White House Drone Crash Is Tied to Drinking by Intelligence Worker

[Omaha Steve]

Source: NY Times

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and MICHAEL D. SHEAR

WASHINGTON — A man who says he operated a drone that crashed on the White House grounds early Monday is an employee of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, according to law enforcement officials. He told Secret Service investigators that he had been drinking at an apartment nearby before he lost control of the craft, the officials said.

The man told investigators that he went to bed despite fearing that the drone had flown over the White House. After friends told him about news reports on the drone Monday morning, he contacted the authorities.

The drone, which was about two feet in diameter and weighed about two pounds, belonged to a friend, the man said.

A spokesman for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which is based at Fort Belvoir, Va., declined to comment.

FULL story at link.



The drone that landed on the White House's South Lawn. Credit U.S. Secret Service

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/us/white-house-drone.html?_r=0

[KamaAina]

1. DUI

Droning Under the Influence.

[Enrique]

4. MADD

Mothers against drunk droning

[bigworld]

2. If something stupid happens at 3 a.m.

You can almost ALWAYS bet that drinking was involved.

[KoKo]

30. Yeah...just wandering around outside the White House..with toy drone

in a drunken stupor. I think the Fed Guidelines about working 24/7 might have something to do with that....but, then, what we don't know about this is probably revealed much later.

[tridim]

3. Cool story bro.

CYA is so easy these days, just say you are drunk or stupid and everything will be okay.

[AtheistCrusader]

5. Hahah no, that dude is SO fired.

[former9thward]

25. LOL

He has civil service protection. He is SO NOT fired.

[AtheistCrusader]

31. We shall see.

At the least he'll be promoted to the maximum level of his incompetence.

[lark]

6. How absolutely ridiculous.

Fire the drunken asshole!

[snooper2]

14. why, what is the big deal?

[PoliticAverse]

7. Friends don't let friends drone drunk. n/t

[Jackpine Radical]

9. They need little number locks on the control consoles.

The kind drunk drivers have on their cars.

[jmowreader]

11. What "control console"?

That's one of those little model-airplane drones they sell at places like Walmart and Best Buy, not a government-style drone. The smallest drone the government uses is the RQ-11 Raven, which is a fixed-wing aircraft that looks like a moderate-size model airplane. (Actually, I think it IS a moderate-size model airplane.)

[Jackpine Radical]

12. I understood it to be a toy drone, but I don't really

know anything much about them. Don't you have some sort of little hand-held control console (or iPhone app or something) that you use to control it?

[jmowreader]

19. This is what the transmitter looks like

"Console" is really overstating the case here. It's more like what you'd use to drive a radio-controlled car or something. And there are some drones that use an iPhone to control them.



This is what a Predator's control console looks like...



This is an Army Shadow UAV console...

When you say "console" all the Military Intelligence stuff comes back and I start thinking in terms of "you need a box truck to haul it and two hours to emplace it."

[Jackpine Radical]

24. Wow--It's amazing

how one snarky remark can launch a whole off-topic debate on the exact meaning of a word like "console."

I'll probly have to take a snack break now to console myself over having been sucked in here.

[jberryhill]

8. Always pick a designated droner

[Lionel Mandrake]

10. Why should we care what the drunken droner does for a living?

His job has nothing to do with his droning accident.

[William Seger]

13. Well, he was an "Intelligence Worker"

... and apparently hasn't been working hard enough.

[Jackpine Radical]

15. But it does make you wonder what he was doing

in any agency that has "Intelligence" in its name.

[Nitram]

16. It's a DJI Phantom quadracopter

Capable of carrying a Go-Pro video camera. Pretty sophisticated, as it uses GPS to hover even in a wind, or return automatically if the link to the controller is lost. However, an environment with steel reinforced buildings can interfere with the radio-control and GPS signals.

[ladjf]

17. At 3 am there's not enough light to fly the vehicle

simply by watching it. Many such helicopters now have forward viewing on board video cameras which can be used for navigation.
However, it would a very skilled operator to fly that copter around town in the dark while using the on board camera.

He might have launched it and then lost control. But, the fact that it crashed on the White House lawn, leads me to believe that the owner was attempting to buzz the White House and then bring the copter back to the launch area.

[former9thward]

26. The SS said there was no camera on the drone.

[ladjf]

32. Well, with no camera or lights I don't see how it would have been possible

to navigate to the White House. However, some drones have GPS navigation and autopilots. Conceivably, an autopilot program could guided the copter to the White House and even back to the origin if the batteries held out. But, that scenario isn't very likely.
If the craft was equipped with gps and autopilot, the Feds have not mentioned it.

[former9thward]

36. The drone belonged to a friend.

I think the guy was just drinking and screwing around and one thing led to another.

[ladjf]

38. Yet, the craft did actually plop down on the White House lawn.

That doesn't seem like a coincidence to me.

[former9thward]

40. Ever been to the White House?

It has a very big "lawn". But yes, he could have been trying to get close. So what? Not the end of the world and no threat to anyone.

[ladjf]

42. I didn't think it was a big deal or a threat.

I was just having some fun speculating about how it happened.

However, the versatility of the multiple rotor helicopters is impressive. Controlling their use might be more difficult than most people
might think.

[William Seger]

34. Lots of people fly quadcopters at night

They have bright LED lights, with different colors front and back so you can see the orientation. If there's at least enough light to make out where the trees and buildings are and you keep line-of-sight, it's not any harder than flying in daylight. If you get confused about the orientation, however, night or day, it's easy to lose control of these things. This guy apparently borrowed the quadcopter from a friend, so that's a good possibility if he didn't have much experience and had been drinking.

[riverbendviewgal]

18. Looking at this in a positive light

Now it is known there is a weakness in the security of the White House. THis issue will be addressed and hopefully there will be work on making the White House more secure .

[jmowreader]

20. They SHOULD have the security already

Assuming the White House has a radar system to surveil the skies around it, adding a couple of 12-gauge shotguns to blow these creepy things out of the sky would solve the problem in a hurry.

[Xithras]

46. The Phantom is about the same size and speed as a seagull

On radar, they're nearly indistinguishable from the birds that fly over Washington DC. Any radar over DC would have to be tuned to filter out echoes from the thousands of gulls, geese, hawks, and countless other species of birds in the air over the city at any given moment. Small drones like the DJI Phantom would be lost in the noise.

The only way to definitively identify a quadcopter is by eye.

[FLPanhandle]

33. They may already have it.

My drone goes out of control and will crash if all signals are lost.

The Secret Service may have a signal jammer already installed and that's why the drone crashed.

[kentauros]

21. NGA statement on White House drone incident

NGA statement on White House drone incident

January 27, 2015

SPRINGFIELD, Va. — An employee with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency was questioned yesterday by the Secret Service as the operator of the drone involved in Monday’s incident at the White House.

The employee self-reported the incident Monday. The employee was off duty and is not involved in work related to drones or unmanned aerial vehicles in any capacity at NGA.

Even though the employee was using a personal item while off duty, the agency takes the incident very seriously and remains committed to promoting public trust and transparency.

The Secret Service is currently investigating the incident.

Media Contact:
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Don Kerr
Chief of Media
Phone: [phone]
Email: [email protected]

OUR MISSION

NGA provides timely, relevant, and accurate geospatial intelligence in support of national security.

https://www.nga.mil/About/History/Pages/default.aspx

Since someone asked upthread about what kind of agency this could be while having "intelligence" in it's name

[FrodosPet]

22. Was his name "Sterling"?

[Codeine]

37. Dangerzone! nt

[Kelvin Mace]

23. So, an employee of a spy agency

was running a drone in the dead of night around the White House?

[NBachers]

29. Yeah, when you put it that way . . . It really makes you wonder, doesn't it?

[GreatGazoo]

27. "Dude, Where's My Drone?" based on a true story....

[underpants]

28. How many drones must a man pass out on

Before he sees that he needs to stop

[Ykcutnek]

35. "Are you drunk or something?"

[News Breaker]

39. Out of all places

The wandering drone fell in the WH. Hard to believe.

[CTyankee]

41. Stupid as it was, it does not appear to be unlawful.

"Drunken misadventure" is what it was.

It looks like the WH security stopped it because it could have been weaponized. It's a bit embarrassing all the way around.

[ladjf]

43. It most definitely is against the law to fly any unauthorized aircraft in the vicinity

of Washington. Further, the Feds might want to make an example in this case.

[CTyankee]

44. But isn't it just a toy?

[ladjf]

45. Occording to an article I read last week, model airplane clubs in the area had to shut down their

launch sites that were within 20 miles of the center of Washington, DC.

[CTyankee]

47. Thanks for the info. Were they shut down because of recent attempts to get into

the WH? Or were they always forbidden to fly their model planes within 20 miles of the center of Washington? If they were allowed before recent incidents, then that suggests they weren't envisioned as threats, only toys.

[ladjf]

48. No, the shutdowns were simply due to new FAA regulations about aircraft of any type.

A number of new sweeping proposals about model aircraft are being considered by the FAA. If you are interested, their are numerous articles on the INTERNET about this subject.

What has the government worried is the versatility of the model helicopters. Not only can they operated on all axes, they are easily programmable to operated on automatic, that means they can readily be programmed to fly a pre-determined flight plan with no pilot involved and at a cost of under $600 dollars. The current commercial models are too small to carry much weight, but up-sized models could be easy to produced.

With high quality small TV cameras they are very capable reconnaissance craft. They are , in fact, already being widely used for that purpose.

[CTyankee]

49. Wow. That guy should have known that, drunk or not drunk.

[Kennah]

50. "Sir, I need you to step out of your Mom's basement."

[Turbineguy]

51. So, it's a bit like

GW Bush's policies?

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

52. If you mean "drunk, stupid, and out of control", then yeah ...

... but I don't think intelligence-worker-drone-boy had a Cheney making his decisions.

[Cha]

53. At least he called when finally aware of what he had done.