safer as it's difficult to get hypoxia in a control cabin on the ground - unless, of course, the cabin door has an air tight seal!!!

LJ

[Whenurhappy]

Indeed, LJ.

There is a potential paradox with RPS, particularly as there is increased automation and a move towards 'supervised autonomy'. Because the aircraft must operate safely and within rules and procedures 100% of the time, on-board systems will typically default to the safe option. Here's a quote from an in-hourse journal:

Accordingly, and until artificial intelligence is a proven technology, autonomy will be used to assist potentially lethal missions, rather than to execute them. As Moshkina and Arkin showed, the public expect a higher standard of behaviour from robots than the humans who would otherwise do that job. Whereas humans are fallible, and will make errors of judgement that could result in legally disproportionate collateral damage, autonomous combat systems will not have that ‘error of judgement’ leeway. Even though unmanned aircraft will do the dull, dirty and dangerous and deep jobs without fault[1] (http://www.pprune.org/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=7245085&noquote=1#_ftn1), the requirement to discriminate against exacting and binary standards of yes/no, rather than ‘maybe’ could result in autonomous unmanned aircraft completing fewer ‘lethal’ missions than their human counterparts as an ‘artificial conscience’, decision software and learned AI behaviour will default towards safe or low-risk options, such as withholding the release of weapons when a human operator may prosecute an attack albeit with some un-quantifiable reservations. This, of course, is on the assumption that there is a clear computational definition of a ‘civilian’ that is compliant with Additional Protocol I.[2] (http://www.pprune.org/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=7245085&noquote=1#_ftn2)



[1] (http://www.pprune.org/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=7245085&noquote=1#_ftnref1) For a discussion of these factors, see the UK MOD's JDN 2/11 pp 3-43-6.

[2] (http://www.pprune.org/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=7245085&noquote=1#_ftnref2) Art 50(1) of Additional Protocol I, 1977 of the 4th Geneva Convention essentially defines a civilian in the negative sense, ie ‘as any person not a combatant’. Malcolm Shaw International Law 5th Edn CUP 2003 p 1061.

[Bubblewindow]

This is not a joke:

On its 'Peace Enforcement' mission in Chad the Irish Army used small UAV's to recce villages for possible rebel activity. They were programmed to RTB should the signal be lost. This happened on one particular occasion and the aircraft promptly did what it says on the tin and headed for home...... towards Ireland!!!!. :ugh:

Some child in northern Chad has a fantastic R/C model :O

BW

[Sun Who]

Unmanned is coming.

The UK Defence R&D Board has mandated that £13 million pounds of research money be spent on UAS technologies, each year, for 5 years. This resource is funding research into autonomy, airspace integration, system survivability and many other areas.

An additional £10 million pounds of UK Defence research money is being spent, each year, for 5 years, specifically on UCAV technologies.

The US has spent, and is continuing to spend, significantly more than that.

This is not being done out of some sort of naive love of technology but because unmanned solutions provide capabilities that manned can't. The operational evidence to that effect is manifest. As a matter of open record, H450 has >60,000hrs in Th, REAPER has more and that doesn't satisfy the operational demand. God knows the figures for DHIII and T Hawk.

Debate on the merits or otherwise of unmanned is healthy. This is a paradigm shifting suite of technologies and associated approach to warfare - the operational community needs to mature and adjust its thinking.

However, most of the debate on this thread is poorly informed - on both sides. Unless you have involvement in UAS either as an operator, scientist, engineer or informed policy maker, I would counsel sticking to asking questions.

Sun.

[fltlt]

We do Sun and a lot of the time it involves "How did that happen?" or "Why the hell did it do that?".

Yes we over here have spent billions and yes they still wander off every now and again.

[fltlt]

They don't come more technologically advanced than the X 47, but it had to be trucked across country, why? and the below are not my words:



OK, now we know for sure what that “UFO” being trucked through Kansas was all about. It’s an X-47B (http://email.defenseindustrydaily.com/public/?q=ulink&fn=Link&ssid=629&id=kgy8y11luwae6fe0hksvvq5p3wus0&id2=7qimcttnkkutr7i8xy3965x3n2wci&subscriber_id=agaqlsqdwhijzosyhbljieqlfvevbep&delivery_id=airoivxchixtgvvbwkogrhhlzdphbgn&tid=3.AnU.A-tfcw.GS_m.s_pW..ATcA1A.b..s.aQU.a.T9uGVg.T9uGVg.v6g98w) unmanned strike aircraft, being hauled from Edwards AFB, CA to Pax River, MD (http://www.navair.navy.mil/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.NavairNewsStory&id=5020) for flight and aerial refueling tests. The FAA wouldn’t let it fly, hence the U-Haul approach. Careful with those probes!

[Lima Juliet]

There are quite a few X-birds that cannot fly in civil airspace - manned or unmanned! Ever wonder why the Tonopah Test Range (TTR), Edwards and Groom Lake airspaces are so very big?!!! "X" means "eXperimental"...:8

[fltlt]

Unforunately this crew never got to suffer in the GCS, it was destroyed:

"Jamming of GPS signals by North Korea may have contributed to the fatal crash of a Schiebel S-100 Camcopter UAV near Incheon, South Korea, on May 10. The small helicopter crashed into its ground control van, killing a Schiebel engineer and injuring the two remote pilots, both Koreans. The jamming started on April 28 and disrupted passenger flights into Seoul’s two airports, Kimpo and Incheon. South Korean government officials told local media that the jamming originated from the border town of Kaesong.
Schiebel said that an incorrect response by the operators after the Camcopter lost its GPS signal led to the crash, some minutes later. The UAV is equipped with multiple inertial measurement units (IMUs) for backup, the company noted. The recorders on board the UAV and in the ground station were burned during the crash, and could not provide any explanatory data.
The crashed UAV had been operating in South Korea since October 2008, apparently on demonstrations for government agencies. Schiebel has not identified most of its customers (http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/ain-defense-perspective/2012-05-11/schiebel-pushes-camcopter-maritime-surveillance) for the S-100. Schiebel lifted a five-day precautionary grounding of the S-100 fleet on May 15.
In an early April briefing attended by AIN, Raytheon UK claimed to be the world leader in GPS anti-jam technology. The company noted that North Korea has been jamming from land vehicles, and that unprotected platforms can be affected at ranges up to 10 miles.
Raytheon UK said it has supplied more than 7,000 jam-resistant antennas to the U.S. and some 20 other countries for aircraft, helicopters, weapons and land vehicles. These include digital versions of the technology that protects platforms over a larger area than the company’s earlier, analog system.
Under a Pentagon contract, Raytheon UK has also developed a smaller version suitable for UAVs and light helicopters.
June 1, 2012, 2:05 PM"

And sorry Leon, the restricted airspace size, which is made up of many individual areas combined is to keep prying eyes away from many things and provide enough airspace to enable force on force ingress/egress routes to maneveur areas. Testing is only a small part.
If you want to see Reaper training you can stand by the fence at Creech any day of the week and watch them from in front/or on the sides of the Indian Casino. Just don't get too close to the Humvee with the manned 50's at the end of the single lane front gate entrance.