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."
Let me be the First to Say... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let me be the First to Say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that what Brian Boitano would do? Or would he drink Canada Dry?
The interesting thing about using the drones domestically is that it will be harder to cover up these accidents the way they can overseas as classified information. Now we might see how reliable or not they are, and if they are really being used more than once before they wreck.
Re:Let me be the First to Say... (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, who gives a shit. They were designed to be lost.
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Honestly, who gives a shit. They were designed to be lost.
Maybe it went rouge!!!
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Let me be the First to Say... (Score:5, Funny)
Colored its cheeks, then crashed itself out of pure embarrassment?
Re:Let me be the First to Say... (Score:4, Insightful)
Colored its cheeks, then crashed itself out of pure embarrassment?
Or working the streets, turning tricks to make money.
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If so then it is breaking the law, as commercial use of drones is currently banned.
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Begun, the Drone Wars have...
Re:Let me be the First to Say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, who gives a shit. They were designed to be lost.
At $17M each, you'd think they'd be designed to *not* be lost. How many $17M "designed to be lost" drones can we afford to send on one-way missions?
Re:Let me be the First to Say... (Score:4, Interesting)
do you know how much a cruise missile costs? $500,000 to $2 million depending on "features and optional extras"
$17 million is literally chump change to the us military i am almost surprised they wasted time looking at all.
Re:Let me be the First to Say... (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite a few compared to manned aircraft, and remember loss rates will go down as systems mature. The loss rate for prop jobs and early jet fighters was spectacular back in The Day.
When things with wings go down it's news, which is why you are reading it here. When tens of thousands of people die in motor vehicle accidents it's not even interesting.
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Re:Let me be the First to Say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who gives a shit about Lake Ontario. If the thing was lost after three hours of operation it still has most of its fuel load.
Re: Let me be the First to Say... (Score:2)
Re:Let me be the First to Say... (Score:5, Funny)
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Well yes but we need to see your drone hunter lenience now! Like those exist! lol.... (spelling lie-sens is hard)
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On behalf of all Canadians, we apologize.
I told them and I told them... (Score:3)
...the hover time locked to a bedroom window with all the cameras running at max bandwidth is LIMITED.
Jeez, you just can't get good drone drivers these days.
proof that drones are superior (Score:2)
Don't Fear for the Reaper.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, Iran took credit for the downing of this drone as well, saying they have already begun disassembling it and that 'Murica should be very afraid. Pictures have already appeared on the internet of Iranians holding cans of Ginger Ale and eating pancakes, showing their cunning ability to blend in with the indigenous population in order to get close enough to strike at the very heart of the imperialist dogs!
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In other news, Iran took credit for the downing of this drone as well, saying they have already begun disassembling it and that 'Murica should be very afraid. Pictures have already appeared on the internet of Iranians holding cans of Ginger Ale and eating pancakes, showing their cunning ability to blend in with the indigenous population in order to get close enough to strike at the very heart of the imperialist dogs!
I heard North Korea did it
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
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In other news, Iran took credit for the downing of this drone as well, saying they have already begun disassembling it and that 'Murica should be very afraid. Pictures have already appeared on the internet of Iranians holding cans of Ginger Ale and eating pancakes, showing their cunning ability to blend in with the indigenous population in order to get close enough to strike at the very heart of the imperialist dogs!
I heard North Korea did it
Your thinking of their weapons of mass erection project..
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
Nonsense. The drone just hit a deer. Everyone in upstate NY does it sooner or later.
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Oh dear ...
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Hey leave my wives out of this!
Bummer (Score:2)
I get my freshwater from there.
Re:Bummer (Score:4, Interesting)
I get my freshwater from there.
Considering how close that is to a nuclear power station [wikipedia.org] I think you might have bigger things to worry about than a military drone that went down in the lake.
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Not too worried about our CANDU reactors. They ever so often spell some tritium but given the seize of the lake not really too much of a concern.
Re:Bummer (Score:5, Funny)
Not to freak you out but.... 1. Fish defecation. 2. Aquatic bird defecation. 3. Guys on boats in the middle, nobody is looking. 4. Bilge. 5. Poorly maintained outboard motors. 6. Probably some truly horrendous stuff that didn't come to mind in the minute I took to type this while thinking about it.
On your side, as they say, "The solution to pollution is dilution".
If you like, you may think of your tap water as homeopathic drone.
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Yes, but what if they put some really icky radar swallowing paint on their drone? Since all the military tech is top secret I cannot know the dreck that it may contain. I prefer the familiar horrors.
standard operating procedure (Score:2)
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Forgive My Ignorance (Score:3, Interesting)
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They used to fly F16s.
Its not unusual for ANG wings be have attack capabilities.
Especially near those Dreaded Canadians.
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....
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Clearly they're on to our plan to invade the US and reclaim Maine and the Alaska panhandle....
What about places outside Maine or Alaska?
Do you take petitions? Is there a sign-up sheet?
Re:Forgive My Ignorance (Score:5, Funny)
No way! We're first!
We want to be invaded.
********
Alaskans for Canada.
********
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I think the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is first on the list already. They periodically attempt to secede from either the US or from Michigan.
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Syracuse depends on Canadians to come down to their mall for VAT avoidance spending trips.
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, Interesting)
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It also serves to remind people of the idea that the U.S.A. is a group of united states. The Guard units really answer to the Governors and are each states' mini-armed forces, even if they are occasionally assigned to work with the federal armed forces.
And the U.K. is a group of united kingdoms. Fuck, I hope Scotland and Wales get their own mini-armed forces! Northern Ireland already kind of does if you count the paramilitaries!
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British Army regiments have individual identities, with many of them identifying with home areas around the UK, so in essence Scotland and Wales do have their own armies as there are Scottish and Welsh regiments.
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The Guard units really answer to the Governors
Presidents Eisenhower [wikipedia.org] and Kennedy [wikipedia.org] disagree.
Many (but not all) states do continue to maintain their own "state guard" militias, over which the federal government has only limited constitutional control over. But the Pentagon generally has little use for "soldiers" they aren't even allowed to train, let alone appoint commanding officers for. The National Guard is a federal construct designed specifically to get around those limitations, by creating federal units with federal money that the states can maybe
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That hasn't been true for years. Over the past century the Guard has increasingly been part of the regular forces and under Federal control.
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ANG actually often function as Air Force reserve units. The ones along the boarder with Canada used to specialize in air defense aka interceptor missions back in when the US actually cared about defending it's air space but more than a few have been attack units for a long time. Just think of them as reserve units.
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Where else do you propose your drone pilots learn to fly the drones? Over some other nation's heads?
They're your drones, stick to learning to fly (and crash) them over your own territory thanks.
So what (Score:2, Funny)
15 million dollars in equipment was lost. What's the big deal? I'm sure they spend that much in air-conditioning per day.
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15 million dollars in equipment was lost. What's the big deal? I'm sure they spend that much in air-conditioning per day.
This time it was unintentional.
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Not in Syracuse they don't.
Re:So what (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly my thought. If an F-22 went down over Lake Ontario on a training mission, we would have a dead pilot, and lost $150 million aircraft, which can't be replaced. The F-22 loss might have been noted on CNN, but certainly wouldn't have been /. worthy. So, here we lost a $12.5 million aircraft, which can be replaced, and nobody dies. Somehow, I doubt that the submitter and the /. editors are pro-drone, but I see this story and think that, to the extent that I actually give a shit, it makes an excellent argument for drones.
Time for 007 (Score:3)
Call James Bond as an Evil Cat-Patting Genius has taken control of it. We must recover it before they get our launch codes!
Oh, so this isn't the plot for a movie?
This one only "crashed" (Score:2, Interesting)
Just an accident. And when the first drone "accidentally fires" on a US citizen... what then?
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1. Do you know how rarely aircraft fly with live air to ground ordinance in US air space? Live fire practice is actually pretty rare and the bad PR of an F-16 fully loaded with bombs crashing into a shopping mall is very hight.
2. Why is it any more likely to happen with a drone than a manned aircraft and the federal government has had them for a century now.
3, You do know that it is man at the controls when a drone fires correct? Just like in a manned attack aircraft.
So runaway fear is alive and well on sla
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1. Do you know how rarely aircraft fly with live air to ground ordinance in US air space?
No. Mostly because that sort of thing would be kept a military secret. We know more about what sort of things happened in the past, from declassified records. The 1961 Goldsboro NC loss of two 2.5 Megaton nukes springs to mind. At least one of them had all but one of its safety mechanisms triggered and nearly detonated, which would have killed everything in a 17 mile radius. The core of one of the stages of one of the bombs is still buried deep below the site.
So, there's at least a little historical precede
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Actually no. That was back in 1961 when SAC flew airborne alerts and probably long before you where born. You do not think people learn? Besides I was replying to the implication that the a drone would be targeted at someone in the US.
As to worry? The weapons that drones carry at least to day are small compared to what manned aircraft carry. On a good note the US and USSR have an agreement to not fly nukes in their warplanes in time of peace. That is one of the reason for the freak out when a B52 flew with
Re:This one only "crashed" (Score:4, Insightful)
And that's a good reason why they don't actually do such things often these days.
1961 was in the middle of the Cold War. The armed B-52 was not in the air for practice - it was on an actual mission, waiting for the Soviets to strike first before it'd fly off to strike Soviet targets. Since there are no enemies today that have the Soviet's first-strike capability that we feared so much, there's no real need to keep live weapons in the air.
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they've been used for it on purpose.. not reportedly on american soil but really does that make any difference? enemies of the state don't get arrest attempts now, just blown away along with whoever happens to be nearby.
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Only if he's assigned to pick up the pieces and put them in the body bags. But seriously, I don't think they're allowed to be armed when used in America except maybe for live fire exercises over a practice range.
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...I don't think they're allowed to be armed when used in America except maybe for live fire exercises over a practice range.
You mean like the government isn't allowed to be monitoring/storing/analyzing all domestic US civilian data and communications?
They'll do it anyways. Who's going to stop them?
Strat
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MQ-9 is ALIVE! (Score:3)
(With apologies to Johnny Five...)
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Major Metropolis!
Rob Ford shot it down with a stream of bile (Score:5, Funny)
Newsflash on CBC.
So, those drone-hunting licenses finally paid off (Score:5, Funny)
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:Lets have some fun picking this apart. (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you really concerned about an invasion of the US mainland that will entail MIGs? You realize the cold war ended 25 years ago right?
You also realize the cost of a drone verse the cost of an F-16 that will never be deployed? I think your complaints about tax dollars are a little skewed.
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If it can replace one brave guy in the cockpit with one coward in a bunker I'm sure the USA will be ALL for it.
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define brave
The smallest part of 'brave' which applies in this instance is 'willingly putting yourself in harms way' which arguably applies to an F16 pilot. The drone jockey killing people in a far off land while sitting in a nice secure bunker is the very antithesis.
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The drone pilots are the anonymous cowards of modern warfare. The forum cancer, the shitposters.
Saving the base. (Score:2)
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.
The usual fate of an upstate New York air base is to be closed or re-purposed. Keeping F-16s and their pilots at operational readiness is expensive --- and it is an expense that is increasingly hard to justify.
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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?
It wouldn't be so bad if the Reaper were actually cheaper than an F-16. It looks like it's presently more expensive than some models of F-16, although the price may come down over time. You would think someone would have just come up with a remote control module for the F-16.
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And the true irony here is that The Boys from Syracuse used to be an A-10 unit before they went to F-16s. And what did they do with them when they went to the Gulf back in 1
Ogopogo (Score:4, Funny)
Flying in low over the lake, the last image captured was a tentacle reaching up .....
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Yeah, I grew up in Ogopogo's back yard and probably waterskiied over him a thousand times.
They found it! (Score:2)
The drone was attached to the New York Air National Guard’s 174th Fighter Wing
They found it. Apparently it got stuck to one of the fighters.
Search called off due to weather (Score:3)
Having lived in Syracuse I'd say forget searching any time other than July and August.
Damn worst weather in the US.
Riiiight (Score:2)
The Wreck of the MQ-9 Reaper Drone (Score:5, Funny)
Ontario, it is known
Never gives up a drone
When the winds of November come early
Never underestimate... (Score:2)
... the power of poutine !!!
I think there's something wrong... (Score:2)
I think there's something wrong... with my head.
I read the tag as "SuperMangoTit" and was going to look it up on KnowYourMeme.com.
Don't worry, I figured it out before it went that far.
Side note: I like the way other sites use underscores to replace spaces in tags. Makes tags much more readable.
I guess they'll have to postpone (Score:2)
we need your help! (Score:2)
we better start posting fliers on telephone poles now.
Have you seen this drone?
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responds to "death from above"
Craigslist (Score:2)
For sale: Used, slightly wet MQ-9 reaper drone, responds to the name Fido.
now the genius of our birch bark (Score:2)
anti-aircraft canoes will be known around the world. Moo haa haa haa.
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How much was the Drone worth?
Apparently not enough, because you didn't even feel it was worth a single click on the only link in the story.
Re:Finder's keepers! (Score:5, Funny)
Loses Reapers.
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Why don't you go back to usenet where you belong?
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Yes, it does. The 174th has been deployed in the Persian Gulf and Iraq, among other places.
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Even here in the UK I've never seen use of the word "practise", ever.
So it's obviously a form of the word that's basically died a death. Literally everyone just uses the word "practice" in both cases.
There's no point being pedantic about a language rule that no one on Earth gives a shit about because it offers exactly zero benefit to society.
99.9999% of the population in the UK would think "LOL he's misspelt practice" rather than "Oh, look at his awesome and correct usage of practice/practise".
And that's ok
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All Canadian penguins are in Pittsburgh
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We haven't forgot 1812 and are bidding our time until we can invade and destroy you o Canada... and with great justice because we didn't start it!