Drone crashes mount at civilian airports | Hacker News Reader

Drone crashes mount at civilian airports

washingtonpost.com

103 pointsstfu54 comments

The most worrying angles seem to be human factors issues: the lack of coordination between drone crews and airport ATC, and the apparent deficits in training/qualification of pilots.

"Similar accident rate to F-16s at a similar time in their development" doesn't fill me with joy either; combat aircraft can expect a crash or major incident on the order of once per 10,000 flying hours, whereas for airliners the equivalent rate is roughly one crash or major incident per 10^7 hours -- three orders of magnitude safer! It's like comparing over-powered motorbikes in the hands of reckless teenagers with school buses.

The original justification for deploying drones over manned aircraft was that the drones could be built cheaper -- no expensive aircrew to risk in event of a crash, so less need for complex safety systems and multiple redundancy. Now put this cheap, cheerful, and not terribly safe device in the hands of a lowest-bidder contractor's hired help, who may or may not have been hired because they were cheap rather than able to do the job ...

And now imagine the bikers in this metaphor are riding on a stretch of road used by buses, are ignoring the traffic signs, and that a crash will kill everyone involved (including the full bus), and you've got a grasp of the picture we're looking at here.

They should make the UI user safe. If it goes point-and-click, they could hire almost anyone to operate it. Easier said than done, I guess.

In civilian airports equipped with ILS navigation support. Modern commercial aircraft can literally land themselves without human input. As long as runways are properly equipped with the right beacons, automatic landings of drones are not far fetched.

Did you all read some of the problems which arose? In one crash report, the drone took "off without permission from the control tower". In another, "an armed Predator suffered an electrical malfunction that sent it into a death spiral." A third was partially due to a "melted throttle part." A forth started when "[t]wo minutes after takeoff, the engine failed."

Another concern is that air control gives "priority to passenger planes and order[s] drone pilots to keep their aircraft circling overhead even when they are dangerously low on fuel."

Yes, some of the problems were human error. But from the statistics given, UI errors and improved navigation support give at most a 30% reduction in the crash rates. While what's needed is several orders of magnitude improvement to make it match the commercial crash rates.

It is insane to build a craft with powerful weapons and not reserve guaranteed capacity for landing spots, including backups at other times and locations from main flight plan.

I did read the article. I was responding to a post that highlighted the human factors in the conflict.

If the UI was simple, the landing scheduling would be handled automatically. If the plane had too little fuel, the planning failed. Keeping a schedule isn't difficult, human interaction and ill-defined schedules makes things difficult.

I am aware that a central african state isn't exactly the cornerstone of air tech, but good schedules can still be negotiated and kept.

It's like the air france crash where the pilot stalled the plane because of lack of feedback. UI/skill problem.

My argument is that improved UI doesn't appear to be the source for major improvements in reducing the number of drone crashes. While a simple UI might handle some engine failures, it can't handle all hardware failures.

The landing scheduling depends on the local air traffic controllers, which aren't under US direction and can't be solved with an improved UI. The planning problem might be that the local ATC doesn't care for the US military traffic in the area, and this is a form of passive protest. If so - and that is a pure hypothetical as the article doesn't go into those details - then the planning problem is at the high-level political level, and perhaps extending to how the world perception of how the US is dealing with the GWOT. That's extremely far from UI issues.

As minor points, neither Djibouti nor the Seychelles are a central African state. Also, the initial problem with AF 447 was inconsistent airspeed inputs from the pitots, causing the autopilot to disengage. I don't think it's useful to attribute the problem only to "lack of feedback." Yes, there's a "skill problem", but if you continue the analysis chain then there's a training problem, and if you go further then there was an incomplete understanding of the risk model.

Modern commercial airliners do not land themselves without human input. Someone needs to dial in a whole bunch of parameters then monitor the instruments carefully.

Autopilots aren't infallible; they're basically glorified cruise control with three axes of freedom rather than one.

(I will grant you that commercial aircraft with ILS can land in zero visibility conditions, but that's a very long way from being able to fly themselves to an arbitrary destination without human direction.)

i think your parent comment miswrote a period for a comma, so you aren't disagreeing.

Understandably, commercial airliners do not land via computer because human pilots are better than the autopilots in most commercial aircraft. To say that this will always be the case, especially in an entrepreneurial software forum, is ridiculous. Autopilots will get better and better, and drone pilots are not currently as good as commercial aircraft pilots.

Because... you just argued that people are required to enter parameters, and monitor sensors, and, well, people aren't very good at those things.

[http://www.x-plane.com/x-world/hardware/seeker-avionics/]

Automatic landing of drones is and has been a reality for a long time.

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/...

Former Shadow 200 TUAV from the US Army pilot here. Not only are fully automated landings feasible, they are happening in practice. The Shadow has a piece of equipment called the T.A.L.S. (Tactical Automated Landing System). Landing a shadow (I did this in Iraq as well mind you) involved aligning the AV in a small box on the screen which turned it green. Provided the airspeed was right and crosswinds were in tolerance, you click the "Land AV" button and the landing is 100% hands off. If at any point during the tals auto-landing something looks off, you push the abort button which powers the engines to full, gains altitude, and lets you circle around to try again. This tech is around and battle tested.

My thought on why the predator / reaper aren't is simply so an officer can go through flight school and get his cool flight wings in the USAF. There is no good technical reason as far as I know landings can't be fully automated with larger UAVs.

I helped develop that technology, glad to hear of someone on HN using it. =))

To me the most worrying part of this article is this part;

> In a Nov. 20 speech in Washington, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said the Pentagon would expand its use of the unmanned attack planes “outside declared combat zones” as it pursues al-Qaeda supporters in Africa and the Middle East.

The military has to keep engaged to justify its existence, and the blowback from this will give it an unending stream of future "customers".

Any idea how the International Criminal Court would view a signatory nation doing such things?

It's a bit unfair, I'd say, to compare a single military fighter jet incident rate to (all?, matured?) civilian aircraft incident rates, as such:

"It's like comparing over-powered motorbikes in the hands of reckless teenagers with school buses."

I'm not excusing the error rate, but civilian aircraft have a faily simple set of operations: fill aircraft with people and/or cargo, fly a pre-determined route at a relatively stable airspeed, and land. Also, what was the error rate of civilian aircraft during development (as the F-16 number reflects)?

Outside of the Concorde, I don't think they have to worry about supersonic speeds. Also, nor are they concerned high angles of attack, or reduced aerodynamics at low altitudes, or low/near surface flying, and a plethora of other uses and scenarios.

Unless I misinterpreted your statement, then disregard this reply.

Your parent isn't complaining about the incident rates of military aircraft. He's complaining about putting something with the that high of an incident rate in the same airspace with civilian traffic (not to mention housing). It drastically increases the risk of the civilian aircraft being involved in one of those much-more-numerous incidents, and, when an aircraft has an "incident", the passengers and crew (and people standing under said incident) tend to not come out of it well.

Convenient for the military aircraft causing the incidents in this hypothetical situation, they have no passengers or crew to worry about. And I absolutely believe that will increase the number of risks they (the Air Force or its shoddy contractors) will be willing to take, further increasing the risk to civilians around.

Gotchya.

But that doesn't invalidate my reply, which was about the numbers being compared and the context of those numbers.

Are there many people living in the desert where the military trains? Or over open water? Many military bases don't have residential areas in the immediate vicinity, unlike most civilian airports. (Sure, there are exceptions to both, but as a whole - what's the norm?)

I realize there are incidents that have involved civilians, such as when I was in San Diego and an F-18 (?) crashed into a neighborhood near Miramar in San Diego. My questions: what is the total number of civilian casualties from military "incidents" and how does that compare to civilian incidents? And what other airspace can they fly in? Is there no way to compromise? Etc.

I'm not arguing for or against contractors or drones. I would think they should be launched from military bases, if at all. My goal is to look at it from the right perspective.

I don't think people have any issues with them being at military bases, its that they are starting to be more and more deployed at civilian airports all around the world.

And that the crash kills everyone involved except the biker.

A bit off-topic but per the NYU/Stanford "Living Under Drones" report[1], the use of military drones for "fighting terrorism" has been frightening, to say the least. It turns out that only about 2% of the people killed in Pakistan by drones are high-level terrorists, and collateral damage including women and children is a extremely common. Furthermore, "double-strike" standard operating procedure specifically targets first responders by hitting a target a second time minutes or hours after the first strike. The whole thing is pretty sick and based on the accounts in the report, drone activities terrorize the population as simply being near a terrorist (or someone profiled as a terrorist based on their behavior) can get you killed.

[1] http://livingunderdrones.org/

This is exactly the sort of misbehavior that the IDF explicitly claims to avoid, to minimize collateral damage.

IDF may not be following its own claimed standards either, but everyone should.

You won't see unmanned drones flying at US civilian airports. Nor, in most cases, anywhere in US civilian airspace. Drones aren't allowed here because we don't know how to safely integrate them into civilian airspace. There's a controversial effort inside FAA to come up with rules for UAVs and it's going very slowly and carefully. The arrogance of us flying drones in Djibouti and Seychelles civilian airspace when we won't let them in our own airspace is pretty amazing.

I don't know about Djibouti or Seychelles, but depending on their air traffic level, it may be similar to certain testing areas in the US, less dense and intense than something like LAX.

Not saying the drone operators are playing fair and safe, just making room.

The Shadow 200 TUAV has been flying in AZ near and all around Ft Huachuca, AZ since before 2001, when I was flying them there. It has an "experimental" FAA designation and we would frequently hold for civi aircraft. Look it up if you don't believe me :)

This is very strange. Why are military "contractors" flying these things ? Should they be trained military personnel piloting the drones ?

...contractors + buggy software + hackable systems that could even allow a hacker to take control of the drone = 99% unaccountability

you can do everything with these things and get away with it ...and if you do something really genocidally horrible you can always blame "terrorist hackers" or "criminally incompetent" contractors ...bone chilling scary shit (oh, and I can even start to imagine the international situations provoked by doing stupid things with drones outside the USA - "oh, no, it wasn't an act of war against you country, we just had a software bug - now take please take this money for the damages and don't mention anything to the press" :) )

I can assure you, the communication links between the ground and the drone was not an afterthought. There is an extensive amount of regulation/standardization surrounding this.

I am somewhat reading between the lines but from the article it sounds like military contractors handle the local take-off and landing then hand over the drone to the military for the actual combat missions.

I'm guessing they are using microwave communication locally for a more reliable link (than satellite). Since you need twitch responsive communications for take-off and landing.

Once the drone is in the air if it loses communications with the ground then it just either flies it predetermined route or at least flies straight and level until communications are re-established.

The problem here seems to be that people both on the military side and contractor side are cutting tons of corners and we are starting to see the fallout from that here.

I think failure to communicate with ATC (e.g. taking off without permission) is a massive concern. If a traditional pilot did that then they would soon have their licence ripped up, not sure why drone pilots aren't held to the same standard.

Mercenary groups like Academi (nee XE (nee Blackwater)) count as contractors.

It's common to give contractors a bad wrap, and certainly some deserve it. But, many DOD contractors are ex-military persons, either retired, discharged, physically unable to remain in service, or simply choose to work "on the other side of the desk" (as they say).

Almost all the contractors I know were in the Air Force, Marines, Navy or Army for some period time. (It's usually very helpful as they still have the necessary clearances and don't need to be sponsored to get one.)

Yeah it's not an operational failure to use contractors, but it is an accountability failure, because both sides of the table use the contracting relationship as an excuse to break the law and commit treason, as there is no legal culture in place to handle these "organizational" crimes vs traditional mutiny or war crimes committed by a unit in the hierarchical military.

Understood.

But in context, this is a very small amount of the total set of government contractors, most of which are designers, analysts, aircraft/ship building and maintenance, software developers, among a host of other areas. Only a few have a big hand to play in questionable/Black Ops/mercenary roles.

These missions are unaccountable to the local civilian population regardless of who is at the controls. If you kill my family member how do I seek prosecution in court? This disdain for the rule of law is entirely consistant with post-war US foreign policy.

They're used for a lot more than the military, and contractors have the flight time to qualify as pilots for them.

Why should military pilots be flying them? Lots of them are on non-military missions.

These[1] are military aircraft flying military missions. I think it is pretty self evident why the military should be flying them. My guess is that having contractors flying them introduces a level of "indirection" reducing any one organization's responsibility and, therefor, its accountability.

1. Of course there are other, non-military drones out there, but they aren't what we are discussing here.

The 2000s were the era of military privatization. Military personnel pay rates are set by law. The point is that private corporations can't take a cut when military personnel to do the work, therefore everything except shooting has to be privatized.

The 2000s were the era of military privatization. Military personnel pay rates are set by law and are paid by the government to the employee/soldier. Private corporations can't take a cut when military personnel do the work, therefore everything except shooting has to be privatized.

The mention of software bugs seems worrying - I mean, isn't avionics supposed to be second only to NASA in code quality and being bug-free? Or do they just not care that much since there's not a pilot involved?

Obviously not a gamer..

But what about the shorts and tee-shirt? Everyone knows you can only fly a drone properly if dressed in a complete flight-suit.

I was thinking the same thing but then I asked myself if the guys killing people at the other side of the world were dressed like that, and feel ill at ease.

Is it the killing that bothers, or the casual dress?

It's the combination that's problematic. It suggests that the killing is done lightly and carelessly, and it cheapens human lives.

And yet that is the fact. The worth of human life is decided but what's in the pocket. The sooner you accept it the easier it will be.

I should be surprised that a HN reader is falling for this guy's trick, but I guess I'm not.

"Oh and look at how the military is using these hacker kids with neck beards who part-time as assassins in between their Battlefield 3 matches"

I guess this guy (and apparently you too) would feel better if this guy was wearing a 3-piece suit before he launches a hellfire missile into a Taliban camp.

No, someone wearing a uniform and whose leash it tightly held by commissioned officer is a tiny bit more appropriate. A clear and unambiguous chain of command from the sovereign state is the least you can ask for in a war. Those involved should know that they are not autonomous agents, they are instruments of power, tools, and disposable themselves.

Exactly : Wearing a uniform you're doing things that you would never do wearing civilian clothes. That's a psychological threshold, for soldiers and for the society.

Maybe the yanking of the controls? :-/

The BBC used to have a policy of requiring evening dress for their radio announcers. There's something to be said for an inflexible and rules-bound mindset when operating critical machinery - making sure checklists are followed, etc. More fluid application of smarts may be necessary in an emergency, but not as a matter of routine.

"Please sign in to access this article and other exclusive content."

That's not very convenient.

Strange, I didn't get that message. Try this http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonp...

Where do drone OPERATORs get their pilots license...?

Radio shack.

lol

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