Ugg... I hate to wade back into the morass of this thread as much of it has devolved into a melee of mud slinging, but some have seen fit to engage in thoughtful discourse, so I'll attempt to address those additional points.
Actually, I didn't gloss over it. You unified it for me through your amalgamation of my points but that's not exactly what I said. I noted that for a hard object going down the core, yes I would agree that the likelihood of causing significant damage is not 30%. As you note, likely 100%. But the core is not the entirety of the engine. Outside the core, I would suspect that a drone might cause anything from complete engine destruction to absolutely no damage at all. It is, as I noted, completely a matter of luck. I have seen small sparrows dent multiple blades after ingestion. I have also seen steel wrenches sucked in and spit out the back with little more than a paint scratch. I have seen two full grown bald eagles simultaneously sucked down a single engine and spit out the back with nothing more than blood spatter and feathers everywhere but nary a scratch on the entire engine. Anyway, the point is that taking a drone down the engine would hardly guarantee significant damage, let alone a catastrophic loss. Would I want to be on that plane? Heck no. But probabilities are not promises.
This was my more relevant point, and you subsumed it into my other portion addressing an engine ingestion, which is not fair. Even in your conclusion above, you acknowledge that a strike may only be a glancing strike. I was suggesting that a much higher proportion of strikes would result in that, with or without minor damage, in accounting for what we know about bird strikes. Either way, I was pointing out that the assumption that a drone strike would result in significant damage is far from a given.
Again though, for the sake of discussion, I'll fully support the presumption that if a drone strikes a plane, it will cause major and/or catastrophic damage.
Yes, that's precisely my point. Risk management is not about managing only the severity portion of the risk matrix but rather the probability portion as well. For those not familiar with this field, I will give you the risk matrix calculation that we're discussing. Red means bad and we must do all we can to minimize the risk to an acceptable level. Yellow means we should be cautious and potentially address such risks, and green means that we are likely willing to accept that risk. (It's far more complicated than that but without getting too far into the weeds here, I will put it forward under those principles.)
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We can discuss where a drone strike on an aircraft would fall along the top line, from "extreme" to "moderate" (I'm not arguing that it would be "trivial"), but even if it falls on "extreme", it does not necessitate our highest priority. And still, I don't think there's much question, thus far, that the probability index falls on the "rare" portion of the matrix.
I wasn't ignoring general aviation in my discussion. And robustness has
nothing to do with probability. It only has to do with severity. You can't lump those two principles together. And yes, to date, the low strike rate (or zero strike rate prior to less than two months ago) for all drones with all manned aircraft (not just in the US but in the world), commercial, general, military and everything combined (as well as with Mavics, Phantoms, Inspires, non-DJI drones, large UAVs, tiny toy drones combined), the millions of manned flight hours coupled with the millions of UAS flight hours, under a voluntary guideline, would suggest that the strike rate is vanishingly small.
Well... this is where the real "meat" of the argument is. Does the increasing number of drones sharing the skies with the large number (and still increasing) of manned aircraft necessitate the taking of preemptive and severely restrictive action through regulation and law? You're suggesting (correct me if I'm wrong), that it is proper. Like some countries, we could ban them outright. Nicaragua, for example, entirely precludes their usage recreationally, and almost commercially as well. Almost no risk of a drone strike there, correct? But does that prevention of risk outweigh the loss of benefit to their economy, tourism, development, etc in the usage of drones? It's not my place to make that call. It's the people of Nicaragua's decision. (and I know that's not the reason why they've banned them)
On the other hand, does the exponentially increasing number of drones in the air mean that the strike rate will inevitably exceed some acceptable level of risk, if we don't restrict their usage in some manner? Or if it doesn't yet, when does it cross that line?
I would argue that this is precisely the meaning of "bad actors" in this sense. I wasn't just speaking about terrorists using drones, but idiots using them with no sense of responsibility or maturity.
I'm not being critical of other people. I'm simply pointing to the weaknesses of their arguments (or at least the other side of things) and trying to address the true nature of the risk by evaluating the facts/data as we know it. Regulating (by law or by edict) by the seats of our pants or resting on emotional arguments or personal anecdotes does little to promote wise legislation and enforcement.
I think I've made my position pretty clear. To date, I do not feel that the risk posed by drones has justified the hysteria of the general populace, the media, policymakers, and regulators when addressing this topic. Way back when (if you're old enough to remember it), when the Internet was new, it was a thing to be feared. In its nascency, if the Internet had been so overly regulated and restricted, I'm not sure that we would be where we are today with its use. Do bad things happen on the Internet? Absolutely! Will they continue to happen? Sure. But we do not clamp down on the entirety of the field due to the existence of some actors using it for nefarious (and significantly damaging) purposes.
Currently, we already have in place laws that can deal with the idiots and ne'er-do-wells endangering civil aviation with their actions. You can already prosecute someone for endangering civil or military aviation, be it with a stinger missile, a Mavic, a rifle, a laser pointer, or even a baseball tossed up into the air in front of an aircraft. Heck you can't even go onto an airfield and physically touch an aircraft without permission and not go to jail.
Does this mean we should outlaw any baseball fields from occurring on property adjacent to an airfield? Does this mean we should prevent rifles being used on any property within a 5-mile radius of an airfield, by farmers, hunters, or anyone, merely because it would be equally dangerous if that a person took a rifle and shot at a passing aircraft? Should we place some sort of restrictive device on rifles (or laser pointers) that detects when you're within 5 miles of an airport and requires you to call ATC or seek the FAA's permission if you wish to pull the trigger? Does it mean we should prevent John Q. Public from even starting his Mavic's motors and flying over his roof and around his back yard because he lives within 4.8 miles of a major airport? Does it mean we should stop Amazon from flying drones to deliver a pizza or a package because they might conflict with civil aviation?
My position is this: I think that unless/until the incidents occurring between drones and manned aircraft change significantly, that we let the existing laws against "bad actors" enforce/police their behavior. I think that there is/will be technology to assist airfields in awareness of the UAS situation potentially impacting their operations (like we have for birds/wildlife) and reliance on those, along with the responsible behavior of hobbyist/commercial drone operators will minimize the risk to manned aviation without hamstringing an industry with exceptional potential to develop and enhance a nation's economy. I think we should act and put in place restrictions according to the real risks imposed by an activity, not the perceived risks. And yes, we can discuss what the real risks are (which we have been doing) and evolve our positions to match new information and data.
