File photo - An airplane flies over a drone during the Polar Bear Plunge on Coney Island in the Brooklyn borough of New York Jan. 1, 2015. A video produced by the University of Dayton Research Institute shows in alarming detail what happens when a drone collides with a plane. The test, which mimicked a midair collision at 238 mph, launched a 2.1-pound DJI Phantom 2 quadcopter into the wing of a Mooney M20 aircraft. Experts from UDRI's Impact Physics group note that the drone did not shatter on impact, but tore open the wing's leading edge, damaging its main spar. "While the quadcopter broke apart, its energy and mass hung together to create significant damage to the wing," explained Kevin Poormon, group leader for impact physics at UDRI, in a statement.

Commercial pilot John Marking tells his story of a small drone taking down his helicopter while working at an off-road desert race in Mexico. A simulation shows what a drone could do to the wing of an airplane upon impact. Even a small drone crashing into an airplane can do major damage, a test video shows. Kevin Poormon, a University of Dayton engineer who has performed numerous bird strike tests on airplanes, mimicked a midair collision between a 2.1-pound DJI Phantom 2 quadcopter and a Mooney M20 airplane. The drone bore into the plane much farther than a similarly weighted gel "bird" and damaged the plane's main spar, which carries the weight of the wing.

It turns out that small drones can leave a big impact on large aircraft. Scientists at the University of Dayton Research Institute discovered this when they flung a DJI Phantom 4 drone into the sky from a cannon. It didn't take very long before the drone crashed spectacularly with a Mooney M20 airplane. Luckily, the collision was staged as part of a study and no one was injured in the process. For the study, researchers worked to mimic a midair collision between a 2.1-lb drone and an airplane at a speed of 238 miles per hour.

The man flying the drone didn't know he was violating a temporary restriction on flights around New York City (the president was in town for the 2017 United Nations General Assembly). He didn't know he had just two minutes to land before he violated the prohibition on nighttime flights. And he didn't know his DJI Phantom 4--300 feet up, 2.5 miles away from him, and well beyond his line of sight--was flying dangerously close to an Army Black Hawk helicopter. The drone smashed to pieces. The helicopter, luckily, only suffered a dented rotor and a few scratches, according to the National Transportation Safety Board report.