Northern problems with UAVS
I have been suggesting UAVs could be very useful for Arctic surveillance (see end of this post). I have however become aware of three key problems that substantially restrict their usefulness in the north:
*poor communications via satellite north of 60
* icing issues
*poor instrument landing capability (visibility is an obvious constraint in the north).
Babbler's Update: In the comments, Freelance Writer points to an article in Vanguard magazine a few years ago that lays out some of the conflicting issues in an all-too-short piece that nonetheless covers quite a bit of intellectual ground. Worth reading, IMO.
*poor communications via satellite north of 60
* icing issues
*poor instrument landing capability (visibility is an obvious constraint in the north).
Babbler's Update: In the comments, Freelance Writer points to an article in Vanguard magazine a few years ago that lays out some of the conflicting issues in an all-too-short piece that nonetheless covers quite a bit of intellectual ground. Worth reading, IMO.
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 3:58 p.m.
1 Comments:
I think the US Coast Guard took a bunch of people and UAVs up to Alaska a few years ago to scope out the challenges and learned it is very challenging indeed. Yes, icing, and not just at altitude - you need runway de-icing as well. Yes, comms and not just line of sight to the satellite - nobody much talks about how funny radios can get up there. Yes, weather, sufficiently violent that (working from memory here) they could barely get everything and everybody to their base areas, let alone launch, fly around and recover.
There is a sense that UAVs are less expensive than the human alternatives. That may not be true, particularly in the northern environment.
It is my impression that there is a sizable human pilot/air traffic control constituency, carefully cataloging all the bad stuff, real and potential, and alert for the first bad UAV incident. Of course they want to protect air safety. Of course they want to protect their jobs. Powerful motivations both.
Vanguard magazine did this story in '05.
http://www.vanguardcanada.com/TheMovetoUnmannedAerialSystems
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