Air Force Drone Crashes in New Mexico

It appears yet another Air force crash in NM has occurred about a week from the last one in Western NM:

The U.S. Air Force hasn’t yet determined what caused an MQ-1B Predator drone to crash yesterday at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, a spokeswoman said.

The unmanned aerial vehicle made by General Atomics of San Diego went down at 1:45 p.m. about six miles northwest of the airfield, according to a statement from the base.

defensetech.org...-21685

reply to post by Sammamishman


No telling. I've seen everything from a loose cannon plug, to a pilot just flying into the ground. With it being a training mission, I'd lean towards pilot error.

reply to post by Sammamishman


Maybe some CO. drone hunters decided to go on an expedition to NM.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Yah, your probably right.
What I didn't realize though is how often the Predator's crash. Is the loss of roughly 5-6 per year a normal thing?

reply to post by Sammamishman


Oh god yes. In 2011 the Predator accident rate was 4.86/100,000 flight hours, and I've seen as high as 9.26/100,000 in recent years. You don't even want to know what it was like in the early days. Jesus I don't know how they had any left.

Losing 4-5 a year is a GOOD year.

There are crashes and there are crashes.

The base i live out side of uses a lot of target drones every year.

If a drone has problems and is not able to safely return to base the operators are told to find a safe area and lawn dart the drone instead of taking a chance on killing or damaging property.

Ever wonder why the penalties are so heavy against lasers?




Well of course they work silly.



just think starwars.
u will be fine