reaper - Gizmodo

posts about #reaper more →
The Eye of Death
Runaway Drone Shot Out of Sky
Five Reasons Why Humanoid Robots Will Someday Fight Our Wars
First Fully-Unmanned Machine Combat in History Heralds Robotic Apocalypse
First All-UAV Air Force Combat Wing Takes to the Skies Sans Pilots Over Iraq
Attack of the Hunter-Killer Grim Reaper Robots

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dimsum4u
10/14/09

In reply to The Eye of Death
this is a bad ass shot, to bad missiles aren't on it.
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quim barreiros
10/14/09

In reply to The Eye of Death
all day playing video games.... best job ever...unless you crash....
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jetRink
10/14/09

@quim barreiros: From what I hear, it's incredibly stressful and people burn out quickly.
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DustyButt™
10/14/09

@jetRink: As compared to being physically in the arena? Neither is a walk in the park, but I think the Chair-borne service member suffers less.
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92BuickLeSabre
10/14/09

@jetRink: No kidding. Any qualms about distance, etc. I might have had about this have been washed away by the coverage I've seen and read. These guys take this job incredibly seriously, both in terms of protecting their troops and not accidentally taking out the wrong target.

And ironically, it seems like the work itself is tough as hell.
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92BuickLeSabre
10/14/09

@DustyButt™: physically yes, but (a) a lot of these guys have served in the arena (b) a lot of them were no longer "in the arena" already - i.e. calling the shots from say, the green zone, and (c) by all accounts the mental shift from being "in the middle of the war" during the day to being home with family at night is kind of a mind-f*ck.
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DustyButt™
10/14/09

@92BuickLeSabre: Like the story of the Air Force Major who explained the feeling of standing in line at the a local Taco Bell during his lunch. In the news story he explained the feeling he had being there, surrounded by people just going about their day, none the wiser that only a few hours earlier he had single-handedly destroyed a suspected terrorist convoy... Mind f*ck indeed.

He explained the decompression period of his ride home at the end of his shift. He was grateful for it, no doubt.
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ripfire
10/14/09

In reply to The Eye of Death
Now it's just waiting for Google Wave to turn sentient and destroy us all.
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zerovampire311
10/14/09

@ripfire: "How will you use Google Wave?"

Setting up calculated strikes by a team of unmanned Reapers! All controlled, of course, by an easy to use Widget integrated with Google Maps!
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ripfire
10/14/09

@zerovampire311:
Sonofabitch!
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zerovampire311
10/14/09

@ripfire: Oh god, they can see my house, I'm a target of my own scheme!
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RenfredClymene
09/17/09

In reply to Runaway Drone Shot Out of Sky
I work on the Predator program (which also includes the Reaper) and I can tell you that there's no way the Reaper would have continued it's "mission to target enemies on the ground" without operator input. It is not a fully autonomous aircraft. It can follow an "Operational Mission" which only includes where to fly, at what altitude, and at what speed. All other operations are performed by humans.

When the plane goes "lost link" (losses contact with the pilot) it follows what is known as an "Emergency Mission" which is merely a pathway back to base marked by a series of checkpoints. If the aircraft regains link, (even for a split second) it goes back to flying it's operational mission until it losses link again. Once it losses link again it'll start the emergency mission over again (if it hadn't been updated since it last regained link) starting back at checkpoint number one.

There's a good chance that it had gone lost link, started it's emergency mission and started heading home and then at some point regained link for a moment and then lost it again, thus causing it to turn around and start the emergency mission once again. This is usually a bad scenario because having had to restart it's emergency mission it may not have had enough fuel to complete the emergency mission a second time before making it back to base, thus an imminent crash was coming. The Air Force would rather shoot the plane down (thus destroying all the equipment on the plane) than let it crash and be retrieved by the Afghanistan government or military. The technology is valuable and one that sets the U.S. above all others in military warfare, it must be protected.
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Nick
09/15/09

In reply to Runaway Drone Shot Out of Sky
just as long as john travolta doesn't make a movie about this -- it will be fine
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J_Frank_Parnell
09/15/09

In reply to Runaway Drone Shot Out of Sky
gives new meaning to BSOD, huh?
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MaQ
09/15/09

In reply to Runaway Drone Shot Out of Sky
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!
I am panicking!!
What will happen when it starts fighting back?
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Munch the BanNail
09/15/09

In reply to Runaway Drone Shot Out of Sky
Have you confirmed that this wasn't just a publicity stunt for Short Circuit 3?
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Coolmodo
09/15/09

In reply to Runaway Drone Shot Out of Sky
Am I wrong in assuming that these drones cannot really do anything on their own?

I mean this thing is not designed to autonomously select and attack targets right?

Without a human operator it's just a nice RC gadget that can autonomously maintain altitude and fly back home, sometimes?
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Barry99705
09/15/09

@Coolmodo: Correct, it would just fly until it ran out of gas. The problem is if it was armed. Then there would be unexploded ordinance at the crash site, which depending on where it crashed could be used for ieds.
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SugouriWendy
09/15/09

In reply to Runaway Drone Shot Out of Sky
@ shenanigans61 I'm an exUSAF airman who worked with support personnel for the Predator. The UAV's do not replace a pilot, seeing as how an actual Commissioned Officer Pilot flies them. However, they were considering training Enlisted personal E-5 or higher to pilot them. Either way. SOMEONE is always piloting them. The benefit is that it remove the multi-billion dollar aircraft from the sky, as well as the pilot out of harms way. There should always be a place for manned aircraft, if anything as a last measure for the impending robot apocalypse. But with all seriousness, at our current deployed level of technology, a UAV still cannot perform all of the complex tasks and maneuvers of say an F-22. And in the event we have to go against a hostile Air Power, I still think Manned Aircraft would be more suited for certain tasks. That's my opinion anyway.
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Bombear
09/14/09

In reply to Runaway Drone Shot Out of Sky
Calling these Drones is very wrong. the only thing they can do by themselves is fly home....and only if ive told them how to get there. they are the same as every other plane, the only difference is the pilot sits somewhere else, i still control everyting the plane does.
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Pope John Peeps II
09/15/09

@Bombear: they are the same as every other plane, the only difference is the pilot sits somewhere else

You do realize that's the DEFINITION of what a drone is, right? I mean... The ACTUAL DEFINITION. From the DICTIONARY. It's a book you really should become familiar with.
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psychiccheese
09/15/09

@Pope John Peeps II:
Drone
n.

1. A male bee, especially a honeybee, that is characteristically stingless, performs no work, and produces no honey. Its only function is to mate with the queen bee.

nope. I don't think that's the definition of a drone. These drones provide a very harsh sting and perform quite a bit of work. Although I suppose it's true that they produce zero honey.
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Rosa Golijan
09/15/09

@psychiccheese: Normally I'm all over dictionary issues. I mean there are several on my desk, just waiting to be grabbed when someone is wrong on the internet, but you just made me laugh. Thank you. It's a great start to the morning.
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VerdaHizay
09/14/09

In reply to Runaway Drone Shot Out of Sky
I see you quoted "pilots" through the article. All MQ-9 pilots have gone through Air Force flight school. Most have flown manned aircraft prior to flying the Reaper or Predator.Most of them have flown fighter aircraft. Weapon launch commands are given by the pilot like any other aircraft. The aircraft needs both the pilot and sensor operator working together to engage a target.
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Rosa Golijan
09/15/09

@VerdaHizay: You've got a good point there. Away with the quotation marks.
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Gators15
09/14/09

In reply to Runaway Drone Shot Out of Sky
I'm in the USAF. It would have run until it ran out of fuel and crashed in some random place. It won't fire it's ordinances without user input, the same kind of user input that it wasn't responding to. It was shot down for 2 reasons: 1) we don't want the PR nightmare of the thing running out of fuel and falling out of the sky and killing one or more poor unsuspecting souls and 2) we don't want the technology getting into the wrong hands. When we shoot it down, we are easily able to recover the wreckage.
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PaintTheSkyGrey
09/14/09

In reply to Runaway Drone Shot Out of Sky
Just a friendly reminder to commenters to keep OPSEC intact. :)
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Pope John Peeps II
09/14/09

In reply to Runaway Drone Shot Out of Sky
I wonder what would've happened if the Reaper hadn't been shot down. It is typically used for "hunter-killer" missions and targets enemies on the ground. Would it continue a mission like that without operator input?

Is this seriously a serious thought you had? Please tell me that was an ironic sort of meta-joke that I don't understand.
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Rosa Golijan
09/14/09

@Pope John Peeps II: An idle day-mare as Stealth popped into mind.

Don't worry, no fear of planes yet. Airports on the other hand...
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RT100
09/14/09

@Rosa Golijan: oh stealth.... what an awful movie. I still watched it, but it was awful.

also, was this an American Drone? that was just lost and then shot down by american fighters?

kooky
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Rosa Golijan
09/14/09

@rt¹⁰⁰: My thoughts on that movie are the same.

Based on what I read, it was an American drone which lost communication with its operators and was taken down by the US Air Force.
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kidphat (loves bumblebee girl)
09/15/09

@Pope John Peeps II: Well, I think it's a valid and interesting question. If the Reaper didn't respond to it's fail-safe, that's a bug. If there is a bug, it's most likely in an unknown state. If it's in a unknown state, only God knows what it would have done.
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Pope John Peeps II
09/15/09

@kidphat (loves bumblebee girl): Well, the thing is that it's NOT a valid question. Neither is in interesting. If you KNOW that the drone needs an operator to function, why would you even surmise that it could perform missions on its own? A bug would just make it fuck up. Just like your computer at home, it would probably crash, and then eventually crash LITERALLY.

I mean, I don't know all the various components that go into my computer, so I'm no high tech wonderkid. But the writer on a gadget blog should probably know that self-guiding, autonomous, free-firing murderbots haven't yet been invented.
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Edited by Pope John Peeps II at 09/15/09 12:10 AM Pope John Peeps II was starred

ripfire
09/15/09

@Pope John Peeps II: The plane itself doesn't need that kind of sophisticated AI. It takes its controls remotely from a station. However, if "something else" is feeding those controls, well...
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frigg
09/15/09

@Pope John Peeps II: If a bug can cause loss of remote control (i.e. autonomous flight), why can't another bug cause release of ordinance (free-firing murderbots)?
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Canoehead
09/15/09

@Pope John Peeps II: "should probably know that self-guiding, autonomous, free-firing murderbots haven't yet been invented...."

As far as YOU know... ; )
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Pope John Peeps II
09/15/09

@frigg: Listen, I'm not even going to answer that. One day you'll realize how silly that is.
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