Navy Reportedly Suspends Use of Costly Drones After Four Crash

The Navy has lost four of five “eye-in-the-sky” drone aircraft, worth between $250,000 and $400,000 each, and has suspended a program of equipping warships with the pilotless planes, military sources said.

The drones were dispatched from the battleship Iowa over the last month, most recently on Feb. 6, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Four of the five drones dispatched were lost, they said. One source said that those four were left in “little-bitty pieces.” The cost of such equipment varies with the surveillance and camera gear it carries.

The Navy already is investigating the string of accidents, the sources said, and several causes are suspected. One problem might be in the remote-control system for the pilotless planes.

3 Crashed on Ship

“One of them was lost at sea when the engine cut off,” one source said, “but one of them hit the fantail of the ship and the other two hit the (retrieval) stanchions and were obliterated.”

Last Jan. 8, Pentagon spokesman Robert Sims announced that the Iowa had become the first Navy ship equipped with the so-called RPV, or remotely piloted vehicle.

Sims said that the amphibious assault ship Tarawa had conducted initial testing of the drones in the Pacific last year and that the Iowa had run final, successful tests off Virginia in December.

After the December tests, the system was declared operational, Sims said.

Looks Like Model Plane

The drone, which the Navy has dubbed Pioneer, resembles a model airplane with a wing span of about 16 feet.

It can carry various types of sensors, radars and TV cameras and is designed to give surface ships the ability to conduct reconnaissance missions or to direct fire at targets without calling on land-based aircraft or planes from carriers.

A drone can be guided directly, by sailors on a ship, or programmed to fly a particular route. It is launched from a ship via a small rocket-assisted mechanism and returns by flying into a net suspended between stanchions on deck.