L-Ne · Historical Source Library

News Source Record

# News Source Record

**L-Ne / Open-source news extract** — Original media coverage of unmanned aerial systems.

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Collection date | 3 July 2014 |
| Platform | Quiet Systems |
| Data label | Open-source news record // LRRK collection product |
| Handling | Public-source material. Image rights require separate verification before publication. |
| Scale | Local |
| Language | English |
| Terms matched | Reaper; GPS; unmanned aircraft; 174th Attack Wing |

## Bibliographic

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Outlet | The Post-Standard / syracuse.com (Syracuse, New York) |
| Title | Air Force: Reaper drone that crashed into Lake Ontario had failures days before accident |
| Dateline | Washington / Syracuse, New York |
| First publisher | yes |
| Original URL | https://www.syracuse.com/news/2014/07/air_force_reaper_drone_that_crashed_into_lake_ontario_had_previous_problems_with.html |
| Archive URL | https://www.newspapers.com/image/1245899929/?terms=Hancock+Reaper |
| Dedup key | 2014-07-03|post-standard|hancock-reaper-aib-prior-gps-failures |
| Source grade | A1 |

## Pictures

- page scan: not downloaded this pass (img CDN 429 — download rate limit). IAT minted from signed-in session. Extract locked from contemporaneous web first-publisher, not Tesseract.
- clips folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1E1fgqg1Wdpjtyv5kQT5S5j50d7s9fQ6I

## Record

**Verified extract — [Fact — A1]** Syracuse.com / The Post-Standard reported that an Air Force accident-investigation board report on the 12 November 2013 MQ-9 Reaper crash into Lake Ontario showed two similar GPS malfunctions in the days before the accident. The 21-page report obtained by syracuse.com included a paragraph on "two separate but similar discrepancies" in failed GPS units used by Hancock Field's 174th Attack Wing to navigate remotely. One GPS failed in flight on 29 October 2013, forcing a return after loss of the satellite link used by Hancock pilots; a second failed 6 November 2013 — six days before the crash — again forcing a return to Fort Drum's Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield. In both cases maintainers removed and replaced the units. On the crash sortie the aircraft stopped accepting valid data from unit #2 after units #1 and #3 stopped functioning; Air Force officials offered no explanation. The airframe followed an autopilot command to turn right, inverted into a right-hand spin; the remote pilot at Hancock said, "I can't recover it." Adjacent same-day AP (Norfolk) stated multiple GPS/INS failures after about two hours, a $10.6 million hull, crash ~35 miles southwest of Fort Drum near Montario Point, and ~15 minutes from first GPS error to impact. Staff extract is locked to the prior-failure/swap facts and the Hancock cockpit line, which the AP Norfolk wire does not carry.

**Kinematic object.** MQ-9 Reaper (174th Attack Wing — Lake Ontario AIB; prior GPS unit swaps 29 Oct / 6 Nov 2013).

**Coverage frame.** military / incident investigation

## Source integrity

- Why this is treated as an original: Post-Standard / syracuse.com staff obtained the AIB and reported Hancock-specific prior GPS swaps not in the AP Norfolk wire.
- Wire reprint status: Staff-written increment. Same-day AP (Norfolk) is the six-site-style malfunction wire; skipped as the keeper body. Print A4 1245899929 may carry AP, staff, or both — page not OCR'd (CDN 429).
- What was excluded: AP Norfolk hull-loss recap except as corroboration; protest briefs.

## LRRK relevance

Watch / Passport. A Watch desk would have logged repeated GPS-unit swaps on the same Hancock Reaper in the two weeks before the Lake Ontario loss, then an unexplained reject of the remaining good unit.

*LRRK — security assurance for systems that sense, move, and act.*

L-Ne