What you didn’t know about Predator drones
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
Would a robot insurance policy from Old Glory cover this?
Comment by DaveO70 — April 22, 2008 @ 2:58 am