Robot plain wants to kill us!

See I told you there were comming to get us!"

A drone pilot's nightmare came true when operators lost control of an armed MQ-9 Reaper flying a combat mission over Afghanistan on Sunday. That led a manned U.S. aircraft to shoot down the unresponsive drone before it flew beyond the edge of Afghanistan airspace.

The U.S. Air Force stated that a manned aircraft took 'proactive measures' to shoot down the Reaper, which ended up crashing into the side of a mountain. Reaper drones have typically engaged in hunter-killer missions over Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan by targeting enemies on the ground with Hellfire missiles.

More than one drone has fallen out of the sky over the past few days. Aviation Weekly noted that a smaller MQ-1 Predator crashed on September 11 at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, and another Predator just crashed today in Iraq for reasons other than hostile fire.

Such 'lost link' incidents actually represent common troubles for the two drone types. Predator pilots constantly update a set pattern for their drones, so that the plane will loiter in that pattern if it loses communication with its operator (which happens frequently). The drones are even programmed to automatically head toward home to reestablish contact if the link remains dead for too long.