9. Human Factors in U.S. Military Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Accidents

Abstract

DoD accidents are classified according to the severity of injury, occupational illness, and vehicle and/or property damage costs (Department of Defense, 2000). All branches of the military have similar accident classification schemes, with Class A being the most severe. Table 1 shows the accident classes for the Army. The Air Force and Navy definitions of Class A–C accidents are very similar to the Army's definition. However, they do not have a Class D. As the total costs of some Army UAVs are below the Class A criteria ($325,000 per Shadow aircraft; Schaefer, 2003), reviewers have begun to add Class D data into their analyses (Manning, Rash, LeDuc, Noback, & McKeon, 2004; Williams, 2004).

Citation

Rash, C.E., LeDuc, P.A. and Manning, S.D. (2006), "9. Human Factors in U.S. Military Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Accidents", Cooke, N.J., Pringle, H.L., Pedersen, H.K. and Connor, O. (Ed.) Human Factors of Remotely Operated Vehicles (Advances in Human Performance and Cognitive Engineering Research, Vol. 7), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 117-131. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1479-3601(05)07009-8