DRONES IN CAN TECHNOLOGY PROTECT AIRPLANES FROM THE NEW THREAT? A BUSY SKY

摘要

It's exactly 3:45 a.m. on a blustery and unseasonably cold Tuesday morning in May when an armed military guard wearing a bulletproof vest waves me through the west entrance of Edwards Air Force Base. On a typical weekday at this hour, almost everyone here would be asleep. But this isn't a typical weekday. I'm in a briefing room with some two dozen researchers-mostly aerospace and computer software engineers, along with three Air Force pilots certified to fly drones-at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center, which is located on this Southern California military base. We're guzzling coffee and chomping doughnuts while Dan Sternberg, a NASA operations engineer and former F/A-18 Hornet test pilot, leads the meeting, ticking through the day's flight plan.