grey boy 2
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Chinese UAV News & Discussions (Strictly)
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IblinI
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No problem with me.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/chinese-military-drones-rival-the-best-of-the-us-2016-12-01
Brent Lewin/Bloomberg
A model Wing Loong unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) made by the Aviation Industry Corp. of China stands on display at the Singapore Airshow on Feb. 11, 2014.
Not too long ago, Chinese dollar stores could be found on almost every corner in Croatia, and everyone knew that if you couldn’t afford a quality product, there was bound to be a “good enough” knock-off available in those shops.
The same thing could be said for Chinese drones. Unlike those made in the U.S., Chinese drones are cheap and readily available. For about $4 million, the price of a single U.S.-made MQ-1 Predator, one could buy four Chinese Wing Loong units.
“China is known to have difficulties in developing aero-engine technology, and this is also true for UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) engines,” Kelvin Wong, an Asia-Pacific defense-technology reporter at IHS, wrote in an email to the New York Times. “As a result, Chinese UAVs are generally less capable in terms of performance.”
General Atomics
The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, made in the U.S., is the most recognizable drone in the world, owing to its role in the war on terror.
So who would buy drones that can’t compete with their U.S. counterparts? Countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates. With a price tag of $1 million, Wing Loong drones are much cheaper than, say, a modern tank, which makes any losses easier to bear for cash-strapped countries struggling to keep up with the requirements of modern warfare.
Read: The heavy-on-hype, light-on-substance world of drone delivery
But price alone isn’t the only factor in this equation. The main “culprit” for flourishing Chinese international drone sales seems to be the U.S. itself or, more specifically, its rigorous export regulations and restrictions. As a signatory to various export-limiting international agreements, as well as tight domestic regulations, the U.S. has severely limited export options of its own drone technology to allies and other countries. Those countries in many cases have no other choice but to turn to China, which is more than happy to supply them with perhaps inferior, but much more affordable, drone units.
And China is rapidly advancing in drone technology. A few weeks ago, China’s Zhuhai 2016 Airshow featured many new drones available to the ever-increasing number of interested buyers, as well as an insight into future developments. Those units are some of the most advanced Chinese models to hit the market.
China Defense Forum
The Zhuhai 2016 Airshow in China featured the CH-5, which has a flight time of 60 hours and a 4,039-mile range, which rivals the U.S.’s MQ-9 Reaper.
China has shown that in the future it will be more than capable of meeting, or even surpassing, expectations. The show featured the Cloud Shadow, China’s first stealth drone; “marsupial” drones that can be attached to an aircraft and released like bombs; and a video demonstration of coordinated drone swarms. By filling the void made by the U.S., China has positioned itself as a global supplier of drones, a force to be reckoned with.
The availability of stealth drones on the open market is worrisome. Older Chinese models were slow and incapable of reaching higher altitudes, which made them more appropriate for fighting insurgencies and local adversaries. I could easily see how an upgraded model of the Cloud Shadow — along with its long-range weaponry — could be used as an asset not only in local conflicts, but internationally as well.
It will be interesting to see how China’s ever-growing influence on the drone market will affect the global balance of power.The Chinese still haven’t made a big splash yet, simply because their drone market is saturated with client-countries lacking large military budgets. The fact remains that these drones will be more than capable of tipping the scales in various smaller international conflicts, and as history has taught us, these conflicts more often than not fuel larger ones.
What do you think about Chinese drones? Should the U.S. offer its drones on the global market just as China does? Please let me know in the comment section below.
A model Wing Loong unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) made by the Aviation Industry Corp. of China stands on display at the Singapore Airshow on Feb. 11, 2014.
Not too long ago, Chinese dollar stores could be found on almost every corner in Croatia, and everyone knew that if you couldn’t afford a quality product, there was bound to be a “good enough” knock-off available in those shops.
The same thing could be said for Chinese drones. Unlike those made in the U.S., Chinese drones are cheap and readily available. For about $4 million, the price of a single U.S.-made MQ-1 Predator, one could buy four Chinese Wing Loong units.
“China is known to have difficulties in developing aero-engine technology, and this is also true for UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) engines,” Kelvin Wong, an Asia-Pacific defense-technology reporter at IHS, wrote in an email to the New York Times. “As a result, Chinese UAVs are generally less capable in terms of performance.”
The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, made in the U.S., is the most recognizable drone in the world, owing to its role in the war on terror.
So who would buy drones that can’t compete with their U.S. counterparts? Countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates. With a price tag of $1 million, Wing Loong drones are much cheaper than, say, a modern tank, which makes any losses easier to bear for cash-strapped countries struggling to keep up with the requirements of modern warfare.
Read: The heavy-on-hype, light-on-substance world of drone delivery
But price alone isn’t the only factor in this equation. The main “culprit” for flourishing Chinese international drone sales seems to be the U.S. itself or, more specifically, its rigorous export regulations and restrictions. As a signatory to various export-limiting international agreements, as well as tight domestic regulations, the U.S. has severely limited export options of its own drone technology to allies and other countries. Those countries in many cases have no other choice but to turn to China, which is more than happy to supply them with perhaps inferior, but much more affordable, drone units.
And China is rapidly advancing in drone technology. A few weeks ago, China’s Zhuhai 2016 Airshow featured many new drones available to the ever-increasing number of interested buyers, as well as an insight into future developments. Those units are some of the most advanced Chinese models to hit the market.
The Zhuhai 2016 Airshow in China featured the CH-5, which has a flight time of 60 hours and a 4,039-mile range, which rivals the U.S.’s MQ-9 Reaper.
China has shown that in the future it will be more than capable of meeting, or even surpassing, expectations. The show featured the Cloud Shadow, China’s first stealth drone; “marsupial” drones that can be attached to an aircraft and released like bombs; and a video demonstration of coordinated drone swarms. By filling the void made by the U.S., China has positioned itself as a global supplier of drones, a force to be reckoned with.
The availability of stealth drones on the open market is worrisome. Older Chinese models were slow and incapable of reaching higher altitudes, which made them more appropriate for fighting insurgencies and local adversaries. I could easily see how an upgraded model of the Cloud Shadow — along with its long-range weaponry — could be used as an asset not only in local conflicts, but internationally as well.
It will be interesting to see how China’s ever-growing influence on the drone market will affect the global balance of power.The Chinese still haven’t made a big splash yet, simply because their drone market is saturated with client-countries lacking large military budgets. The fact remains that these drones will be more than capable of tipping the scales in various smaller international conflicts, and as history has taught us, these conflicts more often than not fuel larger ones.
What do you think about Chinese drones? Should the U.S. offer its drones on the global market just as China does? Please let me know in the comment section below.
If Chinese make things differently and cheaper not all the time they are inferior. Western commentators make up their mind without knowing the complete facts and have got habit of knocking every one down. Those drones are fit for purpose what they meant to be doing and are cheaper and its simple economics.
Path-Finder
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you see by calling their drones cheap but their own expensive is because they are losing a market share and the competitive edge as well. The Chinese drone comes with no strings attached can the same be said to the american ones? secondly many drones crashed in Pakistan and Afghanistan due to technical issues so US drones are prone to developing faults as well. It's just professional Trolling article that's all
randomradio
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The Chinese drones are pretty good. I don't know if the export versions are particularly good, but the PLA versions will be way better.
Even if China has issues building turbofans, turboprop equipped UCAVs will still be as good as anything elsewhere.
Even if China has issues building turbofans, turboprop equipped UCAVs will still be as good as anything elsewhere.
american MQ1-C drones uses engines made made by subsidiary of china's AVIC
no one wants to compete with 'em. america can stay champion
shuperior expensive american drones dropping like flies
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...re-crashing-than-ever-as-new-problems-emerge/
Last edited:
More Air Force drones are crashing than ever as mysterious new problems emerge
Drone crashes database: 237 of the worst drone accidents since 9/11]
Hazard Above: A drone films its own demise
Play Video2:24
Since 2001, U.S. military drones have been involved in more than 400 major accidents around the world. The camera from a Predator drone flown out of Balad Air Base in Iraq caught one of those crashes in action. (Davin Coburn/The Washington Post)
The aircraft losses pose another challenge for the Air Force as it struggles to provide sufficient drone coverage for counterterrorism operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Mali and Cameroon, among other countries.
Despite a surge in requests from field commanders, the Air Force last year had to curtail its drone combat missions by 8 percent because of an acute shortage of pilots for the remote-controlled aircraft. 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.
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.
While Air Force leaders have publicly bemoaned a lack of personnel and resources, they have said little about the high number of drone crashes, a long-standing vulnerability that worsened substantially last year.
Ten Reapers were badly damaged or destroyed in 2015, at least twice as many as in any previous year, according to Air Force safety data.
The Reaper’s mishap rate — the number of major crashes per 100,000 hours flown — more than doubled compared with 2014. The aircraft, when fully equipped, cost about $14 million each to replace.
The Air Force’s other primary drone model, the Predator, also suffered heavy casualties.
An older and less capable version of the Reaper, the Predator was involved in 10 major accidents last year. That’s the most since 2011, when the U.S. military was simultaneously surging troops into Afghanistan and withdrawing ground forces from Iraq.
Although the Defense Department has a policy to disclose all major aircraft mishaps, it did not publicly report half of the 20 Reaper and Predator accidents last year.
In five other cases, U.S. military officials provided confirmation only after local authorities reported the crashes or enemy fighters posted photos of the wreckage on social media.
According to the military, only one drone was downed by hostile forces: a Predator that was hit by Syrian air defenses near Latakia on March 17.
All but one of the 20 Air Force drone accidents last year occurred overseas. Six drones crashed in Afghanistan. Four crashed in the Horn of Africa, near a U.S. military base in Djibouti. Three crashed in Iraq. There were also crashes in Kuwait, Turkey, Syria and Libya.
In two cases, Air Force officials would not identify the country where the mishaps occurred.
Crashing drones are exposing secrets about U.S. war operations]
Lt. Gen. Robert P. Otto, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence and surveillance programs, acknowledged in an interview that there has been a spike in Reaper accidents.
Many cases remain under investigation, but Otto and other Air Force officials blamed the Reaper’s flawed starter-generator for causing at least six major crashes since December 2014.
“We’re looking closely at that to determine what is the core issue there,” Otto said.
Although the drone pilot shortage has compelled the Air Force to reduce the number of combat missions, Otto said the aircraft mishaps have not forced additional cuts. The Air Force has enough replacement drones on hand, he said, and already had orders in place to buy dozens more Reapers over the next few years.
“Any impact to operations has been negligible to barely noticeable,” he said.
Field commanders, however, have long complained of a drone deficit. In March, the four-star commanders of U.S. forces in the Middle East and Africa both told Congress that the Pentagon has provided less than one-quarter of the drones, other aircraft and satellites that they need for reconnaissance and surveillance missions.
“The Predator has been our most effective weapon in our campaign against the global jihadists,” said Michael G. Vickers, the Pentagon’s former top civilian intelligence official, at a House Armed Services Committee hearing Jan. 12. But he cautioned that the size of the drone fleet “will remain a critical limiting factor in the conduct of our campaign.”
first Predator was deployed to the Balkans on a combat mission two decades ago.
Of the 269 Predators purchased by the Air Force since then, about half have been destroyed or badly damaged in accidents, records show.
Air Force officials describe the Predator as an experimental aircraft that was rushed into war zones, particularly after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. They say it has lasted much longer than expected and that, at a cost of$4 million apiece, is relatively expendable in the event of a crash.
The Air Force has about 140 Predators left and plans to retire them all by 2018. They are gradually being replaced by the Reaper.
Introduced in 2007, the Reaper can fly twice as far as the Predator and carry more bombs and missiles. Until recently, it also had a much better safety record.
Over the past three years, however, some production models of the Reaper have been hobbled by an outbreak of electrical failures.
Investigators and engineers have traced the problem to the starter-generator. It powers the drone but is prone to conking out, for reasons that remain unclear.
The Reaper carries an emergency battery backup system. But the batteries last only for about one hour. If a malfunctioning drone needs more time than that to reach an airfield, it is in trouble.
In such emergencies, the drone pilot usually has no choice but to intentionally crash the aircraft in a remote area, such as a mountainside or a waterway, to avoid striking people on the ground. No one has died in a military drone accident, though many catastrophes have been narrowly averted, documents show.
“Once the battery’s gone, the airplane goes stupid and you lose it,” said Col. Brandon Baker, chief of the Air Force’s remotely piloted aircraft capabilities division. “Quite frankly, we don’t have the root cause ironed out just yet.”
The Reaper and the Predator are both manufactured by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, a San Diego-based defense contractor. In addition to the Air Force, other customers who have purchased the Reaper include the Department of Homeland Security, NASA, and the British, French and Italian armed forces. The CIA also flies Reapers.
General Atomics officials declined requests for an interview or to provide data on the Reaper’s history of starter-generator failures.
In an emailed statement, General Atomics spokeswoman Kimberly Kasitz said the firm “stands behind the proven reliability” of the Reaper. She added that Reapers have recorded more than 2.2 million flight hours and have “been very effective for multiple customers.”
The Reaper’s starter-generator is built by Skurka Aerospace of Camarillo, Calif.
Skurka executives referred requests for comment to their parent corporation, Transdigm Group of Cleveland. A Transdigm spokeswoman did not respond to phone calls or emails.
A crashed Reaper drone seen on the ground in Niamey, Niger, in West Africa on Oct. 20, 2014. The investigation determined the cause of the accident to be pilot error. (U.S. Air Force)
Averting disaster
Government agencies other than the Pentagon have also run into problems with their Reapers.
Shortly before midnight Jan. 27, 2014, an unarmed Reaper was flying a surveillance mission near San Diego for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Suddenly, an alarm sounded, signaling that the starter-generator had stopped working.
The crew flying the drone from a remote-control ground station in Corpus Christi, Tex., inputted commands to restart the generator, but their attempt failed. The pilot made quick calculations and concluded that the Reaper lacked enough battery power to make it back to its launch point, at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., according to an aircraft accident report by Customs and Border Protection.
Worried that the Reaper might otherwise crash into a heavily populated part of Southern California, the pilot commanded the drone to head out to sea, where it was ditched about 23 miles west of Point Loma, Calif.
The drone sank about 4,200 feet to the ocean floor. Ten days later, most of the wreckage, including the intact starter-generator, was recovered from the depths by a Navy salvage team.
According to the accident investigation report, it was the 18th time in nine months that a starter-generator had failed on a Reaper. Disaster was averted in most cases, but in three of the incidents, the drone crashed.
Working with engineers from General Atomics, investigators identified three parts of the starter-generator that were susceptible to breakdowns. But they couldn’t figure out why they were failing.
No pattern was apparent. Older units had failed, but so had brand-new ones. There was no correlation with operating locations or conditions. The Customs and Border Protection investigation blamed an “unknown factor” that was “likely external.”
The report noted that, unlike most aircraft, the Reaper lacked a backup, or redundant, power supply system. Calling it a “design weakness,” the report recommended that Reapers be equipped with a permanent backup electrical supply.
Two days after the crash near San Diego, General Atomics issued an alert bulletin to its customers, advising them to limit “non-essential” Reaper operations to keep the drones within one hour’s flight of an air base in case of an emergency.
The bulletin, however, did not apply to combat missions.
A crashed Reaper drone seen on the ground in Niamey, Niger, on Oct. 20, 2014. The investigation determined the cause of the accident to be pilot error. (U.S. Air Force)
Crashes pile up
General Atomics engineers made little headway in identifying the mechanical gremlin that was plaguing the starter-generators. Meanwhile, Reapers kept crashing.
On Dec. 12, 2014, a Reaper armed with missiles and bombs experienced a starter-generator failure about 90 minutes after it took off from Kandahar Air Base in Afghanistan.
As the batteries drained, the crew intentionally flew the drone into a mountain. The wreckage was not recovered.
“I thought it was a very prudent place to ditch it, onto a high mountain top,” the unidentified mission crew commander told Air Force investigators, according to the accident-investigation report. “Our deal is we try to do it into high mountain tops.”
Less than two months later, on Feb. 4, 2015, an Air Force Reaper had to cut short a surveillance mission over Somalia when its starter-generator died.
The flight crew tried to rush the drone back to its base in Djibouti. But with about 30 miles to go, the battery ran out and the Reaper was ditched in the sea, according to the Air Force’s accident investigation report.
In an appendix to the report, General Atomics noted that it had completed the development of a “more robust” starter-generator in response to the string of mishaps. The appendix, which was heavily redacted, did not give further details.
In March, the Air Force’s program manager for its Reaper fleet filed a report with the Pentagon noting that there had been “a dramatic increase” in starter-generator failures since 2013.
Col. William S. Leister informed Pentagon officials that investigators from the Air Force, General Atomics and Skurka had investigated the problem for more than a year. The team, he said, had identified “numerous manufacturing quality issues” yet had been unable to determine the exact cause of the failures.
“But, I am pleased to report that we may have light at the end of this dark tunnel,” he added, promising unspecified “corrective actions in the very near term.” He declined to comment further for this article.
Other Air Force officials said the service began installing a secondary generator on its Reapers in July that can provide up to 10 extra hours of electricity in case the first one fails.
The Air Force determined that 60 Reapers in its fleet were carrying the buggy starter-generators. So far, the new backup part has been installed on 47 of those aircraft, according to Baker, the colonel in charge of the drone capabilities division.
Since then, Baker said, there have been 17 “saves” — or incidents in which the primary generator failed mid-flight. In each case, he added, the backup generator kicked in and the drone was able to land safely.
Drone crashes database: 237 of the worst drone accidents since 9/11]
Hazard Above: A drone films its own demise
Play Video2:24
Since 2001, U.S. military drones have been involved in more than 400 major accidents around the world. The camera from a Predator drone flown out of Balad Air Base in Iraq caught one of those crashes in action. (Davin Coburn/The Washington Post)
The aircraft losses pose another challenge for the Air Force as it struggles to provide sufficient drone coverage for counterterrorism operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Mali and Cameroon, among other countries.
Despite a surge in requests from field commanders, the Air Force last year had to curtail its drone combat missions by 8 percent because of an acute shortage of pilots for the remote-controlled aircraft. 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.
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.
While Air Force leaders have publicly bemoaned a lack of personnel and resources, they have said little about the high number of drone crashes, a long-standing vulnerability that worsened substantially last year.
Ten Reapers were badly damaged or destroyed in 2015, at least twice as many as in any previous year, according to Air Force safety data.
The Reaper’s mishap rate — the number of major crashes per 100,000 hours flown — more than doubled compared with 2014. The aircraft, when fully equipped, cost about $14 million each to replace.
The Air Force’s other primary drone model, the Predator, also suffered heavy casualties.
An older and less capable version of the Reaper, the Predator was involved in 10 major accidents last year. That’s the most since 2011, when the U.S. military was simultaneously surging troops into Afghanistan and withdrawing ground forces from Iraq.
Although the Defense Department has a policy to disclose all major aircraft mishaps, it did not publicly report half of the 20 Reaper and Predator accidents last year.
In five other cases, U.S. military officials provided confirmation only after local authorities reported the crashes or enemy fighters posted photos of the wreckage on social media.
According to the military, only one drone was downed by hostile forces: a Predator that was hit by Syrian air defenses near Latakia on March 17.
All but one of the 20 Air Force drone accidents last year occurred overseas. Six drones crashed in Afghanistan. Four crashed in the Horn of Africa, near a U.S. military base in Djibouti. Three crashed in Iraq. There were also crashes in Kuwait, Turkey, Syria and Libya.
In two cases, Air Force officials would not identify the country where the mishaps occurred.
Crashing drones are exposing secrets about U.S. war operations]
Lt. Gen. Robert P. Otto, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence and surveillance programs, acknowledged in an interview that there has been a spike in Reaper accidents.
Many cases remain under investigation, but Otto and other Air Force officials blamed the Reaper’s flawed starter-generator for causing at least six major crashes since December 2014.
“We’re looking closely at that to determine what is the core issue there,” Otto said.
Although the drone pilot shortage has compelled the Air Force to reduce the number of combat missions, Otto said the aircraft mishaps have not forced additional cuts. The Air Force has enough replacement drones on hand, he said, and already had orders in place to buy dozens more Reapers over the next few years.
“Any impact to operations has been negligible to barely noticeable,” he said.
Field commanders, however, have long complained of a drone deficit. In March, the four-star commanders of U.S. forces in the Middle East and Africa both told Congress that the Pentagon has provided less than one-quarter of the drones, other aircraft and satellites that they need for reconnaissance and surveillance missions.
“The Predator has been our most effective weapon in our campaign against the global jihadists,” said Michael G. Vickers, the Pentagon’s former top civilian intelligence official, at a House Armed Services Committee hearing Jan. 12. But he cautioned that the size of the drone fleet “will remain a critical limiting factor in the conduct of our campaign.”
first Predator was deployed to the Balkans on a combat mission two decades ago.
Of the 269 Predators purchased by the Air Force since then, about half have been destroyed or badly damaged in accidents, records show.
Air Force officials describe the Predator as an experimental aircraft that was rushed into war zones, particularly after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. They say it has lasted much longer than expected and that, at a cost of$4 million apiece, is relatively expendable in the event of a crash.
The Air Force has about 140 Predators left and plans to retire them all by 2018. They are gradually being replaced by the Reaper.
Introduced in 2007, the Reaper can fly twice as far as the Predator and carry more bombs and missiles. Until recently, it also had a much better safety record.
Over the past three years, however, some production models of the Reaper have been hobbled by an outbreak of electrical failures.
Investigators and engineers have traced the problem to the starter-generator. It powers the drone but is prone to conking out, for reasons that remain unclear.
The Reaper carries an emergency battery backup system. But the batteries last only for about one hour. If a malfunctioning drone needs more time than that to reach an airfield, it is in trouble.
In such emergencies, the drone pilot usually has no choice but to intentionally crash the aircraft in a remote area, such as a mountainside or a waterway, to avoid striking people on the ground. No one has died in a military drone accident, though many catastrophes have been narrowly averted, documents show.
“Once the battery’s gone, the airplane goes stupid and you lose it,” said Col. Brandon Baker, chief of the Air Force’s remotely piloted aircraft capabilities division. “Quite frankly, we don’t have the root cause ironed out just yet.”
The Reaper and the Predator are both manufactured by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, a San Diego-based defense contractor. In addition to the Air Force, other customers who have purchased the Reaper include the Department of Homeland Security, NASA, and the British, French and Italian armed forces. The CIA also flies Reapers.
General Atomics officials declined requests for an interview or to provide data on the Reaper’s history of starter-generator failures.
In an emailed statement, General Atomics spokeswoman Kimberly Kasitz said the firm “stands behind the proven reliability” of the Reaper. She added that Reapers have recorded more than 2.2 million flight hours and have “been very effective for multiple customers.”
The Reaper’s starter-generator is built by Skurka Aerospace of Camarillo, Calif.
Skurka executives referred requests for comment to their parent corporation, Transdigm Group of Cleveland. A Transdigm spokeswoman did not respond to phone calls or emails.
Averting disaster
Government agencies other than the Pentagon have also run into problems with their Reapers.
Shortly before midnight Jan. 27, 2014, an unarmed Reaper was flying a surveillance mission near San Diego for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Suddenly, an alarm sounded, signaling that the starter-generator had stopped working.
The crew flying the drone from a remote-control ground station in Corpus Christi, Tex., inputted commands to restart the generator, but their attempt failed. The pilot made quick calculations and concluded that the Reaper lacked enough battery power to make it back to its launch point, at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., according to an aircraft accident report by Customs and Border Protection.
Worried that the Reaper might otherwise crash into a heavily populated part of Southern California, the pilot commanded the drone to head out to sea, where it was ditched about 23 miles west of Point Loma, Calif.
The drone sank about 4,200 feet to the ocean floor. Ten days later, most of the wreckage, including the intact starter-generator, was recovered from the depths by a Navy salvage team.
According to the accident investigation report, it was the 18th time in nine months that a starter-generator had failed on a Reaper. Disaster was averted in most cases, but in three of the incidents, the drone crashed.
Working with engineers from General Atomics, investigators identified three parts of the starter-generator that were susceptible to breakdowns. But they couldn’t figure out why they were failing.
No pattern was apparent. Older units had failed, but so had brand-new ones. There was no correlation with operating locations or conditions. The Customs and Border Protection investigation blamed an “unknown factor” that was “likely external.”
The report noted that, unlike most aircraft, the Reaper lacked a backup, or redundant, power supply system. Calling it a “design weakness,” the report recommended that Reapers be equipped with a permanent backup electrical supply.
Two days after the crash near San Diego, General Atomics issued an alert bulletin to its customers, advising them to limit “non-essential” Reaper operations to keep the drones within one hour’s flight of an air base in case of an emergency.
The bulletin, however, did not apply to combat missions.
Crashes pile up
General Atomics engineers made little headway in identifying the mechanical gremlin that was plaguing the starter-generators. Meanwhile, Reapers kept crashing.
On Dec. 12, 2014, a Reaper armed with missiles and bombs experienced a starter-generator failure about 90 minutes after it took off from Kandahar Air Base in Afghanistan.
As the batteries drained, the crew intentionally flew the drone into a mountain. The wreckage was not recovered.
“I thought it was a very prudent place to ditch it, onto a high mountain top,” the unidentified mission crew commander told Air Force investigators, according to the accident-investigation report. “Our deal is we try to do it into high mountain tops.”
Less than two months later, on Feb. 4, 2015, an Air Force Reaper had to cut short a surveillance mission over Somalia when its starter-generator died.
The flight crew tried to rush the drone back to its base in Djibouti. But with about 30 miles to go, the battery ran out and the Reaper was ditched in the sea, according to the Air Force’s accident investigation report.
In an appendix to the report, General Atomics noted that it had completed the development of a “more robust” starter-generator in response to the string of mishaps. The appendix, which was heavily redacted, did not give further details.
In March, the Air Force’s program manager for its Reaper fleet filed a report with the Pentagon noting that there had been “a dramatic increase” in starter-generator failures since 2013.
Col. William S. Leister informed Pentagon officials that investigators from the Air Force, General Atomics and Skurka had investigated the problem for more than a year. The team, he said, had identified “numerous manufacturing quality issues” yet had been unable to determine the exact cause of the failures.
“But, I am pleased to report that we may have light at the end of this dark tunnel,” he added, promising unspecified “corrective actions in the very near term.” He declined to comment further for this article.
Other Air Force officials said the service began installing a secondary generator on its Reapers in July that can provide up to 10 extra hours of electricity in case the first one fails.
The Air Force determined that 60 Reapers in its fleet were carrying the buggy starter-generators. So far, the new backup part has been installed on 47 of those aircraft, according to Baker, the colonel in charge of the drone capabilities division.
Since then, Baker said, there have been 17 “saves” — or incidents in which the primary generator failed mid-flight. In each case, he added, the backup generator kicked in and the drone was able to land safely.
they make that shupa cutting edge stealthy drone that easily hijacked by iranian cyber army and steered all the way to their base. lol. just imagine what shupa chinese hackers can do
Last edited:
terranMarine
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Well no Chinese ever claimed those were the best US drones but what about RQ-170 Sentinel? Isn't that state of the art?
AMDR
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Not really. It went operational the same year as the MQ-9.
State of the art would be something closer to the RQ-180 (~2015), in my opinion.
From: http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/rq-170.htm
"It's believed that the first of a small batch of aircraft flew in late 2005 and were operational in Afghanistan in 2007"
I was mainly making fun of the article
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