Drone Concerns

[DancingLady]

There has been a lot of talk about drones lately, for both military and civilian purposes. In the military, I like the idea of not having to put pilots in danger on a mission, but at the same time I have some serious concerns about these drones.

Computers mess up! We know this, no matter how good the software, how tested it might be, sometimes computers have glitches and do totally random and weird things. What disaster might happen if a drone's computer malfunctioned? If you have a person in the aircraft, they may use computerized equipment, but in the case of malfunction, they are there to over-ride and manually run the plane so as to avoid such a disaster.

 

[UAE]

If a UAV malfunctioned it will immediately fall and if there were people around they might suffer unserious injuries. That applies to both military/civilian drones. There are parachutes for recovery/rescue in some drones only in case of technical malfunction but not widely used on civil drones neither installed on military UAVs. Why? I have no idea.

 

[kana_marie]

First, I would like to say that drones are a great idea for military use but absolutely should not be used domestically. That being said, I believe a computer malfunction is no more/no less likely than human error. And if you look at this from a total militaristic point of view I believe it would be called collateral damage.

 

[jeremy2]

There has been a lot of talk about drones lately, for both military and civilian purposes. In the military, I like the idea of not having to put pilots in danger on a mission, but at the same time I have some serious concerns about these drones.

Computers mess up! We know this, no matter how good the software, how tested it might be, sometimes computers have glitches and do totally random and weird things. What disaster might happen if a drone's computer malfunctioned? If you have a person in the aircraft, they may use computerized equipment, but in the case of malfunction, they are there to over-ride and manually run the plane so as to avoid such a disaster.

Some years back, Iranian scientists were able to successfully hack into the system of a US drone overflying its airspace and they were able to make it land in their territory. This goes to show that not all drones are designed to avoid malfunction and they can still be hijacked mid flight by any experienced software personnel.

 

[vegito12]

Drones used by people have been misused like spying on people or trying to scare others so it needs to be regulated as well and for the military it would work well. I think it would not replace humans as much as we would want it as it coudl malfunction and not work properly as well at times and be a bad thing as well. The drone should have a good, user who is going to use it wisely and also use it for what it should be doing and not misuse it as well.

 

[pwarbi]

While drones have been used for quite a few years now, I think the way that technology is advancing, they'll only get more and more sophisticated.

I don't know just how much of a military budget will be put aside for development, but I'd take a guess that it's going to take a fairly sizable chunk, especially if the use of drones is set to increase, which I think it will do.