ICBM, Vx, now this?
Damn those crazy Norks and their 'practical joke of the week' stunts.
The US Army is investigating how one of its drones took an unplanned 623-mile excursion and ended up stuck in a tree two states away. The Shadow RQ-7 drone was launched by soldiers from the 2nd Stryker Brigade of the 7th Infantry Division during a training mission in Arizona at 17:16 local time. It was supposed to provide the …
Of course it ended up in a tree - that's where squirrels live. After all, it is The Shadow, and it never misses...
I wonder if this one had 'Amy Hardwick' on the nose art?
Was it truly intelligent to damage itself, then get found by a hiker?
That would be a genuine question if I believed in the "Evil Genius" of Frankenstein or so many Cold War Era stories. But I've seen just enough to appreciate that the genius of the military lies in shrouding your embarrassing failures in secrecy.
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Scharre noted that the case illustrated some of the problems with deploying semi-autonomous systems in comparison to manned military units.
It is a drone repeat of this incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Belgian_MiG-23_crash
Thankfully, with a happier ending.
So the fact that a pilot is onboard is not a guarantee that an aircraft will not fly in an unexpected direction until it runs out of fuel (we were lucky in 1989, if that happened let's say 5 years earlier we could have had WW3).
Better headline:
"Arizona bombs Colorado, narrowly misses Denver"
I have my resume in to The Verge...
"Imagine a soldier on Fort Huachuca getting lost doing land navigation," Scharre added. "He's not going to keep going and wander into Colorado."
He's obviously not seen me without GPS support...
"This would not happen with a person unless they went crazy or defected. "
Maybe it wanted out of the army, preferring loitering on a beach in Mexico, and its nav software found New Mexico as its first match*
* any nav system user can tell you you need to switch countries first when you're trying to find an address across the border.
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and there was me thinking the unit takes their name from the vehicles they use. You know, the ones named after two Medal of Honor winners named Stryker, one from WW2 and one from Vietnam
To be fair I thought it was a person and not two but I did at least know that much and I am a UK citizen with no military experience. Probably down to the books I read that I know this stuff
Why did the bloke who found it return it ???
I would take it home, wait a year, then disassemble, reverse engineer ... fun personal projects ... until NCIS kick my front door in ... all a lot of fun ... Sir, I found it in a tree, I like drones, this one looked cool, you lost it, I found it, been a year, it's mine, now, good bye!
I found it, been a year, it's mine, now, good bye....
....cruel world, the MiB have got me, oh god, I'll never be seen again! Noooooo! I didn't mean to take it! I thought it was a kite! Don't put me in the tank of water! Bluglugloopp......Aaaarrrggggghhhh! I won't do it ag.....bluglugbloopblug....
And so on.
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