A police drone had a "near-miss" with a fighter jet travelling at 520mph (836km/h), a report has revealed.
The drone's operator "honestly believed" the two would collide in mid-air, according to [PDF] the UK Airprox Board. It said the risk of a crash above Throwleigh, Devon, was "high" but the officer had lowered the drone quickly. Devon and Cornwall Police said it had notified Airprox, which was "content that there was no blame nor any lessons to be learned".
The drone was flying at an altitude of about 300ft (90m) on 16 January, according to the report. "The jet came into view from right to left and seemed to pass by the drone at the same altitude; it looked like the jet was within 200m laterally of the drone. Once the jet was in view it started banking to the right and [the operator] honestly believed it was going to collide with the drone."
"The jet continued and was followed a few seconds later by a second jet."
The F-15 pilot, who was flying at an altitude of 500ft (152m), could not see the drone, the report added. The board said the case had prompted discussions about whether the service which helps the military plan routes through UK airspace should incorporate information from other sources.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @02:24PM
Let's see civilian forces and military forces destroy each other.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday May 31 2018, @02:56PM (1 child)
Well, there actually were some lessons, except that the "pupils" aren't capable of learning them, thus... no lessons to be learned
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Thursday May 31 2018, @08:05PM
These are often referred to as "lessons observed" to avoid implying that learning takes place.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday May 31 2018, @02:58PM (12 children)
The letter of the law in the US would be the jet was in the wrong unless special situation or special training location. In practice the military gets away with a lot of stuff that would be a civilian violation.
Let me think... if in class C airspace, not allowed over 200 knots below 2500 feet altitude, below 10K altitude you're limited to 250 knots (without ATC permission anyways). Minimum altitude of 1000 feet over populated (where police drones fly?) areas. Minimum altitude of 500 feet over rural areas, but other than training why would a drone be over 500 ft altitude over a cornfield... missing rural person or escaped convict, maybe...) . In the middle of freakin nowhere the FAA lets pilots do what they will BUT its the pilots responsibility to stay 500 feet away from people, vehicles (drones), structures, pretty much anything but wilderness. Theres also a handwavy thing about being high enough to safely land, and exemption for landing and taking off obviously.
So yeah the jet pilot, if he were in the USA, would be violating a metric (well, imperial-measure) shitton of laws, which as I previously stated are never enforced on military pilots. The aviation laws are vary similar although probably microscopically different in the UK police state.
Aircraft are generally constructed to whack flying birds and mostly survive with minimal damage although flying tanks don't work so there's always the golden b-b scenario of hitting a 40 pound pelican or swan in just the exact wrong spot leading to terrible crash, although it doesn't happen much in practice. In that way, hitting your average drone isn't THAT much worse than hitting your average seagull, although it should be avoided when easily possible.
In practice even if the military pilot gets away with everything Top Gun style as usual, the drone op should think a little harder about flying around military training areas which are usually reasonably well posted and easily avoidable. Or a simple phone call to the nearest tower, etc.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by FatPhil on Thursday May 31 2018, @03:21PM (6 children)
"""
Military low flying is used to train military aircrew. Low flying by military aircraft is carried out across all of the UK.
Low flying means:
fixed-wing aircraft flying down to 250 feet from the ground
rotary-wing aircraft (for example helicopters) flying down to 100 feet from the ground
"""
The 500 feet is well over that 250 feet limit. So I'd be surprised if the cops weren't more to blame. What case were they investigating at the time? Or were they just out for a bit of a joyride during work hours on taxpayers' expense?
This was near Dartmoor, there's lots of military stuff going on near Dartmoor, so if there's been one, I would expect there to have been many buzzings of the tors.
Personally, I'm most perturbed that that .gov.uk is still using feet as a measurement. They'll not be landing any climate observers onto Mars any time soon.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @03:49PM (5 children)
In aviation, feet are used internationally for specifying altitude.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:13PM (4 children)
However, yes, that also perturbs me.
As do knots.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday May 31 2018, @05:18PM
You can get velcro shoes for grown-ups, too.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 31 2018, @07:18PM
Levels are only used at altitude, for vertical separation of planes in route. In most places the finest grained levels are 1000 feet.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Thursday May 31 2018, @08:12PM (1 child)
You may be interested in a bit of trivia; metric flight levels [wikipedia.org] are used in ...
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(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday June 01 2018, @12:10PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Informative) by nitehawk214 on Thursday May 31 2018, @03:50PM (3 children)
Here is an example of an F-4 killing an entire airliner [wikipedia.org] full of people because the Air Force decided they were too good for transponders or IFR or contacting ATC when flying near a civilian airport.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:18PM
Correction, USMC not AF.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday May 31 2018, @11:29PM
Good job, reaching back 47 years for an example.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday June 01 2018, @12:18PM
Didn't Alanis Morissette write a song about that?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday May 31 2018, @07:34PM
You've been watching too many Top Gun reruns.
Military pilots get reamed quite severly for this kind of show-boating, especially over populated areas.
However In the present case:
Everybody was following the rules it would appear.
The Rules need to be updated.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday May 31 2018, @03:09PM (12 children)
Per George Carlin: "When 2 planes almost collide, they call it a 'near miss'. It's a 'near hit'! A collision is a near miss! 'Look, they nearly missed ... but not quite!'"
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Thursday May 31 2018, @03:28PM (10 children)
He's confusing "[it was] a near miss", where the adjective modifies the noun, with "[it was] nearly a miss", where the adverb "nearly" modifies the verb "was". Unsurprisingly, these only-loosely related sentences have different meanings.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:00PM (5 children)
Doesn't even matter. The fact is that the meaning of words in a language depends only on how they are actually used by speakers of that language.
So English speakers use the words "near miss" to mean that something almost occurred but didn't, then that's what those words mean in English.
Words can change meaning over time. Typically this means that by the time someone starts complaining about "misuse" of particular words or phrases, the complaining person is already wrong: that ship has long sailed.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by FatPhil on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:09PM (3 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @05:08PM
Well we all know that comment moderation here is 100% logical, so now we just have to find out what YOU did wrong!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @06:10PM
Cause your being a pedantic ahole. It was a comedy sketch. No one here cares about the Queen's English.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @08:52PM
Bitching about downvotes = more downvotes.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 01 2018, @12:10AM
Flammable/inflammable, who's complaining?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:58PM (3 children)
Probably should be written down as "near-miss" (hit) versus "near miss" (missed but close).
Somebody please go ask Carlin whether he meant to say the dash.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday May 31 2018, @08:07PM (2 children)
Easier said than done, since he died about a decade ago. Or, more precisely, asking him is easy, but getting an answer back is extremely difficult.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Friday June 01 2018, @12:20AM
So you're saying he'd be subject to a hear miss?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday June 01 2018, @12:44AM
So he suffered from a near miss in living?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @09:24PM
near != nearly
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Thursday May 31 2018, @03:17PM (1 child)
One thing I forgot to mention... no, it didn't, at least if this happened in the USA (which it didn't). The legal FAA regs term is "Separation Violation" and it happens when aircraft are closer than 1000 feet vertically (stacked up in pattern, for example) or FIVE friggin miles horizontally (or 15 minutes if you're using procedural sep like over an ocean). Like most regs the FAA sets the safest standard and the ATC can use best judgment so if you listen to ATC tower they talk a lot making sure pilots see each other in which case they let the pattern tighten up to whatever game of chicken the pilots and ATC are willing to play (this is how formation flying works, more or less... if you see each other, its not a violation). So if we each fold paper airplanes and throw them at each other from five miles away, technically we have to file a sep violation report with the FAA, but in practice its not a serious danger.
Now there's two definitions of near-miss. One is when you watch Blackhawk Down and the pilots windshield gets a bullet hole right above his head, thats a near-miss. The other kind of near-miss is when clickbait journalists want to make something boring sound exciting, then a separation violation no matter how far apart is always described as a near-miss even if the aircraft were never within thousands of feet of each other.
Its surprisingly hard for someone on the ground to intentionally hit a flying aircraft even with extensive training unless you have IR or radar guidance... some rando cop on the street saying they almost collided is about as trustworthy as some rando cop saying the sun and moon nearly collided during an eclipse... there's a difference between some adrenaline rush of holy cow that was scary cool, vs actually hitting something moving at 500 mph quite a long distance away. Obviously the clickbait journalism definition of almost hit is sort of like how I almost hit the oncoming traffic on the interstate this morning, why only 150 feet of horiz sep away, cars were whizzing by in the opposite direction its a miracle no one was hit. Well, not really.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @06:20PM
Is a police drone an aircraft of the kind the military uses to kill groups of people from a distance, or is a police drone what the media loves to frantically call a drone but is actually just a quad- (or hexa- or whatever) copter? Given the media's incessant need to sensationalize, the question is worth asking. A near-strike between a jet and a missile-carrying aircraft is noteworthy, a jet flying by while someone is playing with a quad-copter is less so.
Pull up the article and... oh look, it's a story about a jet that flew by a couple of hundred feet above a quad-copter.
It wouldn't be a story if a jet flew by and didn't strike a duck that was flying a couple of hundred feet away, but make it a quad-copter and next thing you know it's news.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sjames on Thursday May 31 2018, @07:42PM (2 children)
Plane hits a BIRD and it's "OMG WE HAVE TO BAN DRONES". Airline pilot sees something in the distance below that he can't identify and it's "OMG WE HAVE TO REGULATE DRONES!!!". Military pilot actually has what a normal person would call a near-miss (as in "Bring me my brown pants!") with a police drone and it's "YAWN!!!".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @05:41PM (1 child)
Neither fighter pilot noticed anything so it is unlikely that any pants were soiled in the air.
Only the drone operator thought it was a near miss. Humans are notoriously bad at judging the relative positions of objects in the sky by sight. And the report makes this point pretty clearly:
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday June 01 2018, @08:06PM
However, note the stark contrast with previous situations now that it's a police drone and not citizen. None of the incidents presented any threat whatsoever, and the only one that did real damage was a bird.