REMOTE CONTROL FOR KILLER DRONES

If you’re going to have a bunch of killer drones roam­ing the skies, you bet­ter make damn sure you can con­trol ‘em.
Pilotless plane pro­mot­ers have long promised this would be doable. And now, after a series of test flights ear­lier this month, there’s rea­son to think they’re right.
In one trial, con­trol of the X-​​45A exper­i­men­tal unmanned plane was passed from an oper­a­tor at Edwards Air Force Base in California, to another, 900 miles away, at a Boeing facil­ity in Seattle. The Seattle pilot took over for only six min­utes. But the switch was sig­nif­i­cant, regard­less.
Equally reas­sur­ing was what went down at the begin­ning of the month at Edwards. One pilot was able to take charge of two X45s at once, for about an hour.
Eventually, the goal is to let one flesh-​​and-​​blood oper­a­tor guide an entire squadron of death-​​dealing drones at once. That’s still a ways off. But this start ain’t bad.

December 22nd, 2004 | Drones | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.