Another UAV entrant
 

Italian Jet Company Converts Passenger Plane Into the World's Most Stylish UAV

I can't believe they turned the beautiful P.180 II into a UAV!
OH THE HUMANITY OF IT ALL! :eek::(

Pretty soon they will recall all SR71 and A12 aircraft for conversion to supersonic executive passenger aircraft. Everyone - invest in "airborne tanker" aircraft production companies.

Ultimate Avantair Union Buster?
 

Company solution...no pilots at all...

Piaggio Reveals Unmanned Avanti

Good thing these drones never crash. 3. Drone Crash Database « Drone Wars UK

It's a UAV based on a pax aircraft, not an unmanned pax aircraft.

Just wait until that UAV hauling cargo crashes on final in MEM or SDF. A former squid is heading a military UAV cargo project. I saw here on a late night show; she expects airliners to eventually be UAVs. Pax River Could Benefit from Cargo UAV Boom : The Lexington Park Leader

[QUOTE]It's a UAV based on a pax aircraft, not an unmanned pax aircraft.[/QUOTE

I know. I've got about a thousand hours in the manned version, and it's not much of a stretch to go to the next step of automating the pilot function.

A bigger question will be the noise issue; the Piaggio Avanti makes an unusuall, distinctive, annoying sound, and is not particularly stealthy. While a number of UAS out there sound more like flying chain saws than a hollywood-quiet winged wonder, the Piaggio has the huey-like quality of advertising it's existence to people in surrounding provinces, let alone in the area directly beneath the aircraft (even at idle). Idle vertical profiles, useful with certain other platforms, may not be nearly as effective here. There's a lot of noise ISR out there (I've flown some of it), but the Piaggio's chief virtues are it's large cabin, low passenger noise (much quieter in than out), and ability to go high (FL410) and fast for a turboprop. None of those are germane to the majority of ISR work.

She's well known in navy circles...seems to have a huge axe to grind, hates pilot culture and pilots. Just cuz she wants to put us all out of a job doesn't mean its economically practical right now.

That's good to know that she's a known commodity.
She talked like UAVs are a bulletproof solution, ignoring WELL KNOWN vulnerabilities. And I'm not just talking about the high percentage of UAVs that crash.
Drone hijacked by hackers from Texas college with $1,000 spoofer | Naked Security

They can do all they want technology-wise, but should be used ONLY in war zones. Someone ONBOARD must be legally responsible.

Sometimes people know what they are getting into, get into it anyway, and then become surprised and angry when it will not change to suit them. :rolleyes:

I guess these things can tell which LZs have been swept for mines and IED's too eh? :rolleyes:

She must not have been the hot pilot chick in the squadron that all the guys wanted to buy drinks and bed down with.

I think this is key. Ejection seats changed pilot decision making, but sometimes in the opposite way than you'd expect. When we moved to a safety culture the combat aviation community did a great job analyzing itself, but before this an early problem was getting pilots to stop trying to save the day and eject. Many pilots rode aircraft into the ground when they could've lived.

The problem with UAV pax operations will be decision making. When high value cargo or human beings are transported, a human being needs to not only have their butt on the line bouncing through storms and sweating through ice, but that person also needs to be liable for the decisions they make.

Wouldn't most of us have trouble making a no-go decision if we were hauling checks in a remotely operated navajo over a sparsely populated area?

"Oh, hi fellas! Did you know? I dress up as Geddy Lee from the band Rush on Halloween!" - Mary Cummings

http://img.mit.edu/newsoffice/images...02144947-1.jpg