Air Force OKs autonomous cargo flights across California after successful test
timesofsandiego.com
timesofsandiego.com
https://www.xwing.com "Our system changes the role and location of the pilot. The aircraft is fully self-sufficient with the pilot remotely supervising from a ground control station."
So, there's a pilot somewhere, but it's not clear if the pilot is flying remotely or just there for "backup".
Perhaps a better idea would be to have two pilots, together, monitoring dozens.
Absolutely, I just didn't see much detail on where on the continuum this project sits.
I did find a video that appears to have the pilot just monitoring, but not flying, the plane. A little but worrying, given a similar size/type of plane just crashed by my house (commuter airline at Dulles Airport). If there was no pilot actively flying it (remote or not), would it have been able to safely ditch on the highway? Or would it have crashed into a row of homes instead?
Here's some fun tidbits:
Autopilot landings are actually preferred in bad weather (where airport is equipped).
> On a typical commercial flight, autopilot is used for almost 90% of the flight.
> The autopilot can be engaged as early as 5 seconds after lift-off
> autopilot must be used when flying above 29,000 feet
https://travelradar.aero/the-importance-autopilot-commercial...
[quote] “The use of Xwing’s autonomous aircraft eliminated the need to fly a larger aircraft such as a C-130 to deliver critical cargo to the warfighter on short notice,” said Maxime Gariel, president, chief technical officer and co-founder of Xwing. [/quote]
Did it though? All jokes aside, since when was California an active war zone? (I tried to frame this better—-under siege, in a fire-fight, etc. but kept coming up short)
This would be too far a stretch to assume the average skimmer to connect, but as a side-thought, perhaps we should look at it as this marking the beginning of the experiment, rather than the end.
I think the idea is cool and if it can be extended to private applications such as medical and critical, all while lowering costs and increasing access to the general public, that’d be great.
But reading this left me with more questions than answers
It's potentially very economical, in that there is a shortage of pilots. Reducing flight hours required for low tonnage short haul flights is potentially going to save your experienced pilots for more critical missions
Yes, that's what they were doing during the test.
> All jokes aside, since when was California an active war zone?
Warfighters aren't always based in active war zones. For example, the last round of U.S. strikes against targets in the Middle East involved non-stop bomber flights from the US.
But when sensors fail they relinquish control to the pilot. Adding additional sensors could reduce the need for human backup - I wonder if this company added extra redundancy.
edit: found it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkzVMZFWduc
The problems come when you have engines out, landing gear issues, or malfunctioning equipment.
Look at the recent Waymo accidents. Two Waymo vehicles ran into a vehicle being towed backwards. An edge case that a human could have easily avoided, but software couldn’t.
The complexity of flying an airplane autonomously is way lower than for a car.
The biggest reduction comes from there being (almost) no morons in airspace. Planes are expensive, pilot school is expensive, so the chance of encountering someone doing something they're not supposed to do is way lower - in a car, you have to deal with anything from random little children jumping onto the streets over drunk/tired/phone-using drivers to construction sites.
Then there is the requirement of planes to carry ADS-B transmitters in many airspace classes, so planes precisely know where they are and where everyone else is. And distance between planes is also way larger, which makes avoidance easier.
Basically, as long as the aircraft itself is working fine, everything from takeoff to landing can be done autonomously - and appropriate systems have been developed and used for decades, the first CAT 3 autoland capable aircraft arrived in the late 60s [1]. The only two unsolved challenges are taxiing and in-flight equipment failure... the former can be solved by having a tug pick up a plane on the runway, it's only the failure cases that are a real headache because, at least for now, that requires having highly trained pilots on board.
But drones fly, and this is a drone.
"SkyNet: We do logistics!"
These days you cannot tell though. All pilots fly the same - I'm sure they use less fuel which is a big deal to the airlines. I'm guessing they are all using the computer to do the flying. which isn't to say they are using auto land, just there are other things in control ensuring they don't do the fuel wasting things anymore.
The US Air force is the worlds largest air force. The US Navy is second largest. While it is possible to learn to fly in ways other than joining one of the above two (Marines, Army, Coast guard, or private schools), they together train much less pilots and so odds are I never had one. I wouldn't have been able to tell these others from an air force pilot most likely.
I also used to have like a detailed chronological knowledge of the general troop movements and major battles of the civil war, and now I can barely remember that Gettysburg was after both Bull Runs, and that the first battle was just some Union dudes holed up in a fort getting shelled for days somewhere in the south off the coast. I can't remember what state even, lol.
Reading books
Thought it cool when I found it, fired up a random flightsim, it works. It's just better. Even takes off mental loads. I can't speak to actual, human carrying flights, but for sim hobbies I'd "recommend" sticking to this method.
e: forgot to add back disclaimer - am not a pilot any shape or form
https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/geophysical-survey-airplan...
They're not all as high and angled as the image above.
The plane isn't magic, you need to beam specific radio signals at it, from the ground, so it knows what to do.
Take out the humans and add remote piloting and they'll be flying bombs just waiting for hackers to take control of them.
A more stringent MEL means tougher maintenance requirements, which means more mechanic hours per flight hour (in aggregate, on average).
As far as I know, it's difficult to get a computer to read all the NOTAMS in an automated way that will consistently produce a useable plan with no missed problems. It would need to have no false positives and no false negatives. What am I allowed, What am I forbidden.
Of course people have the same problem, but they have problem solving skills and can decide what weight to give any issue that crops up.
There are also a lot of assumptions about what a pilot can work around that will have to be understood.
To be fair, it's extremely difficult for humans too, and incidents have happened due to this in the past:
https://fixingnotams.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Field-Gu...
Probably true, but I wonder if it just becomes easier to hire/train mechanics than it is to do the same with pilots, especially as flight hour requirements ramp up.
One human can review reports remotely for dozens of planes compared to an in-the-cockpit pilot.
When flying through congested California airspace?
A Cessna Caravan just crashed at my local airpot. If there wasn't a pilot on board flying, would it have been able to successfully ditch on an empty stretch of road with no injuries (and barely any damage to the plane)? Would a remote pilot have been able to do the same? An AI pilot? I have my doubts about the latter.
Automated systems can ‘fail’ systemically and completely across the board, which changes the risk profile.
I.e. Pilots won’t all crash loop at the same time if the wrong kind of character happens to be in a NOTAM. Probably.
You can't go from SF to NY while staying in California airspace afaik. That being said the distance doesn't matter much, I'd be more interested in take-offs/landings
But I could be wrong.
The 2800 miles was multiple flights within California between Jan. 22 and Feb. 4.
This article has more detail:
https://www.flyingmag.com/xwing-awarded-military-airworthine...
Legitimate qualms about drone strikes aside, it seems like a big step forward to not have to send a crew with a plane for cargo transportation. Hopefully this can be the case for private cargo transport, in time.
Though I also wonder how it takes ATC direction.
Better to use drones, which even if it fails 10-20% of the time is better than not failing to supply troops on the ground at all.
You can mass produce an autonomous fleet without consideration for a training pipeline. (You can also lose a lot of life-support systems, and engineer the plane to be more disposable in combat.)
For the C-130, I’d guess 10%+ on operating costs based mostly on increased utilisation.
For a new vehicle, support and redundancy alone should yield 10%+. Doubling or tripling production, based simply on better amortisation of development costs, zero learning curve assumed, another 20%+. Then add on reduced operating costs due to lack of pilot training and pay as well as higher utilisation.