UAV's and TFR's along the Mexico boarder

John Doe wrote:


Personally I think a NOTAM saying when/where the UAVs will be should be
enough for VFR pilots to avoid the thing. Why do we need a TFR?



To ensure when a VFR guy crashes into the UAV inside the TFR, the
guvmint can say "it was the VFR guys fault.. it was restricted airspace".

This TFR was inevitable given the circumstances

AOPA and others screamed that UAV's cant visually separate themselves
from traffic. The guvmint isnt going to man an escort plane to fly along
side of it 24/7.. which defeats the purpose.

The guvmint simply agreed with AOPA in that you cant guarantee visual
separation with UAV's. The only realistic alternative was that you
sanitize the airspace so that your UAV is the only player.

Unfortunately the AOPA and others disagree with the establishment of the
TFR as well.

Yanno.. you cant have your cake and eat it too. While this TFR issue was
"sudden", you have to admit that its a 2000 ft wedge, above 10000 feet,
in a very "small" wedge along an obtuse angled section of the border. I
suspect existing GA VFR traffic was light to nonexistent in the area,
and impact was minimal to existing actual VFR operations.

THe only practical gripe that I could agree with is that this is a
"slippery slope" regarding airspace grabs via the TFR/"PFR" process...
otherwise, the existing structure, design and location of this
particular TFR doesnt create much of a problem (when compared to the
ADIZ, MickeyMouse TFR's, 60 mile Presidential no-fly zones, and such.

Dave

"George Patterson" wrote

Someone claimed that a 182 wouldn't be able to carry all the gear that
this thing does. That would argue for the larger aircraft.

It seems to me that a couple of factors figure in, on why they choose the
UAV over the 182. (or bigger)

1. A computer geek can fly the 182, with nowhere near the training of the
182 pilot.
2. The time on station is hard to beat, with a UAV. 12 hours would be near
impossible for a 182 pilot, if not impossible, very uncomfortable. The UAV
dood can get his backup to take turns, go pee, eat, whatever.
3. If you were using 182's, it would just be a matter of time, before you
lost your first crew. News break: small planes do crash.
4. UAV's can do their mission in nearly all weather. Ice would be about
the only thing that would keep them on the ground. They even flew these
things in hurricane recon missions. You can't say the same about spam cans.
They would be frequently grounded, due to weather.
5. You can have a whole crew of specialists, monitoring a large number of
instruments. You could only take the pilot, and one or two, in the 182.
Go large enough to accommodate a large crew, and watch operating costs go
up, with the larger plane.

I am not in favor of sharing airspace, without a better workaround than what
is being proposed, but I do see why UAV's are attractive to the gubermint.
--
Jim in NC

oh, I see, so the Great Wall of China or the Ligne Maginot -- both
built with the best technology available at the time, both to keep
some folks *out*, both just as successful -- would be better
examples then?

Poor examples. Both were designed to stop a military assault.

What is happening on the southern border of the U.S. is far more insidious
than that.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Wendy wrote:

So why don't we just put the UAVs on the boarder above 18,000 ft?

Because he can't make the rent with all those UAV's on him all the time.

Give the guy a little privacy.


Jack

And it's also clear you can't give the Cessna the UAV's capabilities.


Which is it, the Cessna or the UAV's capabilities? (I always love it
when I've got 'em sputterin'.)

It was clear to me. The poster is claiming that you cannot give the
capabilities that the UAV has... to the Cessna. This may or may not be
true or relevant, depending on how you define the capabilities. But
what the OP said was quite clear.

Jose
--
Money: what you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

So why don't we just put the UAVs on the boarder above 18,000 ft?

It's "border". AAAAaaaaaagh!

A border is a boundary. A boarder is one who rents a flat.

Jose
--
Money: what you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

In article ,
Jose wrote:

So why don't we just put the UAVs on the boarder above 18,000 ft?

It's "border". AAAAaaaaaagh!

A border is a boundary. A boarder is one who rents a flat.

don't loose it.

;-)

--
Bob Noel
New NHL? what a joke

On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 03:01:29 GMT, Dave S
wrote in . net::

THe only practical gripe that I could agree with is that this is a
"slippery slope" regarding airspace grabs via the TFR/"PFR" process...
otherwise, the existing structure, design and location of this
particular TFR doesnt create much of a problem (when compared to the
ADIZ, MickeyMouse TFR's, 60 mile Presidential no-fly zones, and such.

So you feel that operating a UAV on this border patrol mission at a
cost that exceeds that of operating a C-182 by several orders of
magnitude is not worth griping about? Why is a UAV the platform of
choice in this mission? It's technology is unnecessary ill suited to
the mission; the money is better spent on ground agents and
deportation funding. There is no rational justification for using
UAVs, in my opinion. It's just a way for the Bush administration to
get headlines and pander to General Atomics's business interest
without materially affecting the influx of illegals which might dry up
the cheap labor pool.

On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 07:26:09 GMT, Jose
wrote in ::

And it's also clear you can't give the Cessna the UAV's capabilities.


Which is it, the Cessna or the UAV's capabilities? (I always love it
when I've got 'em sputterin'.)

It was clear to me. The poster is claiming that you cannot give the
capabilities that the UAV has... to the Cessna.

I thought it was a poorly constructed sentence, but if it meant what
you inferred, I doubt it is true.

This may or may not be true or relevant, depending on how you define
the capabilities. But what the OP said was quite clear.

Regardless, the expensive high-tech equipment installed on the UAV is
not necessary to locate people illegally entering the US as is born
out by the current successful use of video camera equipped model
aircraft.



http://tinyurl.com/7hmqb
A Sierra Vista, Ariz.-based private group calling itself the American
Border Patrol is using a video-equipped R/C model airplane to spot
illegal aliens entering the U.S. via the Arizona-Mexico border.
The "Border Hawk" is an off-the-shelf model made of balsa wood covered
with heat-shrink plastic. The high-wing, tri-gear craft has a six-foot
wingspan and is painted all white, except for yellow wingtips and the
initials "ABP" in blue on the wing.

According to ABP Director Glenn Spencer, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
has a top speed of 40 mph and is usually flown at an altitude of
200-400 feet agl. External fuel tanks mounted on the three-foot-long
fuselage give it a 90 minute endurance.

Spencer said he plans to eventually deploy a squadron of UAVs to scout
the border. Each would cost around $12,000, up to $21,000 if equipped
with night-vision equipment, he said.

According to Spencer, the UAVs are the final stage of a project ABP
has been developing for three years. It began with ground sensors
planted at border crossing points commonly used by illegal aliens.

When a sensor alarms, an ABP team launches the UAV to fly over the
area of the incursion and spot the people who set off the alarm. ABP
then notifies the U.S. Border Patrol of the location and number of
illegals.

During a demonstration in Palominas, Ariz. on May 15th, the Border
Hawk sent live video of the border over the MSNBC cable network to
millions of viewers. ABP is now using a portable satellite uplink to
broadcast live UAV footage of illegal aliens crossing into the U.S. on
its website: www.americanborderpatrol.com.

ABP plans to add GPS to future Border Hawk UAVs so that they can
provide the Border Patrol with the precise coordinates of anyone they
spot.

Though vilified by some as a racist vigilante group, ABP has kept its
activities, including the UAV flights, legal. According to the ABP
website, local Border Patrol agents appreciate the helping hand from
ABP's "eye in the sky."

Addressing ABP's efforts, Bureau of Customs & Border Protection
spokesman Mario Villarreal said, "We appreciate the community's
efforts in notifying us of suspicious activities. We encourage them to
call the Border Patrol or law enforcement but those efforts should be
within the law."

Residents and authorities on both sides of the border are well aware
of ABP and its video-equipped UAVs. Some complain that the drones
invade their privacy and foster poor cross-border relations.

"The Mexican population along the border is indignant," said Mexican
Foreign Ministry spokesman Miguel Escobar.
Spencer's reply to complaints about his group's high-tech policing
efforts is that if the government can't or won't protect the U.S.
border, ABP will. He contends that the Border Patrol could operate its
own UAVs for as little as $15,000-$20,000 apiece.

During a May 17th interview, MSNBC news anchor Michael Savage asked
Spencer, "If you can come up with this, why can't the government?'

"We hope that is a question people will ask their representatives,"
Spencer replied.

Larry -- instead of arguing vague costs and such, can you put numbers on any of this?

You claim that a fleet of Cessnas is cheaper than the UAVs, by an
order of magnitude. What are you basing this on? I am curious how
you arrived at your conclusion. (I am acutally interested in how much
these UAVs really cost -- your "several million dollars" figure sounds
quite high to me. Is that just the cost of manufacturing for the
UAVs, or does it include millions of dollars in research amortized
over a small number of planes?)


Larry Dighera writes:
Regardless, the expensive high-tech equipment installed on the UAV is
not necessary to locate people illegally entering the US as is born
out by the current successful use of video camera equipped model
aircraft.

Why use model aircraft, when we have seen the successful use of
cowboys on horses? This argument holds no weight unless you can state:

a) what is the goal of the border patrol? How many people do they
wish to catch crossing to achieve this goal? (Note: if the answer is
100%, then they should build a wall.)

b) how effective are the model airplanes at achieving this goal?
Compared to the UAVs? Compared to border agents driving pickup
trucks?

According to ABP Director Glenn Spencer, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
has a top speed of 40 mph and is usually flown at an altitude of
200-400 feet agl. External fuel tanks mounted on the three-foot-long
fuselage give it a 90 minute endurance.

Okay. So if these model planes were autonomous, they could fly up to
30 miles from the launch point, and then fly straight back. Along
that path they could view, twice (on the trip out and back), a swath
of land roughly 400-800 feet wide.

To cover the entire border, you would have to station a launch point
every 60 miles along the border. Presumably these planes are not
autonomous, and so you need an R/C pilot every 60 miles. (Does there
exist a radio technology that can reliably transmit control signals to
an R/C plane over 30 miles in the presence of terrain? How is the
pilot going to control the plane when it is over the horizon? Is it
possible to get a good enough and fast enough video signal back to the
pilot for them to do that reliably from 30 miles away? Three foot
long planes are pretty twitchy, especially if you have any wind at
all.)

They are probably pretty light, so you can only fly them on not very
windy days. They are probably pretty noisy (based on my R/C
experience), so you will only catch the folks who don't hear them
coming and hide. Once they find someone, they can't follow them or
track their position for more then a few minutes before running out of
fuel and having to go home.

To be that small and still be able to carry a payload, they are
probably constructed using model airplane techniques: out of wood,
fiberglass, and monokote. How many cycles of use can they go through
before they have to be reconditioned or replaced? I suspect that the
answer is significantly less than 500 cycles.

Now, let's say you want 24x7 coverage on the border. Every 60 miles
you need to set up an R/C landing strip. You need 9 R/C pilots every
60 miles. Assuming the border is 889 miles long (a google search told
me this), that means you need 133 pilots, operating at least 15
planes. (2 pilots for each 8 hour shift -- one flying, the other
watching the camera. Assume they work a 5 day 40 hour work week.)
How much does that cost?

My math:
133 pilots, at $60k/year: $7,980,000/year
Planes -- assume 12 flights/day, 500 flight plane lifetime, $21,000/plane:
(8.75 new planes/year) * (15 aiports along border) * $21k = $2,756,250

So this program costs you just over $10million/year, ignoring the cost
of setting it up, buying land and housing for the airports and pilots,
administrative costs, or fuel costs.

How much did those UAVs cost? How much more (or less) capable are
they than the ten-million-dollar per year fleet of R/C planes?

(Or, do you think my math or the assumptions behind it are wrong? In
what way?)

And what do you get in the end? Every portion of the border has a
video camera passing over it 24 times a day, at known intervals, with
a lot of noise preceeding the camera's arrival, on clear and calm
days. Do you think this would be money well spent?

Chris
--
Chris Colohan Email: PGP: finger
Web: www.colohan.com Phone: (412)268-4751