USMCFLYR

I was in Killeen TX last week and they were using drones to monitor a fire just north of the town. More examples of the increased use of drones in today's NAS and the potenital for growth in the industry for those seeking employment after leaving the military with experience.

Predator drones go to work on domestic front - latimes.com

USMCFLYR

rickair7777

The way this is going to play out...

The FAA, prompted by various special interests, will gradually make regulatory exemptions to "see-and-avoid" requirements rather than mandating a comprehensive (and hideously expensive) techn ical solution.

UAV's will become more common in NAS, right up until one of them creams an airliner, or a bizjet carrying hollywood royalty. Then the whole thing will be set back about 50 years.

Perm11FO

With the continuing discussion of using UAVs for a variety of purposes in the skies, the debate on the safety of interfacing unmanned aircraft from manned aircraft rages on.

The government, seeing a way to perform certain missions (drug surveillance, military, etc.) at a significant cost savings says that UAVs are safe and can intermingle with manned aircraft at no loss of safety.

The attached article demonstrates how well this concept works. Let's remember that both the C-130 and the Army MQ-9 were military aircraft.

Military Cargo Plane Struck by Drone

forgot to bid

Out of curiosity, do C-130s have TCAS? how about drones?

Now if this collision had happened on the ground then I'd say the military is beginning to look a lot like the civilian world.

HogDriver

Let's not mince words here.. UAVs are extremely dangerous to be out flying with other aircraft. In my 150+ missions in Afghanistan, I've had UAVs (Predator and Shadows) split my formation ten, yes TEN, times, almost causing a mid-air on each occasion. They are rarely on the right frequency and tend to fly around not talking to ANYBODY. And those are the ones being controlled by the Air Force. In this instance, it was a Shadow UAV, usually controlled by the Army, who tend to rely on the big sky theory more than most professional aviators would like. There is a definite reason they are not allowed to fly outside of Restricted airspace in the US, and I pray that they never are allowed to fly among the rest of us.

Unfortunately, bureaucrats think that these UAVs are the greatest inventions since sliced bread, which means they are not going away any time soon. It is only a matter of time until one of these things kills someone by accident, while the "pilot" goes to refill his coffee mug.

BDGERJMN

Hog your point is well taken, but how many times have you been in the CAS stack and had another FTR split a section or have a near miss in an ALTRAV or Exit/Entry points to a restricted area or warning area or on a low level with GA traffic. It happens more than we think IMHO. I think the broader point here is that technology exists to be able to operate UAV/UAS fairly safely in parts of the NAS or in military use airspace. Still though its a tough nut to crack when we start opening up the aperture in terms of who can operate those systems and where. It will be interesting to see how the FAA integrates those caps/lims into the fold, when they do.

iceman49

What a great statement :"The use of drones is a new phase of aviation, and there are growing pains," I think a drone hitting an aircraft is more than "growing pains."

Humidityblows

About a year ago, I was enroute to KBUR upper teens, southwest of KEDW. Got a TCAS TA and ATC didn't even mention anything. I did hear ATC talking to someone with a callsign- drone ###.

fishforfun

This is true, other traffic, especially formations have caused some problems crossing airways in the AOR but not nearly the number of times I've had a UAV cross while I was on short final to some field in Afghanistan. Typically they are not on TCAS and like Hog said, talking to no one. They are so small and rarely have any lights on for obvious reasons that we were much more concerened about a mid air with a UAV than we were about getting shot at. Sorry Army guys, but the helo guys are just as bad. Nothing like being on short final to ORBI and have 2 UH-60s cross directly in front of you. At least they were squawking so we picked them up in time. We heard about the C-130 incident about 3 weeks ago the day it happened and when we saw the pics we were shocked the crew and plane survived. I know they (UAVs) serve a purpose but damn they scare me when I'm out there.

Elliot

Sorry Rickair, but that's "not the way it's going to PLAY OUT", as you say.

I was at General Atomics just last year, and they have a project in the works, to petition the FAA for the increased safety of the NAS, to allow "sense & avoid" procedures for the larger RPV's. (i.e. Q-1's, Q-4's, & Q-9's). The premise behind an authorization such as this would be that the aircraft's transponder, with altitude encoding, would alert both the manned and unmanned asset of an external threat, allowing everyone to act accordingly.

Thanks for playing,

GJ