Streaming Bits

I came across an interesting article at globalsecurity.org about Predator drones.  I never hear of crashes with the unmanned weapon of death and by happenstance, this article listed several such instances.  The one that really amazed me though was a crash that happened in January 2005.  According to the article

“The incident occurred when the pilot and sensor operators control stations experienced a malfunction with their computer control system. Both control stations were rebooted, but all communication links with the aircraft were lost and never regained. The incident happened approximately eight and a half hours into the mission, with the aircraft flying uncontrolled and crashing approximately 21 hours into the flight.”

I don’t know if you caught that last little bit, but the Predator drone was flying for twelve and a half hours unpiloted before it crashed…TWELVE AND A HALF HOURS!  So basically, you could be sitting on your front porch when a Predator drone launched from Germany comes crashing on your doorstep because the pilot had to reboot his Windows ME installation.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/mq-1b.htm