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More Air Force drones are crashing than ever as mysterious new problems emerge
- _asdf_asdf 11y agoI'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
- brbsix 11y agoSo nice to be reminded these are still being used domestically.
- msandford 11y ago> Investigators have traced the problem to a faulty starter-generator, but have been unable to pinpoint why it goes haywire or devise a permanent fix. I find it incredible that they know where the problem is, but not how to fix it. Get 100-1000 of them and start stress testing them in a lab. This stuff isn't rocket science.
- UnoriginalGuy 11y agoI do love when people imply a "lab" is this mythical thing that can, through no effort, reproduce any likely or unlikely condition that one could ever expect to encounter. They should just print out a sign that says "lab" put it on an empty room, place the starter motor in the middle of it, and then suddenly they would know why it was broken. It is in a lab after all! This isn't rocket science! Or if one in an empty room fails put 100-1000 into the empty room, it has GOT to work!!! It is too easy to fail! Being in a lab is all that it takes! I'd suggest you watch this[0], this issue was literally costing human lives, they knew there was a rudder issue, they placed it in a lab, testing it for thousands of hours and ultimately found it by a little luck. It moved our understanding of failure states forward. There's no reason to assume that finding the issue with the starter motor is easy or trivial. No amount of lab hand waving changes that, it will take just brute effort. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36mg8BNwBT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36mg8BNwBT4
- msandford 11y agoYes, clearly it's not just "dump motors in room, get results", but rather that it's usually very doable to generate failures. There are only so many reasons that they can fail and it shouldn't be too difficult to generate the circumstances that cause those failures. Obviously figuring out which circumstances are the ones that are actually responsible for failures will be more difficult. But it's not too hard to do some sensitivity analysis to get some clues. If they're highly sensitive to having too much current drawn then that might make you suspect that somehow, somewhere the system's power demands are overwhelming the generator and that's what is causing the failure. The point behind "it's not rocket science" is that rockets are very, very expensive to make and so you can't just test as many of them as you'd like, for as long as you'd like, until you through trial and error reproduce the conditions that caused the failure. You also don't get the rocket back when it either succeeds or fails. But in this case the starter/generators are cheap, and they are able to in many cases sort through the debris of the crash. So that does make it qualitatively and quantitatively different than rocket science.
- TallGuyShort 11y agoSounds exactly like why people tell me it shouldn't take so long to get bug-free software.
- msandford 11y agoYou can't see software. You can't touch it. It can spontaneously change shape, form and function in dramatic ways if a single memory bit gets corrupted. That's very, very different than physical objects.
- irishcoffee 11y agoNot when software controls hardware, which it does in this case.
- msandford 11y ago
- sk8ingdom 11y agoUltimately the issue here is budget and time. With aircraft there are TONS of variables: temperature, pressure, humidity, vibration environment, dust. Even once you THINK you know all the variables, reproducing the problem in the lab might not happen--then after hundreds of hours of testing you're still at square one.
- CamperBob2 11y agoI find it incredible, too. As UnoriginalGuy says, lab tests don't always tell you what's going wrong in the field. But the fact that they don't know what's happening (if that's true at all, some other posts have called the whole article into question) is still the designers' fault. With modern hardware, the most important thing -- the thing you start building on Day #1 of the project -- is built-in diagnostics. In the case of something like the 737 rudder problem, those planes were designed 40 years ago, in an era when it wasn't practical to record every bit of operating data in real time, or add cheap, lightweight sensors to everything in sight. That's not true anymore. Whether they're building a drone, a fighter plane, a spacecraft, or even a modern passenger car, there is no excuse for requiring people to stand around some wreckage scratching their heads. The onboard controllers should be able to tell them exactly what went wrong. If they can't, then that's the problem to be solved first.
- metaphor 11y agoI'm having a difficult time imagining anything "cheap" about a complex sensor diagnostic system integrated into a defense aerospace platform with big daddy ACAT 1D program status whose acquisition strategy revolved around cost reduction.
- CamperBob2 11y agoWell, here we're seeing the cost of not adding that stuff.
- toss1 11y agoYes, we do now have far better onboard sensor suites and logging than in decades past. And this can provide incredible amounts of information, and get us closer to the source of issues much faster. Many times, it makes the issue immediately obvious and documented. HOWEVER! Do NOT make assumptions and fool yourself into thinking this is a cure-all. There are many problems that, while the logged sensor data narrows it down and provides clues, it can sometimes either not provide the critical clues, or can even be misleading. Yes, sometimes adding more sensors focused on the issue may help, but not always. Sometimes it is just down to the hard work of finding the peculiar circumstances and interactions that cause previously unknown failure modes. Been there, done that (UAV & motorsport systems), seen lots of very smart & experienced engineers stumped for way longer than you'd expect.
- csours 11y ago> The Air Force also has contracted out more drone missions to private companies to meet what one general called “a virtually insatiable appetite” from military commanders for airborne surveillance. It sounds like for now, contractors are only running surveillance missions. What if contractors: * Fly the drone and release ordnance that kills someone. * Fly the drone but military personnel pushes the button that kills someone. Does the contractor as a civilian bear liability differently than a member of the armed forces? Could a foreign country try to extradite and prosecute them? Could a foreign country arrest them if they left the USA?
- pc86 11y agoDid civilian contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan who engaged in direct fire and killed combatants bear any liability that the service members did not?
- gnu8 11y agoIf they had happened to be captured by the forces of the opposing governments, they could rightfully have been treated as mercenaries or even as common criminals, rather than prisoners of war. This was a moot point though, since neither side made any pretense of observing international law in terms of treatment of PoWs.
- Spooky23 11y agoThey were immune from Iraqi prosecution until 2008.
- nsns 11y agoBut don't such things already happening on the ground (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi )?
- finid 11y agoYour questions make it appear as if we have any compunction about killing anybody or anything. We've become jaded to such things. As long as the guys frame it in terms of protecting the homeland, national security or some other vague excuse, we don't seem to care. It's when the guys that we don't like do it that we raise hell. It's sickening, but that's what we've become.
- chanandler_bong 11y agoIn "Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War", America's warfighting is crippled as the electronics that were manufactured in China contained backdoors that allowed them to shutdown or destroy the various computer systems. Hmmm...
- Wingman4l7 11y agoThe US military is already wary of this attack vector. Likewise, Australia was leery of letting the Chinese telco Huawei do any work on their National Broadband Network infrastructure.
- pc2g4d 11y agoAny idea how they mitigate it?
- Wingman4l7 11y agoProbably by just limiting their contracts to sourcing only super-expensive US-military-contractor-manufactured milspec electronics.
- toomanybeersies 11y agoIs Australia's case, they're wanting to use American electronics, with American backdoors.
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- sk8ingdom 11y agoThis is relatively old "news" and the problem has since been resolved. It had to do with the coating used on one of the coils interfering with the software--as the article mentions, there is no redundancy for this system. The part was supplied by a subcontractor. General Atomics [1] is VERY vertically integrated (even making servos) and uses few COTS parts. Engines (and components), unfortunately, are pretty difficult to make--many of the engines were initially purchased second hand. Once the problem was diagnosed, fielding the solution is / was another challenge. Some of these aircraft are in pretty remote areas. These aircraft gained popularity and rapid adoption because they're substantially less expensive and VASTLY quicker to manufacture than any other option. Almost all customers prioritized cost and acquisition speed over long term reliability, which of course comes with a certain amount of risk. Testing and certifying an airframe to standards is expensive and time consuming [2] but has the advantage of improving reliability. Also, this is just hogwash journalism. > Last year, the Army reported four major drone crashes, each involving the Gray Eagle — a model identical to the Predator. Warrior / Gray Eagle / MQ-1C [3] is a 40% payload increase over Predator / MQ-1 [4] and the airframe was almost completely redesigned. Hell, the engine is even different. It's a different aircraft. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_Aeronautical_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_Aeronautical_S... [2] http://www.ga-asi.com/certifiable-predator-b http://www.ga-asi.com/certifiable-predator-b [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1C_Gray_Eagle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1C_Gray_Eag... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1_Predator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1_Predator
- irishcoffee 11y agoI can speak professionally about the Grey Eagle program if anyone is interested. But yes, you are very correct about the redesign. Shoddy journalism.
- option_greek 11y agoYes please. Looking forward for some blog post or a long comment :)
- fsloth 11y ago
- ohitsdom 11y agoNo doubt the data shows a problem exists, but the stats used by this article a worded pretty dramatically. Saying "highest ever total" doesn't alarm me because drone use is (relatively) new, and increasing at a large rate. I'd expect damage costs to rise along with increased use (although ideally at a slower rate as we gain experience and make improvements).
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- carsonreinke 11y agoWhy is someone in a space suit at the crash site?
- Jtsummers 11y agoThat's a hazmat suit. And given the nature of the jet fuel, the paints, and metals involved in aircraft components, you'd probably want to wear something similar when wading through the crash site until it was cleared.
- macintux 11y agoAs we make these more lethal and harder to detect, I can't help but wonder: when will the first drone attack on US soil take place? When will the first US president be assassinated by drone?
- rasz_pl 11y agoI like how you think it will be some foreign third party doing the killing, and not CIA on the direct order signed by the president, you know, like they do it now.
- bpodgursky 11y agoThe president will sign an assassination order for... the president? I'm not sure you even read the parent.
- macintux 11y agoI made no references to the actors involved. Not really sure what you're responding to.
- perlpimp 11y ago"Things have gotten so bad that the Air Force is offering retention bonuses of up to $125,000 to its drone pilots, who have long complained of overwork." There is a disconnect, flying by wire you don't feel turbulence and changing conditions, rather you logically go about it, being overworked its not hard to see where one can whoopsie daisy it.