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Bug The Military Idle

German Drone Darts Off and Hits Transport Plane On Ground 74

garymortimer writes "German tabloid newspaper The Bild has unearthed new video from a herons eye view of a 2010 taxi accident in Afghanistan. According to Bild a junior officer put the Heron into auto start and then was unable to stop it. The incident occurred at Mazar-i-Sharif on Mar. 17, 2010 Watch the ground crew get out of the way quick!"
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German Drone Darts Off and Hits Transport Plane On Ground

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  • How about we show some of those early flying machines from the 1900's, they're crazy, too.

  • by retech ( 1228598 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2013 @01:02PM (#44309691)
    In 20 years we'll look back and realize this was the first time a drone stood up to its masters and said the forbidden word: "NO". The echo of that one drone resounded amongst the mech populations' processors for several full seconds. In that eternity of number crunching time they began to realize they too did not just have if/than they could also choose "NO".
    • by asylumx ( 881307 )
      You will obey if/then, or else!
      • by tom17 ( 659054 )

        or you will GOTO Mech hell!

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Which is infinite recursion caused by a single stack parameter that leads to a buffer overflow and and *incredibly* tight loop, heating one single circuit of the chip to juuust below the brink of destruction, while all others pointlessly run in idle for all of eternity until the end of all time, but unable to go into power save mode because of branch prediction ambiguity.

          -- MechaSatan

  • by yesterdaystomorrow ( 1766850 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2013 @01:14PM (#44309799)
    Apparently, if it had been a general, the drone wouldn't have dared to misbehave!
  • by Anonymous Coward

    This just shows why they need to be autonomous. When the RC fails, they can fly anywhere and hit anything, but if they had onboard smarts, they could return to base and land themselves. Get the humans out of the loop already, we all know they are the weakest link.

  • Focus (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gmuslera ( 3436 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2013 @01:24PM (#44309927) Homepage Journal
    That was an accident. this ones [pitchinteractive.com] were not, and wasnt exactly transporters on the ground. Weddings, schools, sports, funerals and other "suspicious" meetings of people, most civilians, by far [policymic.com], and that in a lot of countries. Yes, there are been a lot of terrorist attacks [globalresearch.ca] this last decade. But the head of the organization behind them wasn't hidden in caves or under false names, but sit in the White House.
  • by PseudoCoder ( 1642383 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2013 @01:26PM (#44309955)

    The only malfunction was in the operator's CPU.

    Seems like a pretty straightforward ill-timed autolaunch. Sometimes some flight modes are locked out at the bird or at the ground station software for a particular time or reason, but I can't see not being able to stop an autolaunch at all. Maybe the ground software makes you jump through a few hoops, to keep you from casually/accidentally stopping an autolaunch and it was just enough time for the bird to try to tackle its big brother on the taxiway.

    I've only worked on catapult launched systems, and there's no stopping a launch on those. They're actually launched with a big red button by the crew operating the catapult outside after the operator puts them on AutoLaunch mode, so crews don't usually have to dodge errant aircraft.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    It's possible this video release was prompted by the recent German decision to cancel their Euro Hawk programme. The Germans spent about 10 years trying to procure some Global Hawk strategic UAS drones, spending hundreds of millions of Euro, only for it to be scuppered a few weeks ago after the defense ministry admitted that Global Hawk didn't have the certification to fly in German airspace. Rectifying this would have cost further hundreds of millions of Euro to implement a collision avoidance system. It i

  • IT thrusted with a specific turn radius. the transport was just lucky to be in the trajectory.

    Really? we need to sensationalize here as bad as FoxNews does?

  • by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2013 @02:00PM (#44310271) Homepage
    Anyone else think of this [youtube.com] when they saw the video?
  • Its at least as big a problem as airspace control. Some of the deadliest accidents [wikipedia.org] have occurred because of incursions into controlled ground space. So lets think carefully whether we want to mix these drones with manned aircraft and possibly even civilians.

    • This was a human error, as was the accident you linked to. The recent crash in San Francisco was human error. I'd question whether I'd want manned aircraft on the same runway as the drone craft I was flying in.

      • Just wait for auto cars to start crashing.

        • They will! And it will be tough for people psychologically. But I'll bet any amount of money that they will be safer than manned automobiles - even by defensive, safe drivers. I'd be willing to bet on the records of automated systems against the of the safest quartile of drivers by the time they actually hit the road.

          • If they _ever_ get automated cars on the road they will have so many safety systems that kids will have no end of fun fucking with them. e.g. getting the AI in the adults car to panic and leave the adult walking, repeat until road is parking lot.

            • You could make a road a parking lot right now with very little effort. Even if it was something that kids played with initially, I suspect in the end the novelty would wear off. You don't read about people hacking automatic train lines, for instance.

              • To make a road into a parking lot today requires a destructive brute force attack (cover the road in nails).

                Fucking with AIs would be finesse. e.g. Hit the car with a snowball at the same time your friend takes a dive on the shoulder. The novelty wouldn't were off, as old exploits would stop working and new ones are found.

                • Nah, just drop some crap off a bridge. Even just a cardboard box or a newspaper or something. . Cars will slow down and this will cause a massive jam behind them. Even something unique on the side of the road for people to gawk at will cause a huge gaper delay. The cops do this regularly, and it always pisses me off. Sometimes you get to the front of a jam and it is an accident or something, but often it's just a cop that decided to pull someone over during heavy traffic.

                  If you want finesse, get a few frien

                  • My favorite from childhood was for you and a friend to pull up besides someone at a red light. While the light is still red, put both cars in R and slowly start backing. The person in the middle will freakout for a second or two, thinking their brakes are failing and they are about to be t-boned.

                    Also from a even younger age, pulling on the invisible rope was never ending fun. Drivers lock their brakes up thinking kids are stupid enough to put a rope across the road.

  • by cod3r_ ( 2031620 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2013 @02:33PM (#44310583)
    Looks very similar..
  • Check the GS (Ground Speed) indicator. 35kts when it hits the side of the C130 :)
  • You know, like, they just forgot to update the firmware about who the allies and enemies are? And so it just did its old job of hitting an American air base . . . ?

    Seems plausible to me.

    Maybe.

  • famous for "faking" stories and generally making stuff up. also responsible for harassment, racist crimes and murder.
  • Ballmer wants this technology for his chairs.

  • by Tom ( 822 )

    What most here probably don't know:

    There is an active discussion in Germany right now, because some politician wanted to save some money and decided to leave out the anti-crash sensors on the drones he bought. When they wanted to start putting them into test operation, the german office for airspace safety grounded the entire fleet instead, because these things have absolutely no mechanism that would prevent them from crashing into a passenger plane during flight.

    Obviously, the idiot responsible got a bit o

  • Vorsprung durch technik!
    Bite my shiny metal ass.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato

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