Tiny Problem! Predator drones with no landing capability, 64 of 183 crash

This must be very good for drone sales!

Air Force Won't Let Drones Land Alone
April 28, 2009
Military.com|by Colin Clark

Outgoing Pentagon acquisition czar John Young sharply criticized the Air Force April 27 in his last meeting with reporters, saying the service had refused to budget for an autonomous landing capability for Predator UAVs even though the Air Force has lost a substantial portion of these to landing accidents.

The new undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, Ash Carter, was sworn in April 28.

Young said the Air Force has lost one-third of the 183 Predators it has bought, and one third of those have crashed because of ground control issues. (Young's spokesman, Chris Isleib, later sent an email to reporters slightly changing the numbers: "Since 1994 the Air Force has procured 195 Predators. 65 have been lost due to Class A mishaps," he said.)

Isleib added that of the 65 mishaps, 36 percent are due to human error and "many of those attributable to ground station problems." About 15 percent of the total were destroyed during the landing phase, Isleib clarified in his email.

Young said he told the Air Force to "move as fast as possible to auto-land." A clearly irritated undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics told reporters "it will not surprise you that the Air Force is resisting this." No cost estimates are available yet for equipping the Predator fleet with automatic landing capability.

Young drew a sharp contrast with the Army's Shadow UAV, saying it had lost very few aircraft to landing mishaps because it can land autonomously.

Isleib said in his email that they did "not have similar [crash] data for Shadow. However, we feel that improvements to the ground stations and addition of auto-land capability could reduce the overall mishap rate for Predator by 25 percent."

Young also criticized the Army and the Air Force for simply not communicating. Although the Air Force's Predator and the Army's Warrior systems share a great deal in common, the two services have resisted sharing information about new engines and items such as signals intelligence sensors. Young, almost growling, said, "that's the power of OSD" to bring the services together in the same room and make them talk.
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