A
United States Navy drone wandered into restricted airspace early this month around
Washington D.C. before operators could stop it. A Navy spokesmen could not say later
if anyone on the ground was alarmed by the drone — officially an MQ-8B Fire
Scout Vertical Takeoff and Landing unmanned aerial vehicle — which looks like a
small windowless helicopter, and was flying at 2,000 feet. The Navy said the
drone got within 40 miles of Washington before operators were able to
re-establish communication and guide it back to its base in southern Maryland.
The incident resulted in the grounding of all six of the Navy’s Fire Scouts as well
as an inquiry into what went wrong. The Navy is calling the problem a “software
issue” that foiled the drone’s operators. Navy spokesmen said the Fire Scout,
made by Northrop Grumman, was a little more than one hour into a test flight
operating out of Naval Air Station Patuxent River on the Chesapeake Bay when
operators lost its control link. The drone then flew 23 miles on a
north-by-northwest course to enter Washington’s restricted airspace. A
half-hour later, the Navy spokesmen said, operators re-established control and
the drone landed safely back at Patuxent.
Earlier
this year, unmanned aerial vehicles patrolling along the Canada-U.S. border
were taken offline for a period of time after a similar so-called “software”
failure.
Pentagon
accident reports == mostly from war zones -- reveal that the pilotless aircraft
suffer from frequent system failures, computer glitches and human error. It is
estimated that each crash incident can cost between $3 and $5 million.
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