The incident report on this one should be really interesting.
From the official military press release.
Admiral Sandy Winnefeld, who oversees the country’s air defenses, said the August 2 incident presented senior officers with an unprecedented dilemma, as a robotic Fire Scout helicopter strayed off course after losing ground communications.
“We were watching this very closely,” said Winnefeld, head of US Northern Command and NORAD, the joint US-Canadian air defense command.
“It’s headed right for the heart of the national capital region,” he told defense reporters. “Do you let it run out of gas and hopefully crash in a farmer’s field or do you actually take action to shoot it down?”
“You certainly don’t want to shoot it down over a populated area if you can avoid it.”
The North American Aerospace Defense Command was on the verge of scrambling F-16 fighter jets to intercept the helicopter when operators regained control of the chopper after 20 minutes.
Comments
If you were the air traffic controller what would you do??
Pick up phone to range... I bet the thing had a transponder....
ATC....... Hello area here, is that your 7000 squawk heading 360 at 2000'
Range.... Um yes
ATC Ok are you aware you have departed segregated airspace
Range.... Um yes
ATC .......What are your intentions
Range.....Um yes
I fully expect ATC were told the second there was an issue, those chaps are professionals after all. There would have been no ratting out. On the 25th of October all UAS over 300lbs in weight will be required to report incidents in the USA.
Must have been the guys watching the DC airspace that rated out the navy? And the computer was functioning because it flew its self and they regained coms and thus control. Its a heli, it always had control of its self or it would of crashed right? You would think they might have a RTL function built in some how. Like a failsafe nav function. Perhaps a" designated operations area", or DOA. Hey I'm pretty good with acronyms, I should have been a MILCON. That's milspeak for "military contractor".
Just a thought.
Regards,
TCIII
honestly if a manned aircraft did the exact samething instead of this uav this report would never have even reached the news.
It’s the same with all robotics really, people are just more forgiving to other humans then they are to computers. It doesn’t matter if they have a better safety records then their human counterparts or not. There are just people looking for anything to prove UAVs aren’t safe for no other reason then they don’t like the idea of it.
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