Drones are dropping drugs into prisons and the US govt just doesn't know what to do The US Federal Bureau of Prisons has appealed for help in stopping contraband-laden drones from flying over prison grounds. The bureaucrats insist they're not after formal proposals nor price quotes. Instead, they want to hear your suggestions for the best ways to stop people from using quadcopters to smuggle items in and out …
@Aqua Marina
Let's put aside the 'shoot them down' part because there is still the question of exactly how you would accomplish that. I'm not saying it's impossible - just that it is something that would need at least some measure of discussion on which method or technology would be best.
The first part of your comment, however, is SPOT ON. You start by making some laws restricting drone use in sensitive areas.
That's a roll-a-six-to-start because if it's not illegal then what right to you have to stop the drones flying overhead in the first place?
Hypothetically you might, /if/ the new law that they will now (also) break enables you to either (a) disrupt the specific lawbreaking activities more easily, or if it (b) enabled you to catch and/or convict them more easily.
But you are right that merely passing the law is not what will stop them - its the enforcement that counts. But enabling easier or simpler enforcement can still be beneficial.
That's probably the most easy answer since there's no money for development costs. The only problem is the "shooting down". Most prisons in the States these days don't have high walls nor the staff to fully patrol the fence line. You definitely don't want someone with a shotgun (goose gun, maybe?) inside the fence line. Since the prisons are designed to keep the prisoners in and generally not to keep things out, it's a problem. More staff.. full-time... three shifts with night googles... one guard every (back of the napkin calculation...) 200 yards or so?
The problem is detection. These things are so small and fast.
What the hell..
Prisons are the places where drugs are needed the most... Why would they want to spoil what little fun those people have left in their lives?
Hand out extacy, make them feel good, they'll rehabilitate that much faster.
Oh crap, I forgot that nobody is really interested in rehabilitation. Running prisons is way too profitable to want to loose customers who's stay is fully paid by the government.
Let out all the non-violent drug offenders. Legalize all the drugs - I don't care anymore what you do to yourself.
For those people that have done something that really requires lockup - let them do all the drugs they want. Just don't intervene when they OD. Lots of problems solved right there.
I'm only kidding a little...
Netting but also fine cotton or kevlar or whatever steamers hanging all around. Get one of those in a propeller and it'll quickly gum up the works (as anyone who ever had to recover a C120 cassette from the heart of a tape player will attest). Combined with some suitable, angled shade netting, I'll bet you can reduce the problem by 95% in a week.
Preventing yard access if a drone is spotted, or found in the yard seems an obvious option, sure there's a reason they don't rely on that. Control signals are probably fairly easy to detect, to set off the 'clear the yard' alarm.
A large mosquito net laid out in a circus-tent like form would work quite well. Plus now you can prevent the people inside from getting sick via mosquito-borne illnesses. Make it out of metal to resist the drones from just cutting the net open, with the added bonus that you just created a Faraday cage so that only approved and cleared cell phones can be used inside (using a femto-cell like arrangement inside that filters which phones can get out).
Some of these prison yards can get pretty large. How do you prevent the netting from getting too heavy, especially if you try the metal thread approach? I suspect anything you can deploy that covers the entire yard will have to be too light to effectively stop a drone delivery. It'll either cut its way through or deploy a payload with a spike or sharp blades underneath to take advantage of gravity.
"Seems to fit the bill. With a few supporting poles here and there weight is no problem, and immune to blades etc"
The supports cannot be in the yard else someone can climb them, use the wire as a weapon etc
the issue is not as clear cut as it looks
safety and escape prevention will stop 90% of ideas
Hey, if it's good enough for federal pension bureaucrats, why not prison guards?
Also there is GPS navigation, so harder to jam that. Seriously, what would they do if you just launched a box of pills and hash cookies from a trebuchet into the prison yard? Or a homing pigeon loaded with contraband pr0n on microfiche? Holy crap, this sounds like a challenge to me!
The only real xyz-axis solution is that all prisoners shall be tied up with piano wire, then put into small, electric, cyclone-fence cages, while armies of fake drones drop decoy contraband upon the yard like leaves in autumn.
" Seriously, what would they do if you just launched a box of pills and hash cookies from a trebuchet into the prison yard?"
There was a lo-tech attempt reported in England this week - using a fishing line.
http://news.sky.com/story/1580343/fishing-line-used-to-smuggle-mcmuffin-into-jail
We have long relied on the fact that most two-legged animals can only traverse easily in the x and y directions. Once you add the z component (digging tunnels or jumping over fences) the fences become less effective. Of course you can increase the height/depth of the fence but it doesn't eliminate the ability to fly something higher or dig a tunnel deeper.
Totally enclosed (x*y*z) would work in these three dimensions as it mainly did in the Truman Show. However the barriers can still be breached over time (t).
For the best protection the inmates would need to encapsulated in a total x*y*z*t shield. Some type of suspended animation might work but would be very expensive for the US prisoner population (the largest in the world.) I can't think a another ultimate solution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Zone
The Phantom Zone was discovered by Jor-El and used on the planet Krypton as a method of imprisoning criminals. Previously, criminals were punished by being sealed into capsules and rocketed into orbit in suspended animation with crystal meths attached to their foreheads to slowly erase their criminal tendencies
"Of course you can increase the height/depth of the fence but it doesn't eliminate the ability to fly something higher or dig a tunnel deeper."
Well, down has a practical limit. If the wall goes down to bedrock, the only way under it will be rock-drilling equipment: harder to come by and subject to physical limitations: you can be fast or quiet, but not both.
As for up, that poses a problem, too, especially if the drone users get wise and start applying lexan shields around their drone, making them extremely difficult to take down. The lexan will require ammo of a gauge large enough to penetrate that if they miss they risk "bullets fired up" collateral damage, the underside is protected by the payload, and the top is not exposed when it flies above everyone. Radio-based attacks will require an FCC exemption since they count as jammers, and I see someone's already thought about the old-fashioned trebuchet (the only catch is it's not as stealthy as the drone, which can be launched covertly from some distance away and can even be cheap enough to send on a one-way trip, making it tougher to trace the source).
Lexan shield hanging under the drone?
Yeah, should be pretty sure the drone won't get shot down... since it will never take off.
The propellers create lift by pushing air down. The mentioned air going down will be pushing down on the shield and create a negative lift that will be aprox of equal the positive lift generated, and kind of negate any upwards mobility.
1. Shield the drone electronics
2. Use laser wireless, and have a comprehensive algorithmic fall-back, should the control signal be blocked.
3. Fly up very high and release the contraband as a free-fall bomb.
4. Minimize mechanical noise of motors, and aerodynamic noise of propellers.
5. Camouflage coatings
6. Decoy drones and payloads
If the drone can get reasonably within the yard on dead reckoning, then let's see.
1. Shield the sides of the drones physically with lexan and the internals with a Faraday shield. The lexan discourages firing at it since penetrating it would usually require large enough ammo to present a "bullets fired up" danger while the Faraday shield should prevent any kind of jamming or EMP attack. Basically, once it's up, good luck getting it down early without some risk of collateral damage.
2. Should be pre-programmed so no control signal at all. If the parameters are set ahead of time and it has a compass and accelerometers, it should be able to steer itself into the prison yard (which tends to be pretty large compared to the drone) with little trouble with just its own reckoning. Plus if it goes one-way, it can't be followed back to its controller.
3. Flying high will beat a vertical net while a spike under the payload should defeat a horizontal net.
4. Agreed, though drone motors don't tend to be all that noisy to begin with. The shields should help deflect any remaining sounds.
5. Not camo: either sky blue for daytime ops or black for night-time. Also, heat-deflecting coats in case the prison uses an IR sensor. Another option is to try to align with the sun so that people can't look up to aim at it.
6. Not going to be effective against a prison that would regard ALL such things as suspect and simply design to country ANY and ALL. What you need isn't numbers but stealth.
If it is enough, there will be takers. I like the idea of a trap/skeet range next door. It isn't like the next door to a prison is "prime real estate" anyway.
Most of these things use some unlicensed control anyway. Setup detectors and sound alarms if they become active. Target practice might help as well.
Of course every prison would require enough skeet shooters to person the entire perimiter 24/7 with the ability to see in adverse weather conditions and the dark.
Then, of course, they all have to be security cleared because the easiest way to circumvent a perimiter of sentries is to encourage one or more to look the other way. They also have to be paid enough that they can't be bribed. They need to be brave enough that they won't succumb to threats to themselves or family and close friemds.
I came to suggest netting, but someone beat me to it and garnered an up vote. Simple low tech solution to put a roof on the area. Works even in the dark and the rain. Doesn't require a mass of armed guards or a tech based arms race.
Most prisons are (or were) built in low-density, low-income areas. Imagine the northwoods of New York where the biggest birds of prey are the mosquitoes and the employment opportunities are close to miniscule.
Skeet shooting is a luxury because those clay pigeons cost money. Some backwoodsman with a knack for packing shot and black powder into a shotgun shell would be really happy to get $5 per bird.
A moat. A moat filled with sharks. A moat filled with sharks armed with lasers.
Seriously, they have guard towers and guards with shotguns or automatic rifles already - adding surface-to-air missiles seem a little overkill-ish. Maybe they should invest a little time and money in target practice. Or nets.
And fortunately, the guards are already facing inwards. What they should do is simply shoot, preferably in the stomach or lower back, any prisoner who touches a drone or its payload. And if they've got the correct chemicals on the bullet, lessons will be learned.
I also think that no drug should be illegal for personal use. Hell, if you want to OD, go right ahead.
Yeah we could get techy and very expensive with special high gain antennas tuned to the RF noise generated by the various drone systems and motors. That would cost a lot in RD and deployment.
Or, we could just plant a bunch of poles in the ground and put up nets with mesh too small for contraband to fit through.
Back in the 19th century, American market hunters employed large gauge (8 gauge or 10 gauge) shotguns with full choke and long barrels to knock high-flying geese out of the sky from their migratory formations. These heavy shotguns threw larger lead shot in a tight pattern at considerably longer range than the normal 12 gauge shotguns used for ducks and other smaller fowl.
Of course, this might lead to goose-gun armed tower guards following their target downward toward the prisoners shoving and pushing and milling about to be first to grab the goods, which could lead to unintended (?) wounding. Then again, such a threat might discourage the prison population from taking delivery. And it's not like America has a shortage of prisoners. They're expendable.
Marlin Arms Co. made and sold goose guns of a bolt-action variety until the mid-1960s. Perhaps they could be persuaded to make a production run for the Federal anti-drone troops.
Net. Big one, strung across all areas open to the sky, mesh fine enough to catch anything dropped.
Seriously, are the people that run prisons so completely retarded, that they haven't thought of this, and need us to suggest it?
Bet that instead, some MI contractor will get a radar detection and laser-guided tracking missile launcher contract to milk a few billion dollars, and still completely bollocks up.
Anyone standing under a prison payload of any size would be a Darwin Award Candidate, spike or no spike, simply by accounting for the idea that 5 pounds or so to the noggin (especially from a high enough altitude) can simply kill with sheer blunt force trauma.
The prisoners waiting for the drop would wisely keep clear until it lands, THEN rush for it. Plus any net-cutting implement would instantly become a panic-inducing prison weapon.
Not if the spike or blade is wider than the payload so that if the spike goes through so does the payload. Make the blade sharp enough, drop it from high enough, and gravity should be able to do the rest.
If the net is made of sturdy metal wire, just dropping blades on it wont cut it, unless they are really heavy, at which point you are talking about drones the size of a small helicopter to carry both the blade and the pay-load.
But such drones would be easy to spot by the guards far in advance. The smuggler loses the stealth advantage.
Seriously, are the people that run prisons so completely retarded, that they haven't thought of this, and need us to suggest it?
Pretty Much - but - what they have thought about is how much money the guards make on the little side business and now drones are taking a cut out of that.
But each of these supposed solutions already have counters. Jamming and EMPs can be defeated by Faraday shielding the drone and using a preprogrammed route so it flies programmatically without outside input.
Drones can fly over a vertical net and can drop payloads with spikes or blades on the bottom to punch or cut through horizontal nets.
Oh, and as for military solution, note that a lot of prisons happen to be located near civilian populations (either due to the prison being old and built with different design philosophies or because the town grew up around it), so you have to be wary of collateral damage due to bullets being shot upward, compounded with the idea of the drone carrying shielding around its sides.
Jamming and EMPs can be defeated by Faraday shielding the drone and using a preprogrammed route so it flies programmatically without outside input.
It will need a GPS antenna to follow a pre-programmed route, unless the drone flies by dead reckoning, which is inaccurate over any significant distance. A gust of wind would cause the drop to happen outside the prison.
It will need a GPS antenna to follow a pre-programmed route, unless the drone flies by dead reckoning, which is inaccurate over any significant distance. A gust of wind would cause the drop to happen outside the prison.
It can be fed its initial location and course through an umbilical prior to takeoff, and if it has a tri-axial accelerometer it should be able to correct enough for wind forces to stay on course until it hits the relatively-large target of the prison yard.
^ As subject, but that would be an insane suggestion in a land with the highest %ge of useful adults banged up and written off.
~Sigh~ not going to be.
Carry on... I guess..... go you. Setting a fine example to lead the world..... oh wait that didn't work, no matter we'll just drop munitions on everyone.... what that doesn't work either?
/me deals the Yanks a diplomacy card.... you may need this. You'll grow into it..... eventually.
Unfortunately criminalizing is what happens when you have a bunch of lawyer politicians with nothing to do but appear to be "tough on crime". The easy way to appear tough is to make more crimes and stuff the prisons beyond capacity, much to the delight of private prisons and their lobbyists.
As far as stopping drone drops an easy answer is to put a roof on it. It doesn't have to be flat, it doesn't have to be continuous or solid. It merely needs to be an obstacle for linear or ballistic paths so a series of slanted panels with a gutter at the bottom that collects things that may drop on the panels. Drones will have a difficult time navigating something like a saw tooth pattern and it would also make a nice place to mount detection or interfering technology. For the panels that face toward the sun, solar collectors could supply extra power. Anyone worried about birds has no complaint and it would still provide indirect light and air circulation as well as making the yard useful even when it rains. Also note that rain water can be captured for use inside the prison.
Nice little microchips implanted in several vital spots upon birth? If removed instant death.
I have a couple of dogs that are convinced that wearing a few different "stimulation" collars is a GOOD THING. They know that 73% of the time we'll go for a walk in the woods.
The other 40-90% of the time (depending) they may get a little reminder (usually a buzz but sometimes electro-shock) that I don't appreciate their behaviour (barking at the mailman, licking their nethers, etc.)
This tiny bit of correction seems to have taken a lot of the wildness out of their lives.
Now, my wife has done the same so I better shoot this off befor....
anyone touching a drone delivered payload is sent to that soon to be empty prison in Cuba for the rest of their natural. no trial because this could be regarded as an escape attempt.
Problem solved? Maybe.
The US does not recognise the UN Human Rights charters so those won't be a problem.
Anyone caught flying these drones get 10-20 on a chain gang.
OR
has been said, build the next gen prisons underground with an excericse area under glass/perspex.
There are lot of soon to be reundant coal mines ideal for this...
I'm guessing you're not talking about the prison staff, administrators, local and state legislators. These supporters of the US Prison-Industrial-Political-Military Complex (USPIPMC) are regularly recipients of drop shipments from various sources. Usually in untraceable funds.
They tried already with Alcatraz. Several problems. First, a determined criminal will still try to escape regard of what you throw at them; they'll just defeat them one by one until they can get out. Remember, several prisoners did manage to break off the island; we just don't know if any made it to the mainland alive, but the risk will always be there. Also, the big killer for Alcatraz was the upkeep costs, mainly due to the very fact it's an island, meaning everything has to come by boat: not cheap.
I have long been advocating that we should set up an 'Oubliette' jail on East Falklands (population: 1). Every returning disillusioned Jihadi/failed martyr could conveniently be dumped there and spend their days in unlamented isolation. A bit like Devils Island, but with sheep.
"East Falklands (population: 1)"
I think the population of Stanley, Goose Green and a number of other homesteads would disagree with your estimate of their population.....
as to other South Atlantic possessions, even South Georgia usually has two or three resident scientists.
If you want to find somewhere where no-ones going to complain you'd have to build it on one of the other Sandwich Islands
No, there are plenty of totally uninhabited spots in the Atlantic (and Pacific/etc.)
Most of the (US sponsored) dictatorships from South America started building reefs to hold their undesirables. Unfortunately the reefs were still 2-3km underwater when the choppers left the bones of the disappeared.
GitMeMyShootinIrons, meet Captain Jean-Luc Picard:
"I don't know how to communicate this, or even if it is possible. But the question of justice has concerned me greatly of late, and I say to any creature who may be listening, there can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions."
1 Add the GPS location of the prison to the drone manufacturer's no-fly area database.
2 Drape netting over the prisoner accessible courtyards.
3 Train dogs to recognise the unwanted substances and use them to guard the entrance/exit to open areas.
4 Scramble the radio frequency bands used to control the drones (using a transmitter only powerful enough to affect the prison but not surrounding areas).
5 Block the GPS signal.
6 Make fake drone deliveries of substances that are non-lethal but would force the illegitimate consumer to seek medical assistance. Repeat until they give up.
> 1 Add the GPS location of the prison to the drone manufacturer's no-fly area database.
Not all drones have GPS. How do you plan to retrofit those that do with the data? How do you plan to stop criminals disabling the GPS and flying by sight only? When a new prison is built, how do you plan to get its location data into previously sold drones?
> 2 Drape netting over the prisoner accessible courtyards.
Which will last precisely until the next bout of stormy weather. And if a bit comes down, the inmates can simply twist it together into a rope - no need to tie bedsheets together any more to escape.
> 3 Train dogs to recognise the unwanted substances and use them to guard the entrance/exit to open areas.
Drones are only used to smuggle stuff in while the prisoners are out exercising. Are you proposing that the dogs are left to roam around with the prisoners? And if stuff is dropped just ahead of exercise time, I'm sure the guards are perfectly capable of using their eyes to look for any objects lying on the ground that weren't there before.
> 4 Scramble the radio frequency bands used to control the drones (using a transmitter only powerful enough to affect the prison but not surrounding areas).
And if there is a riot and the prisoners take over the prison: they will be able to prevent the authorities using drones to gather intelligence regarding the situation?
> 5 Block the GPS signal.
See 4.
> 6 Make fake drone deliveries of substances that are non-lethal but would force the illegitimate consumer to seek medical assistance. Repeat until they give up.
Can you taste the difference between caf and de-caf? Do you really think that regular drug takers couldn't tell the difference between real and fake drugs with just a small taste? And if somehow we do decide to waste public funds paying scientists to come up with an extreme laxative that looks and tastes just like cocaine, they'll simply force some down the throat of another inmate and wait 24 hours to see what happens.
If drones were licenced in the same way as cars then you could at least identify the owner of a drone.
At some point I would expect there to be so many drones and unmanned road-borne vehicles around that there will have to be some legislation to attempt to control their usage.
And the car used in a bank robbery/ram raid/house burglary/etc is always registered correctly to one of the crims involved?
As such, registration of drones may be a matter that's going to be required sooner or later, but that's not going to solve this problem.
Butterfly nets. Big ones. On long poles. You know... for the kids. In the neighbourhood. Give them a bounty for each drone that they catch.
Or license hunter-killer drones in, around, and above prisons, with suitable background checks, traceability, etc. and then create a reality TV show, with real-world prizes! prizes! prizes!
Or, an auto-launched drone that, in responding to indications of an incoming drone, drags a small section of fine netting (of kevlar and/or fine wire) toward, and then over, the target drone.
At the very least, a program of very frequent but seemingly-random drone drops into the prison yards, involving packages of various sizes/masses holding various amounts of chalk dust, charcoal, dried-up paint chunks, gerbil poo, peanut shells, etc..
"Butterfly nets. Big ones. On long poles. You know... for the kids. In the neighbourhood. Give them a bounty for each drone that they catch."
They can fly over any net too long to be ungainly to wield.
"Or license hunter-killer drones in, around, and above prisons, with suitable background checks, traceability, etc. and then create a reality TV show, with real-world prizes! prizes! prizes!"
Stealth drones that can't be detected until it's too late.
"Or, an auto-launched drone that, in responding to indications of an incoming drone, drags a small section of fine netting (of kevlar and/or fine wire) toward, and then over, the target drone."
Shielded rotors means it can fly even netted. Plus what if has blades on the side and reacts to netting by spinning along the vertical? Probably cut the net and maybe even damage the opposing drone. And yes, a sharp enough blade can cut through both kevlar and metal wire.
"At the very least, a program of very frequent but seemingly-random drone drops into the prison yards, involving packages of various sizes/masses holding various amounts of chalk dust, charcoal, dried-up paint chunks, gerbil poo, peanut shells, etc.."
First, they can use "slave" prisoners to test for fake payloads. Second, underground prisoner networks can relay the times or key aspects of real drops to help distinguish them from the fakes.
>And yes, a sharp enough blade can cut through both kevlar and metal wire.
Quickly and reliably cut through kevlar? The only thing that will do that is a light sabre. Which you'll find as readily as the Dr. Seuss butterfly nets. However, if such a blade does exist, it--alone--would be considered very valuable inside a prison. So I hear.
"Quickly and reliably cut through kevlar?"
Yes, because at its core, kevlar is still a thread. It's only strong when woven into a tight mesh, and even then it's only really good against blunt trauma like a normal pistol bullet of some decent size. But if the point of impact is too small (something small like a .22 or something pointed like a rifle round), the round can "thread the needle" and slip past the fibers. Kevlar is known to not be very effective against a knife thrust because the knife can act doubly against the kevlar; the point can slip past the mesh while the edge cuts the threads as it slides along. Think about it. How else can they make the kevlar fabric into a vest if they can't cut it at some point?
Yeah a drone to catch a drone. I assume a drone emits an rf signal over a predicable band.
The prison drone heads towards the bad guy using df signal strength only if it is at x altitude or above (stops it smacking into someones house). Geofence it. Perch it on a watchtower and tell the guards to turn off their wifi hotspots. Set some sort of approach bias +1 meter and try and trail some dangling crap into the rotors over a set pattern. That C90 tape (suggested earlier) with a small weight on the end should to the trick.
I notice a lot of replies here saying things like "But nets over such and such a yard would be too big." (which I agree with) or "But criminals will ignore a law stating that it is illegal to fly drones over prisons." (which, again, I agree with).
What those people are forgetting is that security is a process and not a single thing you do. The nets over anywhere practical will prevent some intrusions, the law against flying drones over prisons will allow those with the ability to do so to do things like shoot them down or fire HERF weapons at them, and so on.
Heck, the way some AC posts read here it seems that there are no prisoners in the US since I'd wager every single security measure within the prison system has, at one point, been compromised in theory if not in practice.
I would type more but I've got to put my SSH port back from a non-standard as that's pointless because a real hacker would port-scan. Then I'll uninstall fail2ban because, after all, a real hacker's not going to use the same IP address twice. Then I'll disable public key authentication because, after all, the NSA can break that. Then I'll be nice and safe with my standard-port password-only SSH server...
Edit: I happen to be in the "Just decriminalise drugs already and let prison inmates have all they want" camp.
Indeed, I see lots of people suggested netting. This is much less problematic than poison payloads or jamming measures or even shooting the drones down.
I mean, of course the prisons could be put in underwater domes, or in remote areas of Alaska, so that no unauthorized people were allowed within 100 miles of the prison (but then they could operate the drone using Iridium phones, I suppose).
One simple thing, I suppose, is to have more exercise yards in prisons, so that each exercise yard would have only a few prisoners in it at one time. This would make it easier to stop them from picking up contraband, because then there would be no worry about shooting the wrong prisoner who is in the way. (And randomize who uses each exercise yard, so that it's harder to get the stuff to the prisoner who was paying for it.)
String wires over the courtyard at a distance of about 3m apart.
Tie to the wires a large number of 1m long plastic strips that will blow in the wind.
Then, any drone coming past will tangle its rotors in the strips and get hung up.
Of course, if the drone then drops its package, this might be an issue, though you should have the wires at least 5m up in the air so anything dropped is likely to break.
GPS- guided weapons have HOJ (home on jammer) for dealing with GPS jammers on the ground. Perhaps they could be configured to erase the gobshites in command of the UAVs.
Also these UAVs are probably relying upon video transmission for a precision delivery, and this would be readily jammable from the ground. (Unless the pilot uses a directional antenna, which he probably doesn't)
Also, as has been said already: nets, dungeons, island, phalanx.
The airport authorities must be shitting bricks and thinking hard about the whole question, so maybe talk to them and see what they're doing about it.
I can think of several ways to stop multi-rotor UAV deliveries. I can also think of a few other ways to drop things into guarded environments that would be even harder to stop. I second the trebuchet idea (and other ballistic projectile launchers) although precise aiming would be a challenge.
R/C Gliders. They would be very stealthy, making no noise when the engine was off. They're cheap, you can crash them one-way for good cost, or drop payloads from a decent height if you want to recover the plane.
TV-guided rockets. I know of a group of rocket hobbyists who were shut down years ago by the US government for making such rockets, this would be easy nowadays. Fly over, deploy parachute, bulls-eye the drop zone. If your payload is reasonably robust or padded, omit the descent parachute and nose-plant it. Hard to imagine stopping that.
Trained monkeys and such I will leave for others to speculate on.
A local prison made reports recently about people with slingshots smuggling things inside the prison as well as using messenger pigeons.
If there's one thing the prisoners have advantage over the custodians it is free time to come up with new ideas, keep the prisoners busy building and maintaining infrastructure, that way they will have less time to come up with clever ideas.
The "free time" of prisoners is largely a myth. In all prisons in the US, inmates in the population (not isolation) are forced to have "jobs." These mostly are make-work jobs like raking gravel 8 hours a day. I'm not kidding. Other jobs may be buffing the floor, cleaning this or that again and again, etc. Only a few jobs are real ones. The *idea* is to take up the time of the prisoner.
IOW, prisoners usually don't have a lot of free time.
(I'm in the US) I'm only going to deal with the drug drones. Someone else will need to deal with the weapon carrying ones.
Legalize drugs. In that way, most of the people wouldn't be in prison in the first place. The ones already hopelessly inside would be better off buying the quality legal pharmaceuticals.
OK, I realize the political climate isn't going to let this happen. But there are partial remedies. In California USA and in other jurisdictions, methadone is given to prisoners. This pretty much kills the illicit narcotic market. The drones carrying that would stop.
Next, legalize pot. Let the prisoners have it. Who cares? It actually calms violent people, so prison authorities might like it.
I'm not sure what to do about cocaine, but again, most people in prison for that are there for simple possession. Personally, although I don't do coke, I see it as a crime to lock up somebody for it.
This downright shameful. These drones are depriving impoverished guards from getting their usual bribes (or cut of the drug dealing profits as the case may be). It's hard enough to make it on a guard's meager salary. I say we get rid of those sneaky drones and go back to the old system!
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