Unmanned Aircraft Pose US Airspace Problems 78
coondoggie writes to tell us that congressional watchdogs have called on Congress to create a body within the FAA to oversee unmanned aircraft development and integration. The group cited the rapidly growing unmanned aircraft community and is worried about the possible repercussions. "The GAO also called on the FAA to work with the Department of Defense, which has extensive unmanned aircraft experience, to issue its program plan. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assesses the security implications of routine unmanned aircraft access to commercial airspace, the GAO said. Even if all issues are addressed, and there are a number of critical problems, unmanned aircraft may not receive routine access to the national airspace system until 2020, the GAO concluded."
Security Implications? What Security Implications? (Score:1, Interesting)
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Re:Security Implications? What Security Implicatio (Score:5, Informative)
Loss of communications. If you lose comms in a manned aircraft, the pilot follows his flight plan as filed until he regains comms or is able to take appropriate action to land safely. If you lose comms with an unmanned aircraft, depending upon its programming, it may or may not follow a flight plan, avoid other aircraft, and/or land safely.
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Re:Security Implications? What Security Implicatio (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2007/01/AFpredcrash070126/
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No, no I am not.
Unless it provides me with a scan of the immediate surroundings showing all enemies on my minimap.
The major problem with unmanned aircraft (Score:1, Funny)
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I call shenanigans. Your /. id isn't low enough!
Typical male argument. I don't think your UID is low enough to make that supposition!
For this definition of unmanned craft, the unmanned aircraft may actually be safer!
Just take a look at the risk premiums that auto insurance companies find for young male drivers VS female drivers, you will note in the former case, the risk premiums are substantially higher for males, at least in the US.
The risk premiums are based on, well, you guessed it
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Look, its a joke.
The poster was making fun of the possible wordplay that "unmanned" did not necessarily mean robotic, it could have been women flying them. Now comedic timing is a difficult thing. Surely my statement above was not a funny description. The article stated that there was a serious problem with unmanned aircraft so there was already a sense that these unmanned craft were a bad thing because they were unmanned. There's an existing stereotype (certainly from a time when few women drove and rare
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Not all women are bad drivers and not all men are excellent drivers.
My wife has an excellent sense of direction, and is uncanny accurate in getting to a new place right the first time.
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I've read before that some insurance companies charge women lower premiums. A quick search reveals [motorpoint.com.au]
"Car insurance companies prefer lady drivers to their gentlemen counterparts because they are considered as much less risky drivers. It is not that the accident rates of ladies are low. They face as many accidents as males do. However, the damage caused by them is not as much in most of the cases. So, their claims after the accident are als
Re:Security Implications? What Security Implicatio (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's the bullshit security implications. More importantly, though, you'll have unseeing devices sharing airspace with pink squishy things that won't see them (like me). UAV's, by nature, are generally smaller then manned aircraft. That makes them very difficult to see.
Consider the glider pilot. Let's say that he has a transponder. He's not required to, but he does. His transponder fails. Now, he's invisible to the the UAV. His airplane is painted the same color as the clouds (white) because fiberglass and heat don't work well together. His fiberglass airplane is invisible to radar. if the UAV's coming out of the sun, he's never going to see it, and it won't see him. A person would have seen him, but the UAV doesn't have a person looking out all the windows.
How does the military do it? We block off huge chunks of airspace and keep manned aircraft far away from the UAV's. Oh yeah, and the larger UAV's are driven by certified pilots. The Army has folsk who aren't pilots flying the,m, and crashes a *LOT* of them. The idea of joe cop flying a UAV is bad in every imaginable way. People on the ground, people in the air, privacy, it's just a can of worms.
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While they were testing the prototypes for what would become the F-117 lockhead engineers had the model on a stand and were trying to locate the model on radar. Suddenly it showed up clear, when they looked up there was a bird standing on the model. The F-22 has been compared to having the radar cross section of small birds.
Fiberglass is transparent to radar and microwaves though.
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Re:Security Implications? What Security Implicatio (Score:4, Funny)
Well, there's your problem right there. We gotta find a way to put metal in them pesky birds. Most people would immediately suggest putting metal in bird feed but I think we need to encourage our winged friends to adopt the fashion trend of body piercing.
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Including radar systems on aircraft. The covering on many aircraft is made of just such materials.
Gliders, birds, lots of things without metal in them don't show up.
Birds will show up in large flocks. But the typical radar system is going to be set up to ignore anything with a small RCS.
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For fuck's sake. We are so worried that some radical muslim will take over a plane and fly it into the whitehouse that we are destroying the constitution. Now we want to put remote control airplanes in the sky
Oh wait, that's right, government pilots were flying the plane that hit the pentagon the first time. So, sure, nothing will go wrong.
Or perhaps we can just get insurance companies to cough up the dosh to pay for all the
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You can also do this using a truck...
Consider the glider pilot. Let's say that he has a transponder. He's not required to, but he does. His transponder fails. Now, he's invisible to the the UAV. His airplane is painted
Re:Security Implications? What Security Implicatio (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Security Implications? What Security Implicatio (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest "security implication" perceived by the FAA is interference with air traffic. However, the FAA lumps all UAVs into one category, from the Predator on down to tiny biomimetic dragonflys. This makes it nearly impossible for us to test fly our new products, without hauling a truckload of gear up to the nearest military test range.
And contrary to the belief of many, very few UAVs are armed. Only two US UAVs in operation carry payloads. The rest carry cameras.
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Whilst birds are considered a danger to aviation, a not especially large bird can cause serious damage to an aircraft or engine. I'm unware of an insect causing problems to an aircaft in flight. Indeed the only insect related accident appears to have been due to one building a nest in a pitot.
And contrary to t
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Well its kind of like strapping timed bomb to a dog and then dropping him off at the shopping mall. Obviously they aren't going to say "The terrorist dog blew himself up along with the bystanders... Case closed!"
Same thing with a UAV, someone had to build it and someone had to tell it either via programming or remote control to go blow someone up.
Really, its just
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When Martial Law breaks out, you'l be wishing you had made friends with them...
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oh the irony... (Score:5, Interesting)
We have a massive increase in the number of UAV flights. You know, because of the "terrorists". This is (allegedly) primarily to stop "terrorists" getting on board planes and turning them into giant fireballs that will fall on the population.
Now, these same UAV's are in danger of hitting planes and turning them into giant fireballs that will fall on the population.
I ask you, even if you believe in "terrorists", which is more dangerous: "terrorists", or your Government?
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Comforting (Score:2)
It's far more comforting to believe that a great powerful conspiracy was required to take down the towers than a couple dozen whackjobs with pocket knives.
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Open the other eye and see that they will obviously not be used for terrorisim surveilance a great majority of the time. UAV's have been getting cheaper and they are cheaper to fly than have a pilot up in jet/plane. Police agencies want these things because obviously if you had taken math class you would look at the numbers compared to flying a helicopter.
Were you dropped on your head as a kid or do you actually believe they would fly these things in commercial airlines routes. Thes
Unmanned != Unpiloted (Score:3, Insightful)
There seems to be a tacit assumption in posts thus far that unmanned craft will be flying willy-nilly through the commercial lanes. That's just not the case. UAVs have pilots controlling them through encrypted datalinks. The few that have or are proposed to have "autonomous operation" will do so at altitudes that are far above normal flight levels or in restricted zones. Even during autonomous operations, monitoring is continuous and a crew is standing by to take over flight operations. As far as Air Traffic Control is concerned, UAV in-flight emergencies will be handled just like piloted craft in-flight emergencies. Airspace will be cleared around the disabled or uncontrolled craft.
I'm much more concerned over the modernization of our air traffic control systems, than the impact of UAVs.
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personally UAV's to replace police helicopters would be a good thing, it would lower police costs while providing the exact same service
Photography and couriers (Score:1)
Small UAVs can also make good couriers if you want to beat street traffic, although electronic transmission and things like 3D-fax machines lessen the need for this.
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Almost the entire airspace is a "commercial lane". (Score:3, Interesting)
Given that practically all airspace in the US, except for very small amounts of restricted and prohibited airspace, is a "commerical lane" by default, your argument is void. UAV's *are* flying "willy-nilly" thru Class G, Class E, and even Class D airspace and it is becoming an topic of serious safety concern for not only general aviation and commercial
Actually Unmanned == Unpiloted nowadays (Score:2)
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Exactly. These kinds of vehicles usually have a preset mission and have enough smarts to carry it out without needing human intervention, they're not remote-controlled vehicles at all!
The difference is akin to the difference between the instructions you'd give to a blind car driver and what some mapping software would do.
The blind car driver would require constant attention to make sure the car is not steering towards pedestrians or other obstacles. This is essentially remote control operation.
On the
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The agricultural GPS system your link refers to is at present pretty primitive, and is just about guidance, really (although it can and does steer the tractor). It's incredibly useful though. I'm from a farm and all of our tractors and combines have these guidance systems now. They are limited to driving a particular path, then letting the operator turn around and drive towards the next path and then have GPS guidance lock on and steer the next pa
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That's probably something which general satnav could do with. Especially when truckers use systems with maps which are only suitable for cars omitting such details as ro
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Actually I do, quite a bit. I design them.
And no, it's not. The autonomy part is fairly easy and the control algorithms already exist.
Autonomy =/= unpiloted. There's still a pilot, the operator still has a stick and a HUD, he just doen't need to continually correct heading, airspeed, pitch, and throttle for changes in wind conditions, updrafts, etc.
Very, very few UAVs will be "un
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Uh this statement is not even remotely true. First off UAV's have been flying mixed in with regular traffic for some years now. They
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Unless the UAV carries an appropriate transponder then ATC and other air traffic can't "see" the UAV too easily.
Even with the pilot on the stick the view is very limited and are unable to look around to see what is going on.
Visibility isn't always too good in piloted aircraft either
Responsible parties, flight plans, tracing (Score:2, Interesting)
* Areas below a certain altitude will remain unregulated by the FAA except near airports and within a very short distance of official heliports and helipads, and then only at altitudes that affect aircraft. Localities can regulate them if needed to address local issues, such as flying near power lines or near government buildings, requiring failsafes (see below), requiring operator training, prohibiting certain activities such as commercial or private-investigation photography
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Checking power lines is an obvious application for a UAV.
See & Avoid (Score:4, Informative)
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This means that the distance at which the UAV will be spotted will on average be much closer to a point of potential collision than with GA craft, and the time to react will be much lower.
On top of that, when you see something airplace shaped, you judge its distance in part by its ap
What about Open Source UAVs? (Score:3, Informative)
Given that these are basically toys created by amateurs, it's going to be really hard to regulate them. That's why we want the FAA to create a de minimus regulatory category (under 3 pounds, under 1,000 feet, away from built-up areas, airports, etc), similar to what the FCC did with open access wireless spectrum. Otherwise, we're going to completely kill innovation in the independent commercial sector by creating an impossible regulatory burden.
the real problem (Score:2)