Mystery shrouds the rogue flight of an Army unmanned surveillance aircraft

[sardak]

http://www.stripes.com/news/questions-hover-over-army-drone-s-630-mile-odyssey-across-western-us-1.456505#.WLdUg7mgs6i

SAN ANTONIO — Mystery shrouds the rogue flight of an Army unmanned surveillance aircraft that was launched from southern Arizona on Jan. 31, flew hundreds of miles independent from human control and was found Feb. 9, broken apart in a tree outside Denver.

The incident has raised questions: Why did the Shadow RQ-7Bv2 unmanned aircraft fly so far outside its 77-mile range, and how did the Army lose its aircraft for 10 days?

The CAP radar forensics team got involved. This version of the Shadow has a 20 ft wingspan, is 11 ft long, 3 ft wide and weighs 450 pounds when fully loaded. A full fuel load gives a flight duration of about 9 hours at 80 knots. 77 miles is its radio link range.



Photos and official Army press releases on the Fort Huachuca Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/u.s.armyforthuachuca/

[Starbux]

It was either a navigation system error or it was a human error and someone did not program a failsafe point.  The MQ-1/9 this was called an "Emergency Mission" Not sure if the shadow has the same mechanism to return home.  With General Atomics birds you have to program a return path which it will orbit over a point until you can regain control or it runs out of gas and crashes.

Either way this will raise more questions with the FAA if flying beyond line of sight is safe.  The FAA is pretty hard nosed about the line of sight rule, which is why you have to have a chase plane or ground monitors along the flight path.

[etodd]

Either way this will raise more questions with the FAA if flying beyond line of sight is safe.  The FAA is pretty hard nosed about the line of sight rule, which is why you have to have a chase plane or ground monitors along the flight path.

Might keep our Syracuse mission going longer.

[Luis R. Ramos]

I'll bet that USAF will be happy to pay to send a Syracuse, NY team next time a drone has to fly from or over Texas...

[FyreDragn]

I'll bet that USAF will be happy to pay to send a Syracuse, NY team next time a drone has to fly from or over Texas...

Unfortunately the Army UAV systems don't talk to the Air Force UAV systems.  Two totally different drone systems.  Besides, there would be a much closer team to be able to handle that.  It seems that it just lost radio link and continued flying.  Newer technologies have emerged since the Army drones that have a default set to Return to Base upon losing signal which will use GPS to come back.

[Luis R. Ramos]

Did you not understand sarcasm in that response? Why would someone put  in their message?

Was it not clear that even if the Air Force decides to send an experienced team, it would not be from Syracuse but another team that had done similar things to what they did, and be closer than them? That is the meaning of putting  in the message...

Or... did you understand my message was full of sarcasm and you wanted to bring it out in the open, no sarcasm so it was completely understood?

And... some people will take advantage of this, some will not care! Am I taking this response too personal?

[Starbux]

I'll bet that USAF will be happy to pay to send a Syracuse, NY team next time a drone has to fly from or over Texas...

Unfortunately the Army UAV systems don't talk to the Air Force UAV systems.  Two totally different drone systems.  Besides, there would be a much closer team to be able to handle that.  It seems that it just lost radio link and continued flying.  Newer technologies have emerged since the Army drones that have a default set to Return to Base upon losing signal which will use GPS to come back.

It does have a lost link logic similar to the MQ-1/9.  It would be ridiculous if it didn't. We would be losing a lot more aircraft.  There is no way the FAA would allow the Army to fly this thing out of a civilian field if it did not have a failsafe for lost data comms.  Losing link is a common occurrence with the line of sight ground data terminals, especially in the AOR.  There is a very crowded spectrum over there.  Sometimes we would lose link when someone would turn on their systems at a close frequency. We would get it back if it got closer to the base.  Very rarely would we lose link and never regain it.  In fact its only happened a few times out the thousands of missions flown.  If we ever had rogue aircraft it was usually what I explained above. 

https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/air_force_lost_link_mission.pdf