Since November I’ve been in regular contact with BBC East, as I was concerned that a claimed near miss near over Newmarket between a NPAS (National Police Air Service) helicopter and a drone, was likely a misidentification.
There are already cases with the Information Commissioner as the authorities have contradicted, misdirected and refused information throughout the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process.
When it comes to drones, the UK Airprox Board often do very little, if any meaningful investigation, incidents that can be readily proven as manned aviation mistaken for a drone, get logged as drones regardless. Thankfully in this case, maybe even because of the FOIA being used, it resulted in an investigation that found that this incident was a USAF F15 jet.
This incident underlines the fact that aircrews, especially at night, even equipped with Electro-Optical/Infrared can clearly misidentify manned aircraft as drones, it proves entire experienced crews when tasked to a look for a drone, will be under the influence of confirmation bias.
This incident also highlights a gap in police pursuit policy for aircraft, even if there really was a drone, it is simply asking for a fatal accident to deliberately task a helicopter towards a drone that is suspected of being used maliciously.
Authorities continue to block questions on this incident, where they themselves recorded the following:
“FORCED TO TAKE EMERGENCY EVASIVE ACTION IN RELATION TO A DRONE WHICH CAME WITHIN A DANGEROUSLY…”
So we have an incident, that at the time, when it was believed to be a drone, was recorded as a dangerous situation requiring an emergency evasive manoeuvre by the helicopter, now it’s known it was an F15 the authorities are collectively trying to pretend this was an incident, fully under control, with mutual awareness.
So either authorities:
1) are downplaying the incident, concerned about the public knowing there was a likelihood of a fatal collision which would almost certainly have killed civilians living below.
2) are willing to exaggerate the severity of airspace incidents when they believe a drone is involved.
Recently ASSURE (Alliance for System Safety of UAS Through Research Excellence) published a report that was compiled from capturing 11 months of UAS use from across the US, it found drones were rarely flown at night or in bad weather and the vast majority flown were DJI.
UK authorities need to grasp the fact that drones reported at night, almost certainly are not drones. Basic knowledge of drones and their low powered LEDs that can’t be seen at distance should have meant this was already common sense.
“Most flights occur in calm weather and daylight hours”
Today the BBC reported on the incident and noted my concern that the public and authorities have not been provided with materials to educate them on identifying objects in the night sky.
Police helicopter in near miss with US jet over
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