[thanatos_dem]

This is seriously your argument? Alright, hold my red bull, it's math time.

Let's assume they're using a Boeing Vertol 234, a civilian model of the Chinook commonly used for firefighting. They're double rotor, and as such the rotors are slower than most single rotor helicopters, at around 225 RPM [1] at full throttle.

The rotors on a chinook are 60ft in diameter [2]. This means that the edge of the blade is traveling about 188.5 ft per revolution. At 225 RPM, that's 706.8 feet per second, or ~481 miles per hour, on par with a commercial aircraft at cruising speed.

So yeah, smacking a drone into a relatively thin and lightweight rotor blade at over 400 miles an hour may cause a wee bit of damage.

[1] http://www.chinook-helicopter.com/standards/areas/blade.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CH-47_Chinook#Specifica...

[MrBuddyCasino]

Just to be clear, I think the people flying drones are assholes. I'm not saying "don't make a such a big deal out of it". I'm just wondering what the actual danger is. Are the blades really that sensitive? I'd assume they would easily shred a drone to pieces and not be harmed in the process, because they already need to be quite tough to not tear apart under the centrifugal force during normal operation. But I have no idea, thats just my intuition.

[podunkPDX]

The issue is a drone, or debris from a drone, getting sucked into the engine intake. This debris can effectively turn the engine into a large amount of shrapnel, crippling the aircraft and its mission.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_object_damage

[MrBuddyCasino]

First good reply, no hand-waving, with real proof, thanks. Theres an actual picture of the possible damage a small bolt can cause on a helicopter turbine.