In Cat Vs. Drone, Cat Wins

(April 22) -- The drone campaign over Afghanistan and Pakistan has captured national headlines and highlighted how modern technology is creating a push-button war, with pilots operating unmanned aircraft from outside Las Vegas. Less publicized, however, is how the fragile communication system linking man (or woman) to drone can be disrupted by something as seemingly harmless as a house cat.

That's essentially what happened in one instance when operators in the U.S. lost control of a drone.

"Actually, a cat climbed into one of the electronic nodes and fried everything and shut down the comms link," Air Force Col. Grant Webb, the director of training for the unmanned aircraft center at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, told an audience at an aviation conference in Texas last week.

The Air Force currently practices what are called "remote split operations" for its fleet of Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. That means the launch and recovery of the drones are controlled by operators in the area of military operations, but once the drones are at altitude, they are handed over via satellite to pilots at Creech, who actually conduct the mission.

Webb noted that there are "a lot of potential points of failure" in that sort of operation.

This isn't the first time communication problems with drones have been cited. In an article published in Esquire last year, Air Force officials described cases when the operators at Creech lost communication with the drones they were supposed to be controlling after power surges at the base.

"We have to find it," Air Force Capt. Andrew Dowd told the magazine of these cases. "It's like hide-and-seek."

As the use of unmanned aircraft has grown, so too have the concerns over communications. A report released last month by the Government Accountability Office said the Defense Department hadn't adequately prepared for disruptions in communications with its fleet of unmanned aircraft.

The vulnerability of drones and drone communications was also highlighted earlier this year when The Wall Street Journal revealed that insurgents in Iraq were able to use commercial software to hack into the aircraft's live video feed, allowing them to see what the military was seeing.

Aerospace writer Stephen Trimble observes that, more than an amusing story, the case of the intruding cat highlights "a point of philosophical friction between Army and Air Force officers." The Army, which operates its version of the Predator -- the Sky Warrior -- prefers to have its operators located in the area of military operations, while the Air Force prefers to operate the drones remotely.

"Of course, as long as UAVs are controlled from the ground, the communications link will remain a single point of failure regardless of where the ground station is physically located," Trimble writes.