The Australian Defence Force (ADF) briefly stops flying Chinese drones

The Australian Newspaper reports that the military there followed America’s example. They then modified the way they used COTs RPA in order to start flying them again.

“On August 9, 2017, after Defence became aware of the US Army’s actions, the use of all commercial off-the-shelf UAS was suspended until a formal assessment into the cyber risk presented by these systems could be conducted”

This I thought was the interesting bit.

“Flight operations recommenced on August 21, 2017, following the completion of the risk assessment that led to the development of revised operating procedures for commercial off-the-shelf unmanned aerial systems.”

My immediate thought is that they mitigated risk by using third-party community firmware. It would be nice if the Australian military shared back what they did so that commercial operators who also face data protection issues could follow suit.

It would be nice if the Australian military shared back what they did so that commercial operators who also face data protection issues could follow suit.

Australia buys most of its military drone equipment from the USA and has inked new deals with AeroVironment and GA-ASI in the last twelve months.