The Army has put together and demonstrated a system of ground-based "sense and avoid" technology that should show the Federal Aviation Administration the military can safely fly drones in civilian airspace without ground observers or chase planes, the project's leader tells AOL Defense.Read the whole thing but a simple question.
"We're ready now to start getting the system certified," said Viva Austin, product director for Unmanned Systems Airspace Integration Concepts in the Army's Program Executive Office for Aviation. "Once this system is certified, I think we have cleared a major hurdle. I think we're there."
We know that the Army WANTS to fly drones in US air space but can anyone tell me WHY they want to? There are too many military ranges with tons of space that's restricted for this to be merely for training. Police dept and the Dept of Homeland Security has drones of their own...so why?
That would be because currently, drones have to be transported on the ground to get to different parts of the country. See the X-47B 'UFO'. You have to disassemble them, pack them, ship them, subject them to the chance of a collision on the road (lot more things on the ground to crash into than in the air :P) then unpack them, reassemble and test them before you can start flying them again.
ReplyDeleteWith this system, a UAV can fly to where it needs to go like any other aircraft, and be ready to go again pretty much as soon as it lands and gets refuelled.
And of course, such a system isn't just useful over the continental US. Other places where there are a lot of aircraft flying around stand to benefit from drones becoming 'smarter' and being certified to avoid flying into other planes. Like say...a battlefield.
bullshit. if it was simply a transportation problem then you could solve it by shoving them inside a C-5. plenty of ways to skin that cat. you could put it on a train. you could do it so many ways its stupid.
ReplyDeleteadditionally we have been operating uavs and manned aircraft together for years. so bull