Executive

Who's in Control of Our Skies? The Flying Robots Saga Continues

By Neil Bocci, editor-in-chief

Some of us might still remember when the first drones started flying in our skies; voices of concern rose and were silenced. No, we were not heading for a Terminator world ruled by heartless, ungraceful chunks of metal. No, we were not giving up any of our rights and liberties if the skies were to be patrolled by drones. No, the drones would not invade our privacy; they weren't meant to be spies in the skies. Finally, yes, these drones are perfectly safe and at all times under the control of a human being.

But are they? Both safe and under control? The recent slew of events raises this legitimate concern.

The April incident in Kandahar, Afghanistan, responsible for the loss of four lives, is still being investigated. The US military still owes our Canadian allies an answer, to bring closure to them and much-needed changes in the manner that drones are operated. Three-and-a-half months later, we still have no definitive answers to any of our questions.

Last month's incident in Florida, with twenty dead and sixteen wounded, has broken the pattern of remote, unseen combat mishaps, by bringing disaster to our homeland. No word as of yet about the cause of this mishap from the US Air Force. In this case, the Air Force admits ownership of the rogue drone but has not yet released any findings, or shed any light, into what could have caused the tragedy on Highway 98.

Just last night, again on foreign land, again in Afghanistan, in the isolated, little town of Panjab, forty-two civilians came under a drone attack. Only six of them survived, seriously injured. This time, the mystery is even harder to solve; the survivors' reports did not identify the drone by its markings. No one has identified to which branch of the military the drone belonged. Naturally, no combatant force wishes to take responsibility for this meaningless, devastating act against non-combatant civilians, including men, women, and children. There will probably be a long time before we have any release of information in this case.

There have been enough reports of drones causing serious trouble to prompt some questions. Are we really in control of our equipment? Are these drones reliable enough? Are they as safe as advertised?

One by one, we'll attempt to answer these questions, with the limited knowledge of a news crew.

Control. The Florida incident is related to a drone out of control, or described as such by the numerous eyewitnesses present at the scene. We have explored the scenarios that would cause a drone to be out of control. There aren't many. Human operators, using a joystick and guiding imagery captured by the cameras installed on board, remotely control the drones. The scenario, in which an Air Force pilot, deliberately or in error, slammed the drone into a bus full of tourists, makes no sense. The pilot who was at the controls of the death drone in Florida was not available for comment. Our guess is he won't be available for a while, at least until the Air Force finalizes and releases the findings in this sensitive investigation.

So, what else could have caused the crash? Some kind of malfunction, in either the drone itself, the comlink between drone and operator, or the remote control station. These are the three possible areas to investigate and find potential technical issues that could have been at fault for the incident.

If we're considering technical malfunctions or defects, let's examine the manufacturers' records of quality. There are only a few drone manufacturers. California-based NanoLance has a significant percentage of the defense contracting for the flying doom machines. Having a remarkable quality and reliability record spanning decades, as of late NanoLance disappoints in the more visible areas of consumer goods, such as handheld and in-dash GPS devices.

Consumer reviews, posted on many different venues, are indicating failures in recent models of handhelds, from hardware and software perspectives. While the reported hardware errors were not able to shed much light, due to consumers simply reporting the devices as "broken," the software angle gives a little more insight, such as loss of satellite reception and the inability to re-establish a link; frozen screens, the devices need a restart to be able to resume operations; intermittent defects of all kinds, causing the devices to get stuck in search mode, or not guide properly.

Hmmm… not guide properly? Why does this particular defect ring a bell of interest? Speculating here… These drones are guided using, among others, the GPS technology developed by NanoLance. The same technology that has been reported to malfunction. Could there be a connection? History will reveal it, not a moment too soon.

Reliability. This is a matter to be fully established after the Air Force releases its findings into the Florida incident, and the first of the Afghanistan incidents, in Kandahar. The key question that needs to be answered is if these were because of pilot error or. technical malfunction. Normally we think of reliability as the capability of a particular device to be physically dependable, somehow assuming this is mainly from a technical perspective. That is not entirely correct. Both the drone and the operator have to be reliable, so that the system comprised of the physical drone, the pilot flying it, and the communications link between them, is reliable in its totality. Furthermore, this drone — comlink — pilot system has to be reliable 100 percent of the time. Ninety-nine percent reliability will not be good enough. Ninety-nine percent reliability is what could have caused the Florida incident.

Safety. Operational safety stems from reliability, with a touch of safety-driven procedures and controls. With our limited knowledge of such procedures and controls, we can't even begin to speculate on how safe they are. However, so far, the safety record of the UAVs doesn't impress anyone. Hopefully, the findings into these incidents will reveal opportunities for added safety features into the operation of robotic aircraft, here, in our own airspace, or anywhere else.

One thing remains certain: as of right now, drones are both unsafe and unreliable, claiming lives of innocent civilians, here, at home, and in combat zones, overseas.