[VRB_20kt]

Ooops!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-49158509

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[Paul_Sengupta]

Reading the article, it was, in fact, going around on its own, when the operator throttled it back and it crashed.

"Five drones - almost 10% of a 54-strong fleet bought from French firm Thales - have been wrecked in mid Wales crashes."

Still doing better than most radio controlled aeroplane flyers...

[Katamarino]

Not just pilot error, but pilot actively intervening into a situation that was fine, and causing a crash. Great job MoD...

[johnm]

@lefty I wonder if any of the old Avionics bods are still involved...

[lobstaboy]

Good to see that it missed the school but I'm disappointed that it doesn't seem to have done any plummeting.
Is this what happens when you let squaddies fly planes?

[JAFO]

If God had meant the Army to fly he'd have painted the sky green.

[townleyc]

Good to see that it missed the school but I'm disappointed that it doesn't seem to have done any plummeting.
Is this what happens when you let squaddies fly planes?

But it did avoid the puppy farm!


KE

[foxmoth]

If it cost that much I would imagine it is the electronic wizardry that makes up the bulk of the £££££££ and that is probably salvageable, if it is the structure that costs then maybe the MOD should be talking to a few homebuilders!

[Lefty]

@lefty I wonder if any of the old Avionics bods are still involved...

Doubt it. They’d all be retired long ago.

[Andrew Sinclair]

If God had meant the Army to fly he'd have painted the sky green.

Many years ago whilst on a training exercise one of the younger soldiers was heard to say to a troop commander 7RHA “What’s the point of jumping out of an aeroplane on a horse?”

[kanga]

Ah, the art of making things 'squaddie-proof' ..

A few decades ago I was involved in designing some very sophisticated electronic gubbins which had to be used by all 3 services in all sorts of environments. One requirement was to have it light, small but rugged, but also to be able to be powered off internal rechargeable battery, 12v-28v DC, or 110-240v AC 50-60 Hz. We thought we'd provided obvious easy and idiot-proof external connectors and leads clearly labelled for all these options. All had been thoroughly tested from Arctic to very sandy, airborne to submarine. During one early and important operational deployment to somewhere rather inaccessible and uncomfortable, however, users reported that it had suddenly stopped working. We had to send out a team including from the designers to troubleshoot on the spot. It turned out that a squaddie had for some reason bodged a 240v AC power source into the DC input point and blown some important innards; he had not told anyone. We had failed to anticipate this possibility, which had not been in the military specification. We had to do a modification to ensure that if this happened again it would lead only to a cutout and warning, requiring a reset via a button, for which we had to find room (all the displays had to be readable in bright snow sunlight, and buttons individually pushable with a heavily gloved hand: RM requirement!). Obviously, it was our design team which was blamed for this oversight