Military Drone Lost Over Lake Ontario 258
First time accepted submitter slipped_bit writes "An MQ-9 Reaper drone has gone down over Lake Ontario during a practice mission. The flight, being operated by the New York Air National Guard's 174th Attack Wing in Syracuse, NY, was going well for about three hours before contact with the aircraft was lost. A search was started but had to be postponed due to weather."
Re:Forgive My Ignorance (Score:5, Informative)
Guard units have a nicely dovetailed dual role. Most of the time they act as reserve squadrons for the Air Force, and can be deployed overseas. The rest of the time, their ground organizational structure, which ordinarily keeps their aircraft and crews ready to go, can be mobilized on a moment's notice to deal with local disasters.
Re:Forgive My Ignorance (Score:5, Informative)
The National Guard is simultaneously both a state militia and federal reserve force, with Uncle Sam getting priortiy. For all intents and purposes they are Air Force whenever the Pentagon wants them to be.
Re:Forgive My Ignorance (Score:4, Informative)
Clearly they're on to our plan to invade the US and reclaim Maine and the Alaska panhandle....
Lets have some fun picking this apart. (Score:5, Informative)
The drone was attached to the New York Air National Guard’s 174th Fighter Wing – the first fighter squadron to be converted from piloted F-16s to an all-drone force.
Wait, what? An F-16 capable of carrying near 18,000 lbs of weapons and flying at mach 2+ is replaced by a drone flying at 240Mph carrying 3800lbs? Well, I'll be danged if someone in the DOD should not be fired for that decision. I could see it if they replace a squadron of A-10s with hundreds of these for close air support, but F-16s?
There have been numerous previous crashes of Reaper drones. Drones are expected to see much wider civilian use in the United States when the first federal permits are issued, which is expected in 2015, and regulators are keenly examining such crashes as they develop safety guidelines. The international market for drones is also expanding.
Okay, so they don't have a good safety record and we accept that since it's Defense. I'm good with this, but then they state...
“I have quite a bit of confidence in the safety of the airplane,” he said. “If you compare it to other platforms or aircraft that are flown by the Air Force You’ll see that it’s a much safer platform.”
So they have a higher crash record than any manned platform, no feedback for what is going wrong, yet somehow they are a "safer platform"? I guess that depends on what you are keeping safe. Pilots, okay. Tax money? Nope. Our borders? Nope, not that either.
As long as they hype the drones, people ignore why we have those for "Defending our borders". The ANG role is the last line of defense against an invading air-force. Reapers and Predators can't shoot down a MIG or SU of any type. Seems like a huge conflict of interest to man the ANG with these.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
Nonsense. The drone just hit a deer. Everyone in upstate NY does it sooner or later.