{"id":29003,"date":"2016-10-06T14:30:09","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T03:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=29003"},"modified":"2016-10-05T14:38:23","modified_gmt":"2016-10-05T03:38:23","slug":"mayday-uavs-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/mayday-uavs-crash\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayday: when UAVs crash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"357\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-29012\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/8639496951_c4fdbbc53b_z.jpg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/8639496951_c4fdbbc53b_z.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/8639496951_c4fdbbc53b_z-205x114.jpg 205w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It seems like every few weeks we hear a report of an American unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) lost in a crash somewhere in the world. According to <em>The Washington Post\u2019s<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/graphics\/national\/drone-crashes\/database\/?tid=a_inl\" target=\"_blank\">Drone Crash Database<\/a>, the US military\u2019s had 237 \u2018Class A\u2019 mishaps involving UAVs since 2001 (although this database was last updated in December 2015 and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.af.mil\/News\/ArticleDisplay\/tabid\/223\/Article\/823888\/mq-9-crashes-in-northern-syria.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">more<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.af.mil\/News\/ArticleDisplay\/tabid\/223\/Article\/670271\/mq-9-crashes-in-afghanistan.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">crashes<\/a> have occurred since). That makes sense superficially. The US military is the most prominent user of these platforms and, logically, the more often something flies, the more often something goes wrong.<\/p>\n<p>But an examination of the data shows that this isn\u2019t actually the case; the US Air Force\u2019s (USAF) loss rate per 100,000 flight hours for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.af.mil\/AboutUs\/FactSheets\/Display\/tabid\/224\/Article\/104469\/mq-1b-predator.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">MQ-1 Predator<\/a> (USAF\u2019s primary armed UAV during the 2000\u2019s) actually decreased as it racked up flight time. As the ADF moves towards incorporating UAVs\u2014including potentially an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.defence.gov.au\/whitepaper\/Docs\/2016-Defence-White-Paper.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">armed medium-altitude UAV<\/a> (see Para 4.55)\u2014into its force structure, it\u2019s worth looking at those findings in more detail.<\/p>\n<p>The MQ-1 Predator has been the mainstay of USAF\u2019s armed UAV program since the late 1990s. Its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/international\/archive\/2015\/05\/america-first-drone-strike-afghanistan\/394463\/\" target=\"_blank\">use in conflict zones<\/a> around the world was kept hush-hush for many years, so little was known about its safety record. However, USAF now publishes <a href=\"http:\/\/www.safety.af.mil\/Portals\/71\/documents\/Aviation\/Aircraft%20Statistics\/Q-1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">detailed safety records<\/a> for the Predator that stretch back to the UAV\u2019s secretive years, giving us a glimpse at its accident rate.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Figure 1: Number of Predators destroyed and loss rate per 100,000 flight hours (1997\u20132015)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"511\" height=\"323\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-29010\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Figure-1-3.png\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Figure-1-3.png 511w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Figure-1-3-205x130.png 205w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 511px) 100vw, 511px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Figure 1 shows the number of Predators destroyed and the Predator\u2019s loss rate per 100,000 flight hours from 1997 until 2015 (data from 1996 was excluded as the aircraft only flew 200 hours that year). During this period the Predator had 122 Class A mishaps that led to the loss of 105 aircraft, meaning that 86% of Class A mishaps ended with a destroyed platform.<\/p>\n<p>While the number of Predators lost in the late 1990s and early 2000s is low compared to later years, the loss rate per flying hour was relatively high. The late 2000s saw an increase in the number of destroyed Predators but the loss rate actually decreased to around 3\u20134 aircraft lost per 100,000 flight hours. That&#8217;s likely due to the aircraft becoming more reliable and its operators gaining experience in flight operations.<\/p>\n<p>Today the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.af.mil\/AboutUs\/FactSheets\/Display\/tabid\/224\/Article\/104470\/mq-9-reaper.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">MQ-9 Reaper<\/a>\u2014a bigger and more capable version of the Predator\u2014is becoming the USAF\u2019s armed UAV of choice. Figure 2 illustrates the number of hours flown by the Reaper and Predator between 1996 and 2015.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Figure 2: Flight Hours by Platform (1996\u20132015)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"634\" height=\"354\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-29009\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Figure-2.png\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Figure-2.png 634w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Figure-2-205x114.png 205w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 634px) 100vw, 634px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Both platforms had a relatively modest number of flight hours in the early stages of their lifespans. The Predator saw a rapid increase in the number of hours flown in the mid-2000s; the most prominent increase coming between 2007 and 2008 when its yearly flight hours nearly doubled from 79,000 hours to 148,000 hours. The Predator\u2019s flight hours peaked in the early 2010s before being overtaken by the Reaper in 2015. The Reaper\u2019s followed much the same track as the Predator; its flight hours slowly ramped up as the platform matured. It then saw big jumps in flying hours as it demonstrated its operational value before overtaking the Predator.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Figure 3: Number of Reapers destroyed and loss rate per 100,000 flight hours (2001-2015)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"496\" height=\"317\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-29011\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Figure-3.png\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Figure-3.png 496w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Figure-3-205x131.png 205w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 496px) 100vw, 496px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s interesting is that the Reaper\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.safety.af.mil\/Portals\/71\/documents\/Aviation\/Aircraft%20Statistics\/Q-9.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">destroyed rate<\/a> is still fluctuating, as shown in Figure 3. No Reapers were lost in the early stages of the platform\u2019s life, likely because the basic teething problems facing UAVs (such as navigation, communications, and reliability) had been worked out during the Predator\u2019s development. As Reapers began flying more often in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the number of aircraft destroyed (and the destroyed rate) increased. However, the fluctuating Reaper loss rate during this period looks an awful lot like the Predator\u2019s loss rate in the corresponding stages of its life. Since the Reaper was able to skip some of the basic problems associated with UAV development, it\u2019s likely that the platform is now working through some of the unforeseen issues inherent to aircraft development. The high loss rate could also stem from the fact that the platform is conducting more demanding operations. If the Predator\u2019s experiences are any indication, we\u2019ll likely see the Reaper\u2019s loss rate settle down to a significantly lower figure.<\/p>\n<p>This shouldn\u2019t worry the ADF much: accidents are an inherent part of aircraft development. If Australia decides to use armed UAVs in conflict\u2014and its looking increasingly likely that it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-australia-usa-drones-idUSKBN0LR05I20150223\" target=\"_blank\">will<\/a>\u2014it needs to develop contingency plans for dealing with crashed UAVs in hostile territory. The US military tries to destroy downed UAVs if they can\u2019t secure the wreckage with ground forces. Whether Australian (or allied ground forces) are available to secure a downed Australian UAV depends on the situation, but it\u2019s unlikely that Australian UAVs would operate where there\u2019s no prior Australian or coalition presence. As long as those plans are in place, Australia won\u2019t have to worry about its UAVs falling into enemy hands when one of them inevitably crashes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It seems like every few weeks we hear a report of an American unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) lost in a crash somewhere in the world. According to The Washington Post\u2019s Drone Crash Database, the US &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":29012,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[429,402,390,655],"class_list":["post-29003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-adf","tag-drones","tag-uav","tag-usaf"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mayday: when UAVs crash | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/mayday-uavs-crash\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mayday: when UAVs crash | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It seems like every few weeks we hear a report of an American unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) lost in a crash somewhere in the world. 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