A U.S. Navy Global Hawk flying out of Patuxent River Naval Air Station crashed on Monday after operators lost contact with the aircraft.
The BAMS-D (Broad Area Maritime Surveillance), an unmanned demonstrator aircraft that’s still in development, went down in a swampy area of nearby Bloodworth Island on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
There were no reported injuries on the ground and no damage to property. The cause of the crash is still under investigation. The Coast Guard set up a safety zone around the marshy area along the Nanticoke River where the crash occurred.
Sources: MSNBC.com; WBOC
This message implies a lost link scenario. Its hard to believe with the redundancy and multiple communication systems built into the Global Hawk, that this could happen. Its more likely that there was a vehicle malfunction in the engine or flight controls. Better reliability analysis during design and addition of fault tolerant control systems are needed to prevent this from happening in the future.