Last month's incident in Florida, with twenty dead and sixteen wounded, has broken the pattern of remote, unseen combat mishaps, by bringing disaster to our homeland. No word as of yet about the cause of this mishap from the US Air Force. In this case, the Air Force admits ownership of the rogue drone but has not yet released any findings, or shed any light, into what could have caused the tragedy on Highway 98.
Just last night, again on foreign land, again in Afghanistan, in the isolated, little town of Panjab, forty-two civilians came under a drone attack. Only six of them survived, seriously injured. This time, the mystery is even harder to solve; the survivors' reports did not identify the drone by its markings. No one has identified to which branch of the military the drone belonged. Naturally, no combatant force wishes to take responsibility for this meaningless, devastating act against non-combatant civilians, including men, women, and children. There will probably be a long time before we have any release of information in this case.
There have been enough reports of drones causing serious trouble to prompt some questions. Are we really in control of our equipment? Are these drones reliable enough? Are they as safe as advertised?
One by one, we'll attempt to answer these questions, with the limited knowledge of a news crew.
Control. The Florida incident is related to a drone out of control, or described as such by the numerous eyewitnesses present at the scene. We have explored the scenarios that would cause a drone to be out of control. There aren't many. Human operators, using a joystick and guiding imagery captured by the cameras installed on board, remotely control the drones. The scenario, in which an Air Force pilot, deliberately or in error, slammed the drone into a bus full of tourists, makes no sense. The pilot who was at the controls of the death drone in Florida was not available for comment. Our guess is he won't be available for a while, at least until the Air Force finalizes and releases the findings in this sensitive investigation.
So, what else could have caused the crash? Some kind of malfunction, in either the drone itself, the comlink between drone and operator, or the remote control station. These are the three possible areas to investigate and find potential technical issues that could have been at fault for the incident.
If we're considering technical malfunctions or defects, let's examine the manufacturers' records of quality. There are only a few drone manufacturers. California-based NanoLance has a significant percentage of the defense contracting for the flying doom machines. Having a remarkable quality and reliability record spanning decades, as of late NanoLance disappoints in the more visible areas of consumer goods, such as handheld and in-dash GPS devices.
Consumer reviews, posted on many different venues, are indicating failures in recent models of handhelds, from hardware and software perspectives. While the reported hardware errors were not able to shed much light, due to consumers simply reporting the devices as "broken," the software angle gives a little more insight, such as loss of satellite reception and the inability to re-establish a link; frozen screens, the devices need a restart to be able to resume operations; intermittent defects of all kinds, causing the devices to get stuck in search mode, or not guide properly.
Hmmm… not guide properly? Why does this particular defect ring a bell of interest? Speculating here… These drones are guided using, among others, the GPS technology developed by NanoLance. The same technology that has been reported to malfunction. Could there be a connection? History will reveal it, not a moment too soon.
Reliability. This is a matter to be fully established after the Air Force releases its findings into the Florida incident, and the first of the Afghanistan incidents, in Kandahar. The key question that needs to be answered is if these were because of pilot error or. technical malfunction. Normally we think of reliability as the capability of a particular device to be physically dependable, somehow assuming this is mainly from a technical perspective. That is not entirely correct. Both the drone and the operator have to be reliable, so that the system comprised of the physical drone, the pilot flying it, and the communications link between them, is reliable in its totality. Furthermore, this drone — comlink — pilot system has to be reliable 100 percent of the time. Ninety-nine percent reliability will not be good enough. Ninety-nine percent reliability is what could have caused the Florida incident.
Safety. Operational safety stems from reliability, with a touch of safety-driven procedures and controls. With our limited knowledge of such procedures and controls, we can't even begin to speculate on how safe they are. However, so far, the safety record of the UAVs doesn't impress anyone. Hopefully, the findings into these incidents will reveal opportunities for added safety features into the operation of robotic aircraft, here, in our own airspace, or anywhere else.
One thing remains certain: as of right now, drones are both unsafe and unreliable, claiming lives of innocent civilians, here, at home, and in combat zones, overseas.
…58
The sun was still high enough to cause a bothersome glare on Alex's cloned laptop screen. She moved around the table a bit, to get rid of the glare and distinguish the needed detail she wanted from the images on the screen. Recalling Tuesday morning, when she had deliberately entered an executive meeting ten minutes late, with the sole purpose of surprising the person who was out to get her, still churned her stomach. She remembered the effort she had to make to walk in there with full confidence and her chin up, knowing that at least one of those present wanted her seriously harmed, enough to drug her and set her up to be arrested and thrown in jail.
She carefully watched the video, insisting on reviewing the minutes just before her entrance, to get familiar with the faces present and their overall demeanors. Unfortunately, from what she could see, neither Sheppard nor Walker had been in the room. Dr. Barnaby had to think of a reason to have the meeting in the company's recreation center gym, the only space large enough that could be fitted with seats facing the entrance. The gym was, on occasions, used for company-wide meetings, although it could barely hold 200 people, not even close to the almost 1,000 on NanoLance's payroll. Those present were quite fidgety, Alex noted. They were restless and concerned, as one would expect from the leaders of a company faced with investigations into the safety of its product, and potential involvement in incidents that had led to numerous deaths.
There it was, the precise moment she had entered the room. The camera, installed on the projector mount, close to the ceiling, only captured her from an angle that was above and behind as she made her way from the door to a seat in the front row. She could pinpoint with precision the moment she had entered the room, as she scrutinized the familiar faces for reactions.
The CFO, Audrey Kramer, just as tired as usual, looked up when Alex entered, then frowned. The frown on her face lingered for a good ten seconds, then faded away. That was too long time for it to have been an accidental or coincidental frown. Could it have been triggered by the rudeness of her being late? It was a possibility. In the case of Kramer's reactions, the results were inconclusive for now. Alex would have to observe Kramer on an ordinary day and figure out if lateness bothered her enough to cause such a reaction.