Jamming of GPS signals by North Korea may have contributed to the fatal crash of a Schiebel S-100 Camcopter UAV near Incheon, South Korea, on May 10. The small helicopter crashed into its ground control van, killing a Schiebel engineer and injuring the two remote pilots, both Koreans. The jamming started on April 28 and disrupted passenger flights into Seoul’s two airports, Kimpo and Incheon. South Korean government officials told local media that the jamming originated from the border town of Kaesong.
Schiebel said that an incorrect response by the operators after the Camcopter lost its GPS signal led to the crash, some minutes later. The UAV is equipped with multiple inertial measurement units (IMUs) for backup, the company noted. The recorders on board the UAV and in the ground station were burned during the crash, and could not provide any explanatory data.
The crashed UAV had been operating in South Korea since October 2008, apparently on demonstrations for government agencies. Schiebel has not identified most of its customers for the S-100. Schiebel lifted a five-day precautionary grounding of the S-100 fleet on May 15.
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