A few reasons why cops didn't immediately shoot down London Gatwick airport drone menace As the Gatwick drones chaos rolled on, with the airport set to reopen at 8pm UK time at the earliest*, many people have been asking a simple question: why the hell can't the authorities just shoot down the offending drones? Like all simple questions, the answer is complex. Counter-drones tech is a new field and not quite as …
I think an XKCD comic that I'm not bothering to search for pointed out that nearby stars are a few years or a few decades away in terms of their light reaching us, not usually centuries etc. Your laser beam might reach a close star in a bit over four years, and then, maybe, they could shoot back. That would deal with the drone problem worldwide, at least.
Unless they sent this drone in the first place. Have they tried playing John Williams music at it?
Not on Earth. But do we really fire the first shot in a war with the aliens, just to reopen Gatwick?
Of course!!!
GATWICK TO THE STARS!
Plus, NYT pseudo-economist bloviator Krugman would be pleased as an alien invasion provides mucho reasons for ramping up Keynesianist policies!
I'm going to assume you were just making a joke, but in case you weren't, a burst of laser fire, even a weapons-grade laser, fired from the surface of the earth would have defocused to harmlessness by the time it reached the moon's orbit, and would have become utterly undiscernible compared to all that light coming off the sun by the time it reaches interstellar space; and that's before factoring in the Earth's atmosphere, which is going to even further diffuse and absorb it.
(To say nothing of what the body of a drone would do to it.)
Nah, none of those. How about using a man-portable Railgun? Wouldn't have to worry about the projectile dropping out of the sky as it would go on into the atmosphere.
Of course, the fact that man-portable Railguns only exist in Arnie movies is totally irrelevant ..
Any magnetic acceleration weapon which was man-portable would have a range profile similar to that of a conventional firearm. A magnetic accelerator and a propellant weapon must still obey the fundamental laws of physics - for every action there is an equal-and-opposite reaction.
It's unlikely a handheld mass driver would significantly exceed the performance of conventional firearms. We can already build handguns and rifles that have far more power and throw far more bullet than "standard" weapons, but those weapons are not widely used because they're three and three-quarters bitches to fire.
To put it another way, sure, a handheld rail-rifle might say "fuck your cover, you, and the six guys behind you," but so would a .50 Barret. You still don't use the damn thing like a carbine because it will append "... And my shoulder" to that statement.
Can you do the bazooka thing with a rail gun? In other words fire something backwards as well so the momentum transfer to whoever is holding it is small? Such a thing obviously has limited uses though: I'm not seriously suggesting it.
(Also it's no better than a rifle from the safety perspective and in fact worse: whatever it fires will fall somewhere as nothing man-portable is firing anything with orbital velocity.)
You COULD, but you wouldn't. That would double the complexity of the weapon just off the fact you're effectively doubling or nearly doubling the firing mechanism, to say nothing of the fact that rifles aren't built that way.
You MIGHT do this if you're making a hybrid ordnance weapon that uses a magnetic accelerator to clear a rocket from the tube and far from the user before the rocket lights off, like the old PIAT trick... But again, why would you? Just make the launch tube a giant coilgun and the user can eat the momentum like they would with a PIAT.
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A superlative idea sir with just two minor flaws, one, we dont have any high power laser bursts and two, we dont have any high power laser bursts. Now I realise that technically speaking thats only one flaw, but I thought it was such a big one it was worth mentioning twice.
Craggamore,
I know it exists BUT not at Gatwick and the Military are not going to loan their latest toy to 'Plod' in case they scratch the paint or something ;) :)
Also it would be a bit embarrassing if it could not hit the target !!!
Simplest solution is a HUGE cordon of Police walking inwards towards Gatwick Airport.
The drones may fly away but the people will not be able ;) .... particularly as Gatwick is shut !!! :)
All they need is 20,000 Police to cordon off the area, in secret :)
Small problem with that, I doubt we have 20,000 police in the entire country never mind in the London area.
As for being secret, usually the kids near me can spot an undercover cop from miles away. At least I'm guessing that's the reason why they haven't caught the anti-social little darlings by now rather than the totally obvious excuse of being completely effing useless
Small problem with that, I doubt we have 20,000 police in the entire country never mind in the London area.
Where on earth do you get your figures from?
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-workforce-england-and-wales-31-march-2017
Police officers 123,142
Police staff 61,063
Police Community Support Officers 10,213
Designated Officers 4,255
Special Constables 13,503
= 151113 police, excluding the 61,063 police (office) staff.
That's a mite more than 20k in the entire country.
Just for comparison, the British Army strength (including the Infantry, Royal Armored Corps, Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers, Royal Artillery, Army Air Corps etc) is 81,500 regulars and in theory 27,000 in the army reserve, a goodly known number of which only exist on paper due to the well covered problems as a result of handing over recruitment to Capita.
The risk-reward equation is rather flipped, there. A V1 that continued on course was likely to kill someone. A drone is not going to kill someone unless you zap it and it lands on someone's head.
Also, minor niggle -- the Spitfires didn't actually touch the bombs. That would be too risky. They used their planes' wingtip vortexes to make them bank, in a way the primitive autopilot in the V1 couldn't handle. Basically they sent them out of control using wake turbulence.
> Just imagine if Churchill stopped the Spitfires from flicking the wings of V1 Buzz Bombs, because it might scratch the fighters paint.
Typhoons/Tempests, mostly. Had the low-altitude speed. Spits could only catch V1s temporarily by diving.
But yeah, wholly agree with your actual point.
More top the point, what if the RAF had to get permission from all the property owners below before being allowed to fire their guns?
All y'all seem to have been thoroughly beaten into submission by the namby-pamby set in the last 70 years. Sad, that.
All y'all seem to have been thoroughly beaten into submission by the namby-pamby set in the last 70 years
It's true that we don't have free-fire zones in our back gardens, Jake. I know that some Americans find that quite upsetting, but on the whole it works for us.
I'd be more concerned if my country outlawed the sale of certain offal/blood products for human consumption than the possession of firearms. Though TBH I'd prefer a firearm over eating haggis.
Yes jake, I'm sure you make the best black pudden in California. If you do: good on you. OT, sorry.
Interestingly enough, first real use of Tempests and Typhoons not commonly used. Also first use of Meteors in a combat role. The Meteors couldn't accelerate like a Tempest but had plenty of speed; so the Tempests could stooge around and look for a V1 then use their power to get up to speed very quickly but the Meteor's had be be travelling pretty fast to start with as they couldn't accelerate quick enough otherwise.
A Polish pilots thoughts on the matter, over R/Te.
"Repeat, please"
I'm reminded of a godawful American film, airliner goes back in time to 1940 gets pasted by Me262 a1a, with afterburners yet, no less than 5 at which point we find the passenger compartment is impervious to mk108 fire, but the landing gear isn't... That's about where I gave up.
How bloody hard would it be to have put in a defence plan against this, they're already using birds of prey to catch drones.. If you really want to do it on the cheap - put a tactical shotgun into a Mosquito model aircraft - ala the tsetse fly.. Just imagine getting paid for *that* job..
You have a point - but once we've ironed out the problems we can fly it down to Washington*...
But my point still stands. This is a situation that's been a "going to happen" since drones were invented - how long does it take for someone to sit down and think about a solution.
And for the people who do not know. In order to get an airworthiness certificate - any multi engined aircraft must demonstrate the ability to maintain altitude and controllable flight with 50% powerplant failure generally within sensible power settings for the remaining engines. If your new type can't do that - it doesn't fly. So for example a Mosquito or Hornet can fly on one Merlin/Griffon and a 747 can fly with 2 engines out - it can glide something like 2 miles per 1000ft of height without any power.
Personally I'd have tested their resolve with an empty aircraft and volunteer pilots - if they really were gonna play silly buggers you'd soon know..
* Fer Dickwit hunting.
The article already deals with that. Point 3, Too expensive and too complicated. Added to the fact it sounds like a large drone.
Sticking a shotgun on a model aircraft has the problems that a) it's still firing projectile weapons potentially near civilians, b) it's flying a fixed wing plane at something that can go vertical very easily, c) there's the problem of where the debris goes. (Killing somebody to stop something that isn't actually endangering life is probably a PR no-no)
(Debris is also the problem with firing a high powered laser at it)
Sticking a shotgun on a model aircraft has the problems that a) it's still firing projectile weapons potentially near civilians, b) it's flying a fixed wing plane at something that can go vertical very easily, c) there's the problem of where the debris goes. (Killing somebody to stop something that isn't actually endangering life is probably a PR no-no),
Guns on model aircraft also suffer a similar challenge as the A-10. Like managing recoil. Which the A-10 has already managed, and there are even scale model RC versions. Sans GAU-8 of course. A shotgun-style weapon would seem the most practical given a spread of projectiles would be more effective. Or a net laucher. But given mass of net, recoil would still be an issue.
(Debris is also the problem with firing a high powered laser at it)
If you leave more than an expanding cloud of vapour, then obviously you need MOAR POWAH! Which is the problem with laser weapons, ie being able to keep it on target until you've transfered enough energy into the target to do it any damage. Plus it'd be cheaper to compensate for damage caused by falling debris than it is for keeping a major airport closed.
Once the drone's been recovered though, boffins can start planning better countermeasures. And we can be pretty certain that governments and airport operators around the world are lookng at their own anti-drone plans and countermeasures.
The wingtip flick of the V1 is an urban myth. The V1s had an trigger that detonated the warhead if the gyros were toppled. Ergo, no more tipping wing aeroplane. Spitfire had to shoot them down coz they weren't fast enough to catch them. Typhoons, Tempests and the superb DH-98 were the only fighters fast enough to catch them. Ok, ok, so was the Meteor but with so little time in the air due to such a high fuel consumption, they were next to tit useless. Also, after destroying it with your 20mm cannons, ingesting V1 debris into your jet engine would make for an interesting day.
"Urban myth" implies didn't happen at all.
The flip was used but not often. because it wasn't an simple manoeuvre and was resorted to when a pilot a ran out of ammo.
Eg a 3 Squadron pilot "It wasn't impossible to tip them up but quite difficult. I only did it once.... I found that every time I put my wing under its starboard wing, it just skidded away; I had upset the airflow. On the next try I slipped my wing under it and immediately flipped my stick over to the right, and that tipped its wing right over and it just catapulted into the ground."
The few Meteors available were only in use from late July (when seven aircraft were posted to Manston) to September (when the launch sites were overrun) against V1s. That and working out the kinks in the new fighter probably counted as much as low endurance against them getting a passable score.
the easiest solution is an armed mob. Just leave torches and pitchforks outside gatwick. Get all the affected people together and say 'go find the culprit then we open the airport'.
Angry mobs always work in the films so it must work in real life right?
Lynch must have a different meaning where you come from. Her house was vandalised, but she wasn't strung up from a lamp post.
And it was a pediatrician not podiatrist. (Doc for kids, not for feet), and was 18 years ago.
Source talking about the distortion of events
Unless you're talking about a different event? In which case - source please.
No, eyesight risk also. Many many years ago I read of a Swiss short range tactical anti-aircraft EMP weapon. Used a smooth-bore howitzer (120mm IIRC) firing a special shell. Shell used gas generation to power a electro-magneto-hydrodynamic (hope I got that right) generator feeding a cavity resonator that emitted a brief 10MgWatt EMP pulse. Cannon bore was the wave guide. Intended to fry aircraft electronics in an oncoming ground attack. Single shot per shell but if drone is over airfield or fence in a no fly zone many of the risks are mitigated Source: International Defence Review , early 1980s.
The best defense is another drone. I've seen the demonstration already on video - the defending drone fires a net at the offending drone and it attaches a parachute which forces it to fall to the ground. Needless to say the airport operator would have to be skilled to pull it off; but I saw in happen on this video, so it is very possible.
https://youtu.be/jvdKNBSWPyU
A lot of these objections amount to a lack of gumption. Nothing is without risk. You have a problem. You go out and solve it, even if it involves a little risk. And you jolly well get on with it, instead of dithering about. Shooting it from a helicopter or flying a net into it (with a helicopter or another drone) seem somewhat plausible. Yes, it might land on something, but that bill will probably be cheaper than the bill already faced.
Gatwick isn't exactly in the middle of nowhere. There are people walking around out there. The bill for landing on one of those heads might be a bit higher, especially for the owner of the head. It's easy for armchair warriors to come up with these solutions. They don't actually have to implement or face consequences.
It looks like there are a lot of fields around Gatwick. I'm not saying it's not a consideration, but population density is not that high everywhere, and I doubt that the risk of damaging a building, a grounded plane, or getting some debris on the runway ought to be serious considerations as the article suggests.
Indeed the police are there with firearms, so they're probably having a go. And helicopters *are* flying, even though this article suggests that would be too dangerous.
It could just be that spotting it is hard, especially when it only shows up once every few hours and disappears quickly.
I doubt that the risk of damaging a building, a grounded plane, or getting some debris on the runway ought to be serious considerations as the article suggests.
Thank you for your input… now reconsider your assessment taking into consideration that the operators are skilled, well-equipped and may have "armed" the drone with this kind of scenario in mind.
Maybe the operators have indeed “armed the drone”.
That makes your proposed non-solution [“careful now”] much worse.
Options:
A) Marksman rifle shot. Risk - spent rifle bullet or drone carcass hits somebody. Risk level - density of people on ground, a few thousand x 0.1m2 per km2 => less than 1 in 1000. Consequence - a couple dead. Bad, but let’s see what option B has to offer.
B) Do nothing. Risk level - fairly high that this is either a serious attack in progress, or an initial probing for a larger attack if the culprits are not stopped. Probability surely at least 10%. Or even say I am paranoid, but not less than 1%. Consequence: loss of one or several airliners, each with hundreds of people on board.
Personally, I choose option A.
Gatwick have gone for B; now we just wait for more attacks, one of which may well succeed with a large number of deaths. Bad choice.
Crawley is indeed next to LGW BUT there is at the present time a decent gap between the houses and the airport perimiter. I grew up next to the airport in Povey Cross which is just to the north of the Airport.
At the SW end of the runway there are fields and scattered houses plus a small factory (Roband Electronics)
There is plenty of space IMHO to shoot not only the drone but to do it without endangering human life or property unless it is one or two cars at the off airport car park that is near the far end of the runway.
IMHO, this is just a dry run for bigger drone events close to specific targets. I'm sure that it won't be long before waves of drones carrying explosives are sent over prime targets. HMG needs to get tough with these people. Throw the book at them.
My consumer grade thermal imager has a surprisingly good range - and if you add use of IR illuminator into the mix it gets far better.
Though my use of it is mainly on spotting local wildlife (primarily bats) in the dark, a lot smaller and more maneuverable than the alleged commercial grade drones mentioned, but bats potentially a more distinct heat signature depending on drone shielding
I too am wondering about the loss of tracking from a helicopter and a thermal imager, as the thing must get pretty hot. The other day we found a spurious heat signature, and it turned out to be the angle grinder I had used an hour beforehand, motor still warm. Not to the touch, but to the thermal imager.
The reasons given for not shooting it sound entirely bogus.
A falling bullet from a "miss" will only reach its terminal velocity on the way down. It's weight is small. So it would be comparable to a hailstone.
As for where the drone falls, that (surely) is the responsibility of the flier. It is their illegal drone and they are responsible for its actions.
It seems to me that the real problem is that the security services are run by bureaucrats. People who are far more worried about the possible criticism and damage to their own careers than by the chaos, disruption and cost that thousands of others suffer due to their inaction and lack of initiative. This incapacity to act also sends a clear signal to anyone else who wants to cause trouble - anarchists - that a thousand £ drone can effectively "switch off" a major transport hub, cost millions of £££s an hour.
> Falling bullets dangerous or fatal
I don't suppose it has ever occurred to you that if law enforcement fired on the drone from outside the airport, into it, that the missed rounds (weighing roughly 12 grams) would simply drop harmlessly to ground on the millions and millions of square metres of concrete and tarmac that makes up the airport.
And since flights were grounded, there would be no reason why all staff could not be ordered to remain inside. The worst that would then happen is maybe a little dent in an aircraft's metal skin - if it was incredibly unlucky - like hitting a squirrel on a golf-course - unlucky.
The worst that would then happen is maybe a little dent in an aircraft's metal skin - if it was incredibly unlucky - like hitting a squirrel on a golf-course - unlucky.
I've heard it said that a beer bottle cap can be enough to destroy a jet engine (some doco show many years back). Certainly a dent in any propeller is a problem and can lead to the loss of a prob blade, which can be catastrophic to anyone nearby.
Not one plane that was there before the shooting would be able to leave until every scrap of every bullet was accounted for.
That said, if the planes were to be put into hangers (or every hole in the engines and sensors covered) before the shooting began they should be fairly safe. But if I was the person with the drones I'd not be flying at that stage, obviously something about to be happening when they go to those lengths.
A decent bounty for evidence leading to the prosecution could work, but then that would run the risks of vigilantes and perhaps a few more innocents locked up.
"As for where the drone falls, that (surely) is the responsibility of the flier. It is their illegal drone and they are responsible for its actions."
I would imagine that responsibility for the drones course would pass to anyone that caused it to change course, so far it has done no physical damage (just flown where it shouldn't) but if someone decides to shoot a rotor off there is no saying where it will end up
'A falling bullet from a "miss" will only reach its terminal velocity on the way down. It's weight is small. So it would be comparable to a hailstone.'
Umm, no. Unless shot straight up, the bullet also has *horizontal* velocity, and that's what'll do the damage. There are well-documented cases of bullets shot randomly in the air causing damage, even killing people.
>There are well-documented cases of bullets shot randomly in the air causing damage, even killing people.
And how many properties were damaged and people killed in WWII from anti-aircraft fire...
I think the stop wasn't issued by the police/army but by the legal console, who didn't want to give the ambulance chasers an opportunity...
Knives are not illegal, I own lots of knives.
Kitchen knives, multi-tools with folding knives, even a couple of ceremonial swords.
But I agree with your sentiment, bans don't work, a decent engineer can build a weapon or drone fairly easily.
We can just be glad this is an idiot flying his toy to disrupt aviation, not someone who actually wants to take down a plane.
"[...] whoever might be the lucky recipient of the spent bullets or shot as they fall to earth."
What's the terminal velocity of such a spent rifle bullet as it finally hits the ground? Will it slow down by tumbling - or will it be a nose first smooth descent?
Presumably a tumbling round - although possibly slower - would do maximum damage to any flesh that it penetrates.
"For those hit by falling bullets, the chance of the wound being fatal was far higher than a typical shooting. The hospital put deaths from regular shootings between 2% and 6%, while for those struck by falling bullets the death rate was close to one third."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/24/how-dangerous-is-celebratory-gunfire
Here's a good analysis of the damage caused by spent rounds and their lethality:
https://forensicoutreach.com/library/the-falling-bullet-myths-legends-and-terminal-velocity/
Some of the comments are worth reading too. That was a straight-forward search: my first attempt used " velocity of a spent rifle round" and the link was the third item on the page.
When you're spraying celebration-fire in the air - the angle of fire is going to vary wildly. I'm sure plenty of these rounds will be fired at angles significantly lower than 70 degrees - which will of course carry very high velocities and probable lethal force right 'til moment of impact on the ground or elsewhere. None of these articles citing deadly celebration-fire incidents can say with any level of accuracy what angle the bullet(s) were fired at.
"What's the terminal velocity of such a spent rifle bullet as it finally hits the ground? Will it slow down by tumbling - or will it be a nose first smooth descent?"
It's not a terminal velocity problem (unless you shoot straight up into the air, still not a great idea for lots of reasons). The problem is that a bullet fired into the air will accelerate towards the ground at about 32 m/sec^2, just like any other object tossed in our gravity well. During that fall back to earth, it's traveling forward at a very high rate of speed and is very deadly. Sure, it will lose some speed due to wind resistance, but still not a great idea in a populated area.
Shot from a shotgun is much less of a concern (lower initial velocity, higher cross sectional area/mass of individual shot, etc.) but as mentioned in the article, the lethal range is less.
"The problem is that a bullet fired into the air will accelerate towards the ground at about 32 m/sec^2"
A confusion of American Customary Units and proper ones there. G is about 9.8ms-2 (it was meant to be 10 but you know how it is when you're doing a rush job and having to work Saturday overtime).
And it is a terminal velocity problem - apparently terminal velocity for a rifle bullet is about 90m/s, around twice the kinetic energy needed to penetrate flesh.
"G is about 9.8ms-2 (it was meant to be 10 but you know how it is when you're doing a rush job and having to work Saturday overtime)."
Nah, we just got m a bit wrong :)
Since we're defining at a fraction of c anyway, I thought we could have cleared it all up.
I'm sure no-one would mind the small adjustments needed :D :D :D
"which makes it even more deadly"
Not really. Bullets that tumble once they enter a target are more deadly due to the increased damage that they do. But bullets that tumble in the air have a much higher coefficient of drag (more so for boat-tail rifle bullets than musket balls) and therefore a lower terminal velocity.
My understanding is that a bullet is designed to be critically stable in flight such that it follows a parabolic arc while spinning, but once it transitions into a denser medium it will proceed to tumble thereby maximising energy transfer to the target. Full tumbling in air causes unstable flight characteristics and energy loss, neither are desirable. Too true a flight maintains accuracy but causes over-penetration of the target which is inefficient for energy transfer.
NOPE. The MythBusters proved that isn't so. If a bullet is spinning and flying in a ballistic trajectory, the point of the bullet follows the parabolic arc and the bullet keeps spinning. You see it all the time if you're a gridiron fan: a passed ball follows the arc and keeps spinning. Because it's still spinning, it's much more aerodynamic which equates to (1) a higher terminal velocity due to reduced air resistance and (2) a nastier impact because it'll probably hit point-first for maximum penetration.
"2) a nastier impact because it'll probably hit point-first for maximum penetration."
Point first produces deeper penetration - but makes a clean path through the flesh. A tumbling bullet - if it penetrates - will do far more damage internally. IIRC some conflicts have deliberately used ammunition with that effect?
To enhance energy transfer, modern 5.56 ammo is combined with a slower than expected spin, from the rifle barrel, to keep the bullet stable, but not so stable that when it hits a leaf or target, it doesn't flip to base first. This dumps the energy into the first 6 to 12" of the impact, to increase lethal effect.
Otherwise you'd need expanding ammo, and that's banned in warfare.
The faster, lighter rounds will cease to be stable around the 1100m range, unless they've already hit something.
"What's the terminal velocity of such a spent rifle bullet as it finally hits the ground?"
Not entirely comparable to a falling round but IIRC someone in S Belfast was hit by what was believed to have been a stray round fired from N Belfast. It was a long time ago so I don't remember the details. But the danger zone can be quite large.
What's the terminal velocity
Killing one. I remember one retarded monkey from the garrizon of a small town in the Eastern European country I lived at the time copping a 20 year term. He set the targets for his troops on a hill ridge with nothing behind and they were shooting uphill. Hit a girl in the town Square 4km away in the neck. Dead on the spot. Ak47 with 7.62 bullet.
Let's face it, the only effective and safe solution is a shotgun on another drone.
" Ak47 with 7.62 bullet."
In the 1960s a friend was in the UK army reserves. They had an annual camp which finished with a rifle range competition between the groups - all shooting at the same time.
Each group's target was initially obscured by a vertically balanced steel sheet - which had to be knocked over by hitting it near the top. One year all the sheets refused to tip over.
On inspection it was found that the bullets were going through the steel. That year they had changed the rifles from the old .303 type to a modern high velocity 7.62 model.
"Let's face it, the only effective and safe solution is a shotgun on another drone."
Rock salt loads? Or something like a syrup gun? The sticky juice could be biodegradable so the tree-huggers couldn't whine. A water-spraying hose might work, too but I'm not certain Greenies know that water is eco-friendly.
Or napalm. Put a flamethrower on a helicopter (or, slightly safer, an unmanned drone) and it could take care of just about anything.
I would suggest using one of our nukes as the E.M.P. might kill the attacker drone even if the blast, heat and gamma didn't but that seems like slight overkill and I rather suspect that the locals would frown on this as a solution to such a minor irritant. Also, after a good nuking, Gatwick might need a new coat of paint.
Or a new Gatwick.
A bigger problem with rifles is, it's bloody hard to hit a target of that size, moving at that speed, at a range of several hundred metres. It's hard enough even to see the damn' thing, let alone shoot it.
So you'd probably end up firing many rounds, probably hundreds of them, before scoring a hit. Or (more probably, and more embarrassingly), before giving up having not hit anything. And every round has a chance of hitting something/one on the ground.
Military systems for this kind of purpose use fully automatic weapons. I don't think anyone's going to sign off on firing one of those over Gatwick.
The answer has to be either something that's harmless when it falls (e.g. shotgun pellets), or doesn't fall at all (energy bursts, e.g. highly directed EMP, which as far as I know is still the stuff of science fiction but looks like it should be overdue for some serious R&D about now).
That only a moron would try it. 25 years in prison for operating a drone too close to an airport ought to do the trick. Even if you only catch 1 out of 50, why would anyone take that chance?
Require any drones purchased in the country to have a warning that lists the penalty for illegal operation in a restricted zone, then people can't claim they didn't know. Having it be on the news when the first couple people get sentenced to hard time for doing it ought to help with that too.
But I think previous research has shown it's not the size of the penalty that stops criminals; it's the risk of being caught. And it looks rather as if the risk of being caught is close to zero.
If the culprit is smart enough to wear gloves when handling the drone, how do you tie it to him? Do the comms systems keep track of 2.4GHz channels once the connection is turned off? And even if someone finds a way to force a drone to return to launch: "Ow, office, I was just walking to the pub when this bloody thing fell on my head!"
Without catching the culprit in the act and either having a return to launch observed or active control, it's going to be damn near impossible to prove it.
"The police have been doing extremely well at catching drone operators operating around prisons......"
So they say.
Elsewhere, the UK public have a rather different experience, in general.
"County line" issues suddenly seem to be a prominent excuse for our largely dysfunctional police HQs failures over many years to respond to the will of the public. It goes back at least a decade or two, in my experirence.
I used to live in a pleasant soutn Birmingham suburb, in one Police Sector, and if crimes were committed by incomers from a different Policing Sector (y'know, like two kilometres away) there was apparently "very little that can be done" (officially).
I do absolutely agree that life for most of us would be a lot better if the chance of being nicked and held accountable for misdeeds was significantly greater than zero. So did quite a few feet on the street in the police. But they have more exciting things for HQ (and the justice system in general) to spend money on.
"The police have been doing extremely well at catching drone operators operating around prisons......"
In that they actually catch some now, they are.
My understanding from correctional officers is that it is the predominant method of smuggling contraband, based in part on catching less contraband in other methods whilst those methods have improved. Mainly non invasive scanning being able to spot internally stashed goods.
You can also hear them. And often spot them. But you still have at least a dozen inmates per CO, so you have a limited amount of response available. They used to lock down the wing that the drone landed on, but they often land it on one, then fly to another after 5 minutes. Or fly six drones in at once. Or have a fight kick off then a couple of drones come in while everyone is busy.
Most common contraband is tobacco products and cellphones, followed by your usual range of recreational substances and steroids.
"But I think previous research has shown it's not the size of the penalty that stops criminals; it's the risk of being caught. "
Perhaps add a transponder to all drones, one that uses low power so it doesn't impact on the battery much but has a digital code that the spies can pick up by way of their super-secret, ultra-sensitive gear. That way, UKGov could license Air Traffic Control to keep an eye on identifiable drones. Were one to stray near to restricted airspace, the owner could be instantly tracked and jailed.
It would be something like a car being tracked by A.N.P.R. and the registered keeper being responsible for that car's misdeeds.
"add a transponder to all drones so UKGov could license Air Traffic Control to keep an eye on identifiable drones. "
Were you thinking of something like the tried and tested ADS-B transponder system, or something rather more basic (ADS-B out, maybe, emerging now?), or what?
"something like a car being tracked by A.N.P.R. and the registered keeper being responsible for that car's misdeeds."
Assuming, of course, that the criminals don't steal a legit transmitter (in the same way as criminals don't steal legit registration number plates on road vehicles?).
But I suspect you already knew that, in which case maybe you'll get better reception over at the Daily Mail.
We had the first case here, Fresno CA, of someone using a laser pointer at the local police department helicopter. If I recall correctly, he's doing ten years in prison. Still, criminals and the general public are generally stupid so even this hasn't caught their attention yet as people still doing it. By the way, the press pretty much everywhere in the US broadcast it far and wide, so publicity isn't a factor, apparently.
Yes, the likelihood of being caught is the main factor. Murder was punished by hanging for denturies, and yet people still killed people, not just in the heat of the moment, but in a planned and calculated way. They knew they'd hang if caught, but they took measures not to be caught. Threats don't break anyone's bones.
I would think it is the return on "investment". If one could steal $100 million with a 50/50 chance of being caught and executed, a LOT of people would try it, that would be a far better proposition than being a gang banger in a big city and a lot of people do that. If one could steal $100 million with a 99.99% chance of being caught and a 10 year term, few would try it (that's pretty much what you'd get if you tried one of those Hollywood Oceans 11 style bank robberies where you aren't armed unless you are as skilled as those characters are)
What's the "return" on flying a drone around an airport? As far as we know, Al Qaeda and their ilk haven't tried to fly a drone into a jetliner - deliberately trying to hit the jet rather than "being in the airport's restricted zone" are two very different things and could easily have different penalties. So most of the people who do this aren't getting anything out of it, aside from a kick from breaking the law and getting away with it. That kick disappears if you risk a long prison term, or so I would think.
Sorry dude, Al Quaeda don't much care about long prison sentences. They can now cause millions of damage an hour to the UK economy with something that costs a few grand, is programmable, and is almost impossible to track back to its owner. This isn't a prank but some dumbass - I'm willing to bet it's a coordinated act of protest or worse terrorism. Long sentences may not deter the culprits.
And what evidence is there that Al Qaeda is trying this? The people doing it now are just idiots or thrill seekers flying around in a restricted zone, they aren't buzzing around deliberately trying to impact the jets. That could easily be tried under a whole different category with life imprisonment for deliberate endangerment of a passenger jet.
And what evidence is there that Al Qaeda is trying this?
None, but we've become conditioned to look for terrorists everywhere. They like it as it's good advertising. I personally don't think it fits their modus operandi but I'm not an expert. Lots of other possibilities. Cui bono?
I don't think that it is a dumbass & her mates, the software in modern a drone will stop it flying near an airport. So some expertise is needed to hack the software to change this.
One possibility is that this is a practice run sponsored by Al Quaeda or Putin for some future planned disruption (or maybe just as a bit of seasonal fun). If done for Putin part of the exercise would be to enable the drone operators to escape and some plausible deniability.
"Forget long prison time - the Police will have a bigger headache keeping the culprit alive, away from the hands of the baying mob of inconvenienced travellers"
Yes, I'm sure they'd get a damn good tutting - unless they had a swarthy appearance - in which case the great British public would be too terrified to even raise a tut.
Good grief, you really do have a chip on your shoulder about those "foreign invader" types don't you? And yes, while what you said isn't technically racist, the sum total of your comments on this topic alone give us a solid indicator that you are indeed a shriveled little racist; no amount of bleating about how supposedly touchy everyone is these days will change that fact.
"They just need to make the penalty so outsized
That only a moron would try it. 25 years in prison for operating a drone too close to an airport ought to do the trick. Even if you only catch 1 out of 50, why would anyone take that chance?"
I should point out that the punishment is already life imprisonment. This would fall under endangerment of an airport, and therefore under the Aviation and Maritime Security Act 1990. At the very least, it's 5 years in prison for operating an illegal drone.
Has anyone ever been sentenced to life in prison? If not, that penalty is only theoretical (probably used only if a terrorist tried to deliberately impact a jet with a drone) and therefore doesn't do anything to discourage the run of the mill idiots who aren't trying to kill anyone but eventually will get "lucky" and do so with enough occurrences.
Has anyone ever been sentenced to life in prison?
Lots of people. Harsh sentences increase prison costs without noticeably reducing crime. Which is the main reason why California repealed the "three strikes" law which puts lots of people behind bars for life.
No, I think they did it to reduce the crime rate because they learned firsthand that "three-time losers" have nothing to lose so are more likely to take the "in for a penny, in for a pound" mentality: going for big crimes and/or refusing to be taken alive because rotting in jail is worse than suicide by cop.
No, we didn't repeal the law, we modified the law (see Proposition 36). As originally written, California's version of three strikes was a stupid fucking law that did nothing to reduce crime, and everything to clog the court and penal systems. It's better now, but still needs work.
Indeed, when our political classes outlawed capital punishment against the will of the people they PROMISED life would mean life - of course it didn't take long for that to be watered down to 7 years, soon "hate" crime such as upsetting certain groups of people will carry a larger sentence.
It is remarkable how often you post about things you clearly don't even have a basic understanding of.
Life tariffs, in the UK, mean life under the watch of the legal system. Please, go do at least the basic research before shooting your drone off.
After custody, they get release on license, a life of having to report back to a parole officer at least weekly, having to keep them updated with everything in the usual way, and, if they commit any offence at all, they'll be sent back to prison immediately. So they fly tip, or get arrested for being drunk, whatever minor thing, they go back to prison to carry on their life sentence.
"a life of having to report back to a parole officer at least weekly, having to keep them updated with everything in the usual way"
What parole officer? The parole system has mostly collapsed, mostly since it was piratised:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45584655 (2018)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7362879.stm (2008)
"if they commit any offence at all, they'll be sent back to prison immediately."
The probability of even getting caught is probably small.
But if someone is caught, don't they also need to be charged and tried and found guilty? Or are the rules different for someone out on licence?
Or is just being accused enough to lock up someone who is out on licence?
Definitive references very welcome- I genuinely don't know those answers.
That only a moron would try it. 25 years in prison for operating a drone too close to an airport ought to do the trick.
=======================
Perfect. That should really do it. I wonder if that's more than the penalty for knocking a cop out and drugging him/her with something that blocks long term memory formation.
The problem with excessively draconian penalties is they encourage other crimes in an attempt to escape.
Think about it. That's why the penalties for rape and kidnapping should always be less than the penalty for murder.
This generalizes, and you have to maintain sufficient perceived difference to discourage crime escalation when capture or identification is threatened.
It's a very different situation. The Nazi's had to track a strong AM signal in a far less congested spectrum. The police have to track a very weak signal that is likely hopping between a range of frequencies many times a second in a band of spectrum cohabbited by WiFi and quite probably side bands from the many radars near Gatwick.
Yes, in this case I believe the problem isn't triangulating the signal -- that's quite straightforward, as you note -- it's figuring out which signal is the correct one. Unlike WWII-era signals there's no reason for this transmitter to identify itself in any human-readable way.
The police have to track a very weak signal that is likely hopping between a range of frequencies many times a second in a band of spectrum cohabbited by WiFi and quite probably side bands from the many radars near Gatwick.
You are making an assumption about the use of WiFi ie. the 2.4GHz and 5Ghz unlicensed bands. Given the problems TPTB had, I suspect the operators were using at least the 3/4G wavebands, ie. they were controlling the drone via LTE (given reports had the drone avoiding capture) either via their own transmitter or more likely via the mobile networks (interestingly, if 5G delivers it will make it even easier to use 'public' frequencies to control things like drones).
I like the net idea - but it needn’t be a net, steel wire would be effective since that would tangle the blades. I take the point about risk to the chopper pilot - but surely you wouldn’t use a chopper. You’d use another drone.
In fact, this has practical applications in warfare since this anti-drone drone tech (which would have to be developed since I assume that it doesn’t yet exist) could be handy on the battlefield too.
"I like the net idea - but it needn’t be a net, steel wire would be effective since that would tangle the blades."Not if the blades are cowled. Plus, being these are likely industrial-grade drones, what's to say their blades aren't metallic and able to cut a wire?
Cowling adds significant weight thus reducing flight time and manoeuvrability. That's mainly why the prop guards on drones are so small vs the total area of the blade (most covering around 1/4-1/3 of the prop's area)
A large ship's propellor can be fouled by a relatively small rope (in this case a mooring line is "relatively small", although even smaller lines have caused big problems). The blade and the engine combined aren't enough to cut the rope. A small engine on a drone will not cut a wire. If you doubt this, get a decently powered lawn mower and see what the same size wire as a top E-string on a guitar will do to it.
Nothing short of a predator drone will have an engine able to cut even a very thin wire.
In fact, this has practical applications in warfare since this anti-drone drone tech (which would have to be developed since I assume that it doesn’t yet exist) could be handy on the battlefield too.
More than 20 years back I used to take part in battles with kites, RC aircraft and all sorts of other toys. The aim was to bring down your opponent while still maintaining controlled flight yourself.
The tech has been around a while.
(I wonder if nets could be deployed from a form of barrage balloon?)
It would be difficult to shoot down a plastic bag. Also, these magical drone batteries seem to last for an indefinitely long period of time, and with the lights on the drone that help the authorities to see it too, how noble of the drone operators... SMH. Sounds like a big rouse.
I'm sure they let the press have free run of the entirety of the airport such that there is an even coverage.
A few press cameras can cover a very large area. The sorts of camera operators who work at sports events (eg golf) who can track a tiny ball moving at decent speeds from a long way off would be able to find and track a drone from some way off.
And I'm pretty sure, especially as the airport is closed at these times (or was), there's little harm in having a few members of the press and associated camera crew escorted inside - so long as they're paying for the escort's time and a 'small administration fee' to the higher ups.
At least the golf cameramen know where to start looking: the golfer. Otherwise, how do you find a bone needle in a haystack?
Well, if the drone is actually being sighted in the area............
I've worked with a 'spotter' before, one with binoculars who would direct the camera (or other equipment) operator to the 'object of interest' (aka 'target').
Spotting rabbits from some distance away where they have natural cover to blend with is on a par with spotting a drone, yet we could do it with relative ease once we were practised. A well-enough-trained camera op can do the same.
"Spotting rabbits from some distance away where they have natural cover to blend with is on a par with spotting a drone, yet we could do it with relative ease once we were practised. A well-enough-trained camera op can do the same."
But who's practiced to spot a single drone of variable (including very small) size in a wide-open sky with 360 degrees of possible scope...especially if said drone is taking steps to elude detection such as say being painted sky-blue?
Most last at least 20 minutes, and have easily replaceable batteries, "Industrial specification" type drones, probably bigger ones like a DJI Inspire are often sold with multiple batteries.
And if the intent of the perp is to disrupt the airport, being visible would be part of the point no?
Okay, but, what about sending up a few of our own industrial strength drones and engaging in a dogfight? Maybe armed with big metal roads, nets, low calibre guns, shit like that. Think robot wars but aerial.
Also if they could let me have a go - or at least film it and put it on Youtube, that would be awesome. You could make a show out of it, and get Lethal Bizzle or someone to present it.
Assuming these bogey men exist in the first place, the problem was it was raining heavily yesterday, the MOD's (£15million a shot TCO) watchkeeper surveillance drone has a bit of a problem flying in anything other than perfect conditions - whereas most off-the-shelf ~£20K commercial drones can fly in all weathers reliably.
No. Keep it simple. Send up a unarmed drone with longer flight capacity to follow it home. Follow this up with a visit from plod to collect the forensic evidence (i.e. a drone with lots of fingerprints and DNA inside and out) and/or nab the perpetrator.
A Typhoon flying cap would spot this drone miles off - Typhoon's Pirate ISRT system is one of the highest resolution Infrared Search systems ever produced and could spot and track a match burning at stand off ranges, okay it doesn't have direct look down, but it doesn't need to, its look ahead angle is good enough to cover ground targets at pretty close range, it learns what the constant heat sources are (buildings etc.) and can concentrate on only what's new/moving. You may ask how much per hour does it cost to fly a Typhoon, but how much does Gatwick closed for a day cost?
We have the technological capability to track this pretty quickly, which is why I don't think it exists, there's either another security operation going on - or it a hoax to scare us out of our liberties.
Keeping DNA and prints off of something should be trivial for even the dumbest posters here.
Putting someone else's DNA on something should be relatively easy for most here after a tiny little bit of thought - DNA is probably one of the easiest lots of 'evidence' to fake or transfer (have a look at the back of the chair you're sitting on right now).
And for the really smart, obtaining and transferring finger prints (never proven that no 2 people have the same prints) is not particularly hard either. As a thought exercise, figure out how to do it with DNA-matching skin oils or other 'bodily fluids'. Do it right and the evidence sticks quite well in these sorts of cases.
"never proven that no 2 people have the same prints"I believe it's actually been DISproven. At least once, two dissimilar people have been discovered to match at least one fingerprint between them.
"Adam Ruins Everything" did a bit on this. According to the ep (one on ruining forensics or something like that) the guy who also invented eugenics was the one who came up with the idea, though without any real evidence.
They also claimed a US lawyer was arrested as he had an exact match for a set of prints involved in the Madrid bombings (IIRC). Eventually proved it could not be him, but he did spend some time locked up.
I can see how it can be a high odds against there being 2 people with the same prints - the swirls on each finger are one thing, but those swirls on 2 consecutive fingers is another, and on 5 or 10 gets to be harder to be done.
Also, prints can change over time. And they're not hard to plant at a scene. How many glass or other smooth hard exterior items have you handled in recent weeks?
I don't think Warning/ID is really an issue in the airport use-case - because you know that no drones should be larking about over runways & approaches... Plus there's no guarantee that such a "fighter" drone would be quick or agile enough to actually disable/destroy it's targets... Small cheap low-powered SAMs for drone destruction would be more fun to build and they'd be quick (airlines/airports lose money very quickly). If you can knock a drone out quickly enough the nuisance drone operators are *likely* to come to the conclusion that their fun/protest is no longer economically viable.
At low altitudes ground based guidance should be possible (most drones are relatively slow moving), so you can have a lighter, cheaper and less dangerous-when-it-goes-wrong missile...
If you wanted it to be pricey, you could have some kind of netting + parachute warhead, but huge explosions would obviously be much more fun^Weffective.
"Small cheap low-powered SAMs for drone destruction would be more fun to build and they'd be quick (airlines/airports lose money very quickly)"
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It has potential. You can pass them out to all the security guards, and for better coverage, airfield maintenance/operations types.
You can then make a lot of money running a pool on how long it takes for someone to tag an aircraft with one of them, accidently or deliberately.
Perhaps four different pools - accidental, deliberate, unknown, and 'missed the drone'
Quadruple your profit.
Anti-aircraft guns tackled the problem of rounds returning to the sender with fuses that detonated at a given time/altitude... Admittedly it would suck if the fuse failed - but it that doesn't seem to have impeded folks from putting AA batteries in the middle of built up areas in times gone by...
Those fuses where used to maximize the chance to hit an airplane even when you didn't get a direct hit. Proximity fuses greatly increased the lethal effect. And any not detonated one would be even a greater risk. When airplanes drop high-explosive or incendiary bombs on you, that risk becomes somewhat acceptable...
"Those fuses where used to maximize the chance to hit an airplane even when you didn't get a direct hit."
Not exclusively so...
The vast majority of shells fired will *miss* or fail to detonate in typical AA applications if they *didn't* have some kind of time/altitude fuzes. Without that "failsafe" fuze your AA batteries will do more damage than the opposition's bombers. ;)
Delay fuzes are used in lots of applications to reduce the chances of harm to the operator, from "dumb" bombs to the latest and greatest missiles.
Anyone outside during an air raid was well advised to be wearing a steel helmet even if not in an area being directly bombed. There were many civilian casualties from falling AA shrapnel. After a raid boys would scour the streets for pieces of AA shrapnel for their collections.
See the John Boorman semi-autobiographical film "Hope and Glory" (1987).
"...and there's more of it."
The targets are relatively soft and slow so you wouldn't need big rounds, or many of them.
I was thinking along the lines of something that was accurate at short ranges (ie: <1km), rather than something like a ZSU-23-4 which is intended to shred armor at a couple of km, so I wouldn't be parking ZSU-23s around Gatwick anytime soon. :)
The targets are relatively soft and slow
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In fact, the targets are getting faster, harder to spot, and tougher (except for stealth fighters, which may be harder to spot with some technologies from some angles, but are often slower and more fragile).
That's why AA guns and aircraft cannon kept growing - .50 cal, 20mm, 23mm, 25mm, 27mm, 30mm.
Good close support aircraft and helicoptes are often supposed to be proof against 20mm fire.
Popular ground air defense guns now seem to be 30mm, or 35mm, for the most part, if not larger dual purpose weapons like the Oto Melara 76mm and larger.
ZSU-23-4 which is intended to shred armor at a couple of km
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The ZSU was designed for AA not anti-armour, and most if not all modern IFVs are supposed to resist rounds that small.
The AA units with good anti-armour capabilities are probably 30 to 35 mm, with dual feed to allow switching to APDS rounds, and that is only good against APCs and IFVs, not MBTs, or probably, heavy IFVs.
"The ZSU was designed for AA not anti-armour, and most if not all modern IFVs are supposed to resist rounds that small."
True... But I reckon vanilla 23mm HEI-T rounds would still be overkill against drones. They point about mentioning post-war AA units was to show that it is possible to make small(ish) rounds that self-destruct to minimize the collateral damage on the ground. I really wouldn't want a ZSU-23 anywhere near Gatwick.
Admittedly it would suck if the fuse failed - but it that doesn't seem to have impeded folks from putting AA batteries in the middle of built up areas in times gone by...
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When you are weighing shell fragments and unexploded shells, against accurate 500 pound bombs delivered from undistracted aircraft you have something rather different from a hypothetical danger from drones which may or may not exist.
At this time I can't think of a single airliner brought down by a collision with a small drone.
A collision with a large drone - 15+m wingspan, mass measured in tonnes, not kilograms - would be dangerous, but that's not what we have here.
And yes fuses fail. If you shoot a lot, more fail, in absolute terms. And trying to hit something as small as a small drone, you will shoot a lot. Are they even big enough to trigger a proximity fuse?
"And yes fuses fail. If you shoot a lot, more fail, in absolute terms. And trying to hit something as small as a small drone, you will shoot a lot. Are they even big enough to trigger a proximity fuse?"
I would *hope* we can do a bit better than an Soviet AA unit designed over 60 years ago (which incidentally fired ~10 round bursts)...
The primary purpose of these light AA ammunition fuzes is to stop you shredding the stuff you're trying to protect on the ground, they don't carry enough explosive to be useful with a proximity fuze - assuming you could make one small, reliable and cheap enough for sub 30mm rounds... I think you would need a much cheaper and less powerful round for drone blasting - which would further reduce the scope for collateral damage.. :)
"I seem to remember a plane going down in the Hudson River in New York because of a bird strike."
US Airways Flight 1549 hit a flock of geese and lost all engine power. It wasn't just a bird-strike.
"I would assume that a couple of pounds of meat and feathers would generally do less damage than a couple of pounds of metal and plastic."
Flesh turns into a bag of really sticky, stringy elastic material that sticks to revolving bits and sends them out of balance, causing massive failure. (Ever clean a meat grinder after making sausage?) Drone-sized metal bends and goes away, plastic (mostly) shatters and goes away, causing less massive failure. (watch any number of "will it blend" videos.) I wouldn't want either one to hit my Cessna, but if I had a choice I'd take my chances with a drone over a goose or turkey.
AA guns were used in a scenario where the planes they were shooting down were busy dropping tonnes of explosives on us: the tradeoffs were just a bit different. Indeed if you hit the plane you then have bits of burning plane falling out of the sky on you, and that was still better than the alternative.
"The airport perimeter is something like 10km long."
And a couple of lidar scanners can cover it all.
This isn't exactly a "new" problem and the longer it goes on without any evidence of said drone, the more likely it is that there never was a drone to shoot down in the first place.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/wicked-deeds/201507/moral-panic-who-benefits-public-fear
Your linked article on moral panic posits various tests and this situation fails on all of them.
Firstly, we haven't identified a group to demonise here, unless it is "all drone pilots" which would be ridiculous.
Secondly, there's no gap between the threat and the objective threat as this isn't an objective threat, it really has stopped over 100,000 people from travelling. The hazard is small, a downing of a flight, but the risk is very large, the consequent loss of life.
Thirdly, there's no fluctuation of attention over time. It's just happened and it's been ongoing.
Mostly importantly there's no public hysteria.
Conspiracy theories are invariably posited by nutters and believed by the pathologically credulous. Trying to back up your insanity with totally inappropriate material simply demonstrates your foolishness.
"The airport perimeter is something like 10km long. How many shotguns/hunter drones/nets/eagles/whatever are you going to need to deploy to cover that?"
Shotguns? About 400. More to cover breaks, sick, etc.
You don't want them tired, so probably about 600, with 150 on shift and 100 on station at any time.
That leaves gaps, but minimizes the chance they will hurt each other.
If you want to close up the gaps, double the number, and change the rules of engagement to reduce the danger of fratricide.
Or triple the number and have better coverage, and safer rules.
There are also environmental issues. If you are not using lead shot, to avoid contamination and poisoning wildlife, then you need bismuth (expensive) or steel (less effective - tighten your intervals, increase shot size, increase carttridge length to mitigate loss of pattern density, and add another 600 to 1200 shotguns, depending on how tough you think the dornes are).
"The nearest archery club would likely be able to offer a half dozen bodies with crossbows, and 50lb fishing line. If hovering at no more than 50m you've got yourself a drone, with traceable serial numbers."
What makes you think the drone(s) will hover within 50m of the people on the airport perimiter?
And you really don't want distracted people looking at the sky while wandering along runways and taxiways.
Unless said group are also telepaths then public communication systems were employed to organise this and hence recorded, that is unless this is just one group that physically meet to organise, meaning that if you catch one you catch them all.
That finding a communication record or identifying a group indicates that the police have not done all they might to prevent/curtail the impact, even assuming that they felt it was an issue they need to deal with early on.
Yes, it is possible that media reporting was the primary organiser but even then, if the police been on the ball, then the report would have been that drone pillock/s captured rather than airport disabled and police in an apathetic funk/teabreak.
Technically, dealing with a single wayward drone pilot is easy, just track via radio transmittion strength to locate and arrest, but multiple pilots could be harder unless you have bothered to have multiple detectors, if said detectors can also transmit then just blanket jamming is and should have been the solution thoughout. It might be said that the airports themselves are more to blame for lack of due dilligence and expecting the police to protect their infrastructure without "new" funding/equipment specifically to address this "new" problem.
"How about a short burst of a high powered radar to fry its electronics? just a short burst, when no aircraft are in the line of sight for the radar beam"
And this would work why?
1. If the radars don't do it now, they won't do it later. It's not like they are built to produce 100 times the needed power, and then forever run at 1% output.
2. Other than approach, landing, and ground control radars - all relatively short ranged, air traffic control radars are likely situated well away from airports, on high terrain that gives a good all round view to long distances.
Fly a C130 Hercules over them and drop a net on them off the back ramp. Even if the operator deliberately flies into the Herc, it's most likely not going to take down the Herc (it may destroy a prop / engine though), and even then the problem is solved because the drone will be destroyed when it hits the Herc.
Ok so I am no expert, but what the hell its the internet so let’s have a go at helping the UK “my” government out.
1) Triangulation , Triangulation, Triangulation. Set up some frequency analysis equipment around the airport perimeter. Contect it to a computer and do some Jeff Goldbum Independence Day magic. I know we lost that war to the USA but it’s only a movie title.
2) Not your favourite movie ok let’s go all Die Hard 2. Simply take a lesson from Russia and start spoofing the GPS and make ground level -2000 feet. I know GPS is not ALS but you could easily do it.
3) Radar, you know the stuff we invented in WW2. Get some bloody radar equipment their and start tracking the low level local airspace. It’s god dam air port I am sure you could find so stuff in the store rooms.
4) People/Army you talk about 3500 army on stand by for Brexit. Let give them a dry run. Flood the place with people. Eyes on the ground until they find who’s doing this.
Because you've already got a degree. And hence should have a decent job, and therefore he could reduce the tax burden by you who can afford it better.
That frees up resources for those without a degree already, who will benefit more.
But hey, those Tories found a way to stop that "unfairness" - they just made it cost £9k a year for a degree, so no-one can afford it.
It appears they are trying to use an simple off the shelf system to intercept all DJI drone communications. I think the police use the D200 DJI drone, so I guess its the only experience they have with drones.
https://www.coptrz.com/dji-aeroscope/
Much better to build a custom system as a government but when the pen pushers and bull shitters are in control and not the educated engineers thats all you get I guess.
Much better to build a custom system as a government but when the pen pushers and bull shitters are in control and not the educated engineers thats all you get I guess.
I suspected that that was consideration and hence part of the reason why the police/army kept the airport closed for so long. Expect the Home Secretary to sign off a nice project budget - using monies from outside of existing funding pots.
"1) Triangulation , Triangulation, Triangulation. Set up some frequency analysis equipment around the airport perimeter"
That is crowded spectrum with a ton of signals - wifi, microwave ovens, baby monitors, Bluetooth, corrdless phones, Zigbee, video senders, and car alarms at the least. Some of these devices may not be legal in the UK (power level, bandwidth, etc) but they get used anyway.
Most consumer drones use 2.4 GHz, but while I haven't checked, there's a good chance that it's an SDR - software defined radio. Whatever protocols are used can be modified to hide among all the other traffic.
A hardware modified or custom built drone has a lot more options. Frequency agile spread spectrum, with other techniques for LPI (low probability of intercept) and possibly other diverse frequency ranges (laser command link, 10 - 30 GHz LPI channels, etc) could make such a drone very hard to detect and localize, particularly if it spread the traffic around bands and modes.
2) "start spoofing the GPS and make ground level -2000 feet"
Spoofing GPS and GLONASS and Beidou and Galileo - they are different and independant systems - and modern drones often have ultrasonic or other ground detection technologies.
Still, how many small civil aviation aircraft can you lose, due to pilots not reading the notices, or getting busy and distracted and flying with habitual techniques before this becomes morally and politically indefensible as a tactic? And since you have to warn ALL pilots, the drone operators will know ahead of time. And then there's the lawsuits.
3. "Get some bloody radar equipment their and start tracking the low level local airspace. It’s god dam air port I am sure you could find so stuff in the store rooms."
The old stuff is junk - not fit for the problem. Drones are too small to show up on older radars, and probably most air traffic radars. As well, ATC radars are usually secondary radars - they send out a signal that triggers the aircraft's transponder that then replies. No transponder, no detection.
Primary radar is rare, produces cruder data, and may or may not be able to pick up a small, low radar cross-section (size, shape, and material matter) object. These are more likely to be military air defence systems, and they would tend to be on national perimiters or high land. By the time a radar at an airfield could pick up anything it would be so close that a standoff anti-radiation missile would have obliterated it, so there is little point in putting them there. Field AA systems are almost certainly designed to pinck up larger targets.... and the newest radars have longer wavelengths to 'see' stealth aircraft - which makes very small objects probably invisible. As well, air defence radars likely use a doppler gate to screen out ground clutter in low level operation and it is likely the drone would be too slow to excape being erased by the clutter filter, even if it could otherwise be detected.
4) "People/Army you talk about 3500 army on stand by for Brexit. Let give them a dry run. Flood the place with people. Eyes on the ground until they find who’s doing this."
Take a page from the asymmetrical warfare playbook. Lie low when they are looking. Wait. Move to another airport(s). Start rumours and false reports. Let them chase their tails until exhausted, and their operational budget drained.
Total army strength is about 102,000 including reserves - but this is in addition to all the other things it must do. Available strength is severly limited.
Sources list 144 airports in the UK. Let's assume that 1/3 are busy enough to be relevant targets, How long can you maintain blanket watch on the surroundings of 48 airports?
Brute force is not the answer.
1 get a MQ-9 Reaper drone (or whatever HM Forces calls them, if they actually have any which haven't crashed) and fit it with Hellfire or Brimstone guided anti-tank weapons or with Stinger guided anti-aircraft weapons. Hunt down the other drones, if they actually exist, and swat 'em with extreme prejudice. Alternatively fit a machine gun of some type (Colt-Browning .303 calibre or Hispano-Suiza 20mm are traditional; 30mm DEFA might also get a look in, but might be too substantial for a Reaper, especially one operated by HM Forces, who can't seem to land them without breaking them. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/12/watchkeeper_drone_wk031_crash_report_1m_uav_destroyed/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/01/thales_watchkeeper_crashes/ ) and go hunting.
2 get a few sqaddies and hand them Stinger or similar missile launchers. Or just a few machine guns.
3, and most glorious... borrow the Hurri or the Spit or both from the Battle of Britain Flight and make sure that the guns still work. Talley-ho, chaps!
Yes, mine's the one with the mint condition copy of 'Biggles of the 266' in pocket, thanks.
"3, and most glorious... borrow the Hurri or the Spit or both from the Battle of Britain Flight and make sure that the guns still work. Talley-ho, chaps!"
Something as small, hard to see, and maneuverable as a drone is likely to be a very very difficult target... and it is not wartime. A lot of those misses are going to fall into 'civilianland' and as soon as one of them gets seriously hurt or killed, drones will be the least of your probles.
Hunting Boomerangs - apparently called kylies can take out a kangaroo or parrot at about 100m according to Wikipedia. So must be capable of taking down a drone with minimal risk of collateral damage? Just need someone trained in throwing them.
Or what about Killer Drones? Surely you just have a bigger, more powerful drone. Equip it with Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence... powered from the Cloud... and just get it to perform a quick hard reset on the intruding drone?
And Robert's your mother's brother.
They've also confirmed it has been more than one drone.
Not everything is a conspiracy.
They have some sort of time window rule they have to stick to. What has been happening is this:
Drone sighted, necessitates airport closure for X hours.
X hours - 5 mins - Drone is back.
There hasn't been a drone or drones flying continuously for all this time.
@Brangdon
I get that but how do they now know it's gone for good? How can they open the airport? According to the BBC it was last seen at 10pm on Thursday, is there a special time limit? I'll just wait for the drone regulation stories to appear within the next couple of days and for drones to be removed from Amazon etc..
Do you want to be the one who signs off on the use of something that could potentially screw over the GPS receivers aboard dozens of airliners, opening you up to ruinously expensive compensation claims as well as properly grounding all the holidaymakers jetting off for Christmas? No, thought not.
Lack of GPS will not ground airliners, they have other navigation and precision landing systems. The main problem would likely to be passengers getting lost while driving to the airfield, despite all the signage.
The main problem would be
Probably getting the US military to pick up the phone. They're the ones who control GPS and, as far as I can tell, this is still a UK civilian issue. And that's actually a good thing: we don't want it to be easy to declare a state of emergency so that the military can take over.
Do you want to be the one who signs off on the use of something that could potentially screw over the GPS receivers aboard dozens of airliners, opening you up to ruinously expensive compensation claims as well as properly grounding all the holidaymakers jetting off for Christmas? No, thought not.
Lack of GPS will not ground airliners, they have other navigation and precision landing systems. The main problem would likely to be passengers getting lost while driving to the airfield, despite all the signage.
I may be behind the times, but at one point aircraft were not allowed to use GPS to fix their position. Has this changed?
Forgive us, a number of us vultures are of that generation where we were taught metric but grew up around imperial. Thus, 120 metres means more to me than 390 feet, but 8000 ft means more to me than 2.4km. I weigh 76kg but i'm 6ft 2in. It's a mess.
And I'll sort out the units.
C.
> Forgive us, a number of us vultures are of that generation
> where we were taught metric but grew up around imperial.
Original poster here: yeah, me too. I even spent two years of metric immersion as a child, living in a country that threw itself whole hog into metric. There was not a foot, not a mile, not an ounce, or pound, nor even a lowly Fahrenheit to be found anywhere.
And I forgot it all within minutes of returning to USAia, only to have to learn it all again as an adult in order to carry on a conversation with other adults from civilized parts of the world.
Consider yourself forgiven.
They will pull all the stops out to get these guys.
They cannot let it lie.
Allowing these people to disrupt a major airport for such a long time without any plan to answer what is an anticipated threat will not be tolerated.
Expect the culprits to be apprehended and shat on with a f*ck ton of shit from a great height, and they will make a very public example of them.
Alternatively, they can publish their names and let over 10,000 angry passengers vent their frustration upon them
I, for one, cannot wait.
To be honest, the airline probably needs its own drone operators to counter this. Another drone to follow it back to base and capture video of anybody there would be a good start.
And the most effective way to take it down it another drone trailing a lightweight net underneath it. Tangle the props and it'll be down in seconds.
"And the most effective way to take it down it another drone trailing a lightweight net underneath it. Tangle the props and it'll be down in seconds."
Unlikely.
Eqivalent drones? The one without the net is faster, more maneuverable, and has greater endurance.
Better chaser? Go after a 1 kg drone with a faster 15 kg drone? Maybe.
Of course, if you get too focussed on the chase, and manage to smack into an airliner, you might do serious damage. Is it worth the risk, particularly given the limitations of FPV systems focussed on a chase target?
people realise this thing isn't just buzzing around permanently, right?
from what it looks like, the thing goes up for 2 minutes, just to keep the airport shutdown in place, then its packed away for a few hours. the polis can't just go over and shoot it down, because the time they've got there it's buggered off only to appear half a mile away 3 hours later...
Exactly.
Given the readers and topics here, you'd think the level of basic intelligence would be higher, but it seems, well, averaged out.
Whoever is doing this is a professional* team, with motivation and skill.
*as in practised and with a plan, rather than necessarily being paid for it. But it could be another crypto coin ransom attack using "drones as a service".
Can't wait for self-driving cars on the roads, can you? /s
They might also be being careful to avoid flight paths to use the defence, if caught, that they were not endangering aircraft.
In my mind, some sort of acoustic triangulation similar to that used to locate gunshots in cities could be effective at tracking the drones as it may not need line of sight.
It might take a while to write the software to pick out a quadcopter from the other noise, however.
1) If the drone is remote controlled (the most likely option), they try to find whoever controls it, for questioning, shutting down the drone, arrest, and indictment. From what I observe, 99% of drone problems (mostly from ignorant nutters) can be resolved this way.
2) Whatever else is going on, they want to get hands on the intact drone whenever possible. Again, to find out who made it and launched it, in particular for autonomous drones.
3) From these two points, it follows that one needs to protect the people and infrastructure in the area while this is going on. For an airport, that means shutting down.
In short, that's the realistic and rational way this problem can be handled right now in the real world.
Possibly the 'overblown' reaction is because there is an expectation that something is going to happen. ???
i.e. Information from GCHQ type sources etc
The Drones are a possible example of this so no risks were taken.
There is obviously 'Some' reason for this type of reaction when drones have been flown near other airports without the same response.
Please add this to the pile labelled 'Tin Foil hat wearers etc' :)
I am wondering how anyone could have spotting a drone flying around an airport at about 3am in December. It could be flying using GPS waypoints, so the operator doesn't need it to be showing a light, but just how are they detecting it? Radar? They're not stealthed but they're not a big target, and a lot of the aviation business relies on transponders for routine use. There will be some radar which uses the echo, has to be in case something goes wrong, and that sort of radar has been spoofed since the 1940s.
It seems possible that there is no drone, and something else is being detected, but, even if the plane doesn't crash, sucking something into a jet engine is expensive.
If it's a decently-sized "industrial" type drone, I think radar would have no trouble detecting it at that range. I'm told geese show up pretty well and they probably don't reflect radar nearly as well as something metal.
In the past drone reports have mostly been due to pilots seeing and reporting them, sometimes after a near miss. It's possible it was originally detected that way.
Gatwick's chief operating office says "We have had the police, we have had the military seeking to bring this drone down for the last 24 hours and to date that has not been successful." ( https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2018/dec/20/gatwick-airport-drone-travel-chaos-disruption-live-updates )
If that's true that the military involvement began 24 hours ago, whereas the press reports only had the military stepping in much more recently around 4 pm.
They don't seem to have done much good, though!
What if you do not have anything to shoot at?
The drone flies around long enough to be spotted. By the time the guys with the guns arrive it's gone.
What now? Of course police and security will search, but it's bound to be a large area to search. Meanwhile, you cannot risk flying planes while there's a drone nutter around. Likewise, you cannot jam all the time. You're bound to jam something you'll need to organize the plane-flying. Jamming and shutting down goes hand-in-hand.
It's a rather effective way to shut down an airport or other facility for a bit. And I don't see much that can be done against it at all facilities. (It's similar in a way that you cannot prevent a car to be driven into a large group of people. You can only make certain groups of people less likely targets.)
Likewise, licensing and restrictions for drone operators won't do shit. Evil-minded people do not give a fuck about that – see 9/11 – or the terrorists driving trucks into people.
"What now? Of course police and security will search, but it's bound to be a large area to search."
There's at least one police helicopter involved and they have some pretty decent heat sensitive cameras for tracking suspects in the dark and through underbrush. That might even be why the military have been ask to help.
I'm wondering about that too. If they are competent, they are sure that a risk of a drone strike is negligible.
That is easily explainable by the police and authorities not telling everything they know. Which they often do for good reasons. Like that they know of someone who did it who fled the scene, and they're now looking for them somewhere else. But that's speculation until they tell us more.
I just read that the drones go up every time the airport tries to re-open.
Again, there's only one way to clear this particular incident: Find the operators who launch the drones. Or scare them away by putting up lots of people all around the airport with guns to shoot down enough of the drones – but you need to be sure the operators are gone, or who they were, to make sure they're not coming back, so you're back to having to find them. There's nothing else.
And that takes time.
Hoax or not, the reaction to this incident - a total shutdown of major UK infrastructure - is undoubtedly going to cause a flurry of copycat attacks. Reduce the number of lemon F-35Bs we're buying by two or three and use the money to join Israel's Iron Beam project so the UK could have an independent, viable laser weapon system in pretty short order.
This has been going on for a day with tens of thousands of people with mobile phones, blanket CCTV coverage and presumably many media crews in the area, and still no video of the Phantom Menace. How is this possible?
Is there really a drone out there, or is it a smokescreen while the authorities prevent somebody or something from leaving or arriving at Gatwick?
Or are they keeping the air lanes clear for an aerial armada of bombers / alien invasion fleet / ruling-class evacuation shuttle?
Or have they decided that we are not allowed drones and need to engineer a reason to ban them?
Or are they just practicing for what they can't admit all UK airports will be like on 29th March next year? (Admittedly the last one is unlikely as that would suggest somebody is planning ahead).
Quote "Or have they decided that we are not allowed drones and need to engineer a reason to ban them?"
I think you hit the nail on the head - Gov. has been getting a hard time getting this through parliament but get 7mil onside and they can't lose plus it's a great diversion while they play "Brexit".
Yeah, I have a better idea: let's just stare up at the sky and do nothing while a $10k drone stops a $1 billion airport.
How long have drones been about and nobody has seriously devised a counter-drone strategy? How hard can it be to design a drone that safely captures or demobilises another one? What is our defence budget being spent on - 1908 Pattern Webbing?
It's been the "Age of Austerity" for the last 8 years in the UK. Unless central government funded it directly, it wasn't going to happen.
I'd love a few million quid budget and the licenses to be working on this stuff, but there's no tender, and no government plan.
Oh, but they knew this was a threat before we voted for Brexit, so they could plan ahead... Oh wait, bad example.
The art of Fox Hunting that is searching for a hidden radio transmitter seems to be forgotten here. It's a simple matter of triangulating the source of the signal and you've got the culprit. Any EX GPO radio inspector would have the know how, after all, they would have spent many hours tracking pirate radio stations.
Many years ago I attempted to find somewhere to have outdoor sex on the South Downs without risk of discovery. It was surprisingly difficult.
This operator has to find multiple quiet locations in a densely populated area.
The best chance plod have is of someone witnessing a take off or landing. Unless the locals appreciate the peace and quiet...
If I were doing this, there would be a van with a pop-top for "shoot and scoot" recovery, wireless chargers, several drones, and several redundant backup C&C frequencies.
The most likely thing to track is the video feed from the drone camera. That could be toggled on and off easily, and would likely be at 2.4 and/or 5Ghz - hard to locate, and hard to jam. And, completely non-essential.
GPS might get tinkered with, eventually, so ensure the ultrasonics tell the drone not to fly into the ground, and use the on board inertial sensors to ignore GPS jumps (which they already do) Have the drones alert you to take control of it if GPS lost, or "moves" it outside the operating area.
There's plenty more tricks, too. Thermal shielding, radio relays, and so on.
Total budget? Under £50k, assuming the manpower is covered by the usual FSB or whatever staff budget, or is free. (Unlikely these are free operators though - they're trained.)
Also, make sure you've had someone thoroughly scrub it to remove forensic evidence, and change the "return to base" function to make the thing go and kamikaze somewhere it'll be unpleasant if it pops up, in the event they do manage to jam it; say, Buckingham Palace, the Eye, another airport altogether, or whatever's reasonably within autonomous flight range and will cause sufficient monocle-popping, tut-tut action if the drone karooms inbound at high speeds and might, maybe, cause some minor disruption (on the political scale) like landing on someone's head, or causing an automobile collision or something.
Of course, that's assuming a fully-malevolant, terrorism-minded actor. More likely just program it to ditch in the nearest body of water if you're some kind of properly-pissed-off activist, but aren't (in your mind) looking to add any terror charges or murder beefs to your rap sheet.
A proper terrorist, especially with state backing, could do *so much worse* with one of these things than piss on an airport's operations that it isn't funny. Air-deployed nerve agents, anyone? Kamikaze drone bombs? Airborne gyro-stabilized weapon platform armed with a chopped-down rifle or something?
Any or all of that would be easily within Vlad's means if he felt like that.
"Seriously over 48 hours how many times would it needed to shave returned home?"
Once for every tme it flew.
A good consumer drone may have an endurance of 10 to 25 minutes depending on how you are flying, and it would be silly to cut your margins too much. Logically, maximum flight time should be 10 to 15 minutes.
Then you must recharge or swap batteries.
How many times has it been seen more than 15 minutes after the last sighting? Make that your lower estimate for the number of flights.
Maximum? Not sure.
Presumably it is trying to be seen, so many of the flights should have been noticed. Count them, and presume there may or may not have been a few more.
A few decades ago, an expert marksman would have been despatched, the thing shot down and the owner traced and charged with any ensuing collateral damage or injury as the consequences are rightfully their responsibility. And nobody would be going on about permits or property permissions or remote risks of everything imaginable under the sky.
A few years ago, there weren't drones flying about. There are no "expert marksmen" who can shoot down a drone. When they turn the lights off, you can't even see them at 200 yards. Then they turn them on, and what, you guess the distance and what's located where your bullets come down?
I seem to remember something about Nimrods tracking cars from dozens of miles away. Surely 30 years on a simple helicopter up high can track the drone to it's landing site? How about thermal imaging looking upwards? These things use a lot of power and need to be recharged regularly... by returning to the owner. The drone may well be streaming live video back to the pilot, listening in to that broadcast may give you clues as to where it's coming and going from. There seems to be a total lack of facts, photos and information on this. The police saying "we're confident we have it under control" when they seem to have done nothing doesn't boost confidence.
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You can use a directional 1GHz jammer to take out GPS in a very limited area.
Combine this with 433/866/2400/5800 MHz jammer, and most quads should land in place, or hover until they fall down.
Russia uses false GPS signals in the black sea and Moscow center to offset the location by a few kilometres to avoid GPS drone attacks.
Not sure if there are any easy to use EMP weapons.
Finally there is another solution. Use race quads (racer drones) to take it down. Make intentional collision. Even if you can not repair the race quad it i like $200 lost. If you want to save mone, onther solution is having the race quad carry a long kevlar/dynema thread with a nut counterwieght at the end. Attached to the race drone with a thin sewing thread that will break when the big drone grabs the kevlar and kills its own motors by entangling itself in the kevlar.
A race quad has a short flying time (3-4 min), but flies 150 km/h to get out there. So 3 km in a little over a minute. Just expect it to land out and be retrieved.
I am told that some military forces now uses man portable drone jammers.
Problem with drones is the frequency they use. Can by anything. From 27MHz to 5.8GHz is normal. Anything in betwen can be used. Some long distance pilots uses cellular.
Shotguns are definitely a better option than rifles, any gamekeeper will tell you that.
As far as jamming goes - they'd have to block rather a lot of channels to down the drone, since most of them use frequency hopping. There is the usual 2.4 Ghz band. It could also be using 5ghz, or maybe using WiFi or mobile data etc etc. And how do you tell if the signal you're jamming is the drone control signal out of the morass of signals you're typically dealing with? - of course it could simply be pre-programmed with waypoints so not using a signal at all.
You can keep a heli in the area to look for it, but that would have the same essential effect as the drone (!) if help in the air. If kept on the ground, contrary to what you see in action movies, taking off in a helicopter takes several minutes - especially from a major international airport. So by the time the thing is in the air the drone probably will have vanished again.
Does it strike anyone else as odd that apparently nobody has come forward to claim responsibility for this?
I bet when they arrest whoever it is, it'll turn out they have some long standing grudge against the airport. Maybe they're a local farmer unhappy with a compulsary land purchase, or somebody aggrieved about the noise of aircraft, or someone who missed their flight. I expect the police are already sifting through the crazy files looking for potential suspects.
I hope it was worth it for their safe because given the scale of the incident they'll be in prison for several years at least.
The British army bought 6 Drone Dome systems from Israel.
That's what Israel uses, except their version brings down drones using jamming and lasers. The laser burns a hole right through the drone. The British army opted not to buy the laser add-on, just the jamming.
Israel's Iron Dome can also bring down drones, but that means shrapnel potentially raining down.
This system has already been used by the British army in Syria to protect soldiers from ISIS drone attacks.
In fact surprised he's not turned up uninvited with his mini-submarine, not sure what use it would be but it wasn't fit for purpose in Thailand, that didn't stop him. But he's a genius so he'll have converted it to be amphibious, just superglue wings and a jet engine on to the sub.
Racing Drone enthusiasts could be allowed to disable the geofencing on their devices. They could then be allowed to chase after the rogue drone when it appears. We need to find the operator. The rogue drone is just a drone in the wrong hands.
It worries me that we don't yet have a solution.
One rogue drone carrying botulinum toxin or Novichok flying into central London doesn't bear thinking about.
We obviously need a Police drone squadron and launch an air-to-air attack on the enemy drones. I can't believe they've not done this yet. Just think; Robot wars style 'in house' police drones wearing new lockheed-martin lightweight drone lasers. Obviously streamed live on YouTube with aptly named call-signs to identify each plod drone. In fact; sign me up. I want to drive one!
just tell the people on the *(insert as appropriate) , that their plane is not leaving the gate, until the drone operator is found. Job done. zero police expenditure.
*stag/hen parties heading out for their beer'n'sex tours of Corfu/Ibiza/Malaga/Magaluf
*Scottish coach party with suspiciously little sun cream - heading to the Costas
*Rugby/Football/Hockey club "boys/girls on tour"
or even, just tell the holiday insurance firms what's going on, and what's losing them their money. then the problem will probably disappear all on its own.
Ahhh, the magical image of an insurance salesman repeatedly hitting a chav with a baseball bat and screaming "can I interest you in some life insurance??"
For a fairly long time people who like to think about these things have worried about how easy it is to launch a hugely asymmetric attack on critical infrastructure, with using-a-drone-to-close-an-airport being one pretty obvious approach (my previous favourite was lorry-full-of-explosives-under-M25-bridge-at-4am: you kill probably no-one but you shut the M25 for a few weeks or months).
Well, now someone has done just that, so now everyone knows how easy such attacks are. So it's no longer just people who like to play 'what if' games who know you can do this, but people who might like to fuck stuff up for real.
How much weight can drones carry? What does it take to blow a significant hole in the roof of a datacentre?
Why waste a drone attracting attention, unless you're wanting attention? Better to pop up every so often, just like they are here.
Also, why blow up a bridge, and not simply make them fall down randomly? The latter makes the government look worse than some nutter blowing something up.
Don't we pay an inordinate amount of money for an air force?
This is an aerial attach on UK critical infrastructure. Deploy the same tech as the RAF use to protect their airfields.
What? They don't have any tech to protect their airfields?
So why do we have to pay for the RAF if Russia can neutralize it with a dozen big drones?
As I posted above in response to a similar question:
What resources do you think the RAF has which are capable of dealing with a threat that is slow moving and doesn't go above about 800 feet?
What has the RAF got that can deal with what is essentially a mobile but ground-based threat?
Working out what specific frequencies(s) the a drone is using is difficult.
We're not talking about a single channel on 35Mhz, modern systems use frequency hopping and spread spectrum to reduce interference, you'd need to know all the frequencies that the hopping uses and the pattern. Also what band? 433Mhz, 459Mhz, 1.2Ghz, 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz can all be used and often switched between on the fly.
That being said, Spektrum DSMX protocol has been cracked and can be hijacked. Other systems are more robust.
First thing I would do is get a drone video receiver. If the person doing this is hiding and doesn't have line of sight to the craft, they will, most likely, be flying by video. If they're using off-the-shelf kit (likely) it will probably be on one of the standard 5.8 GHz video channels. Watch (and record) the pictures from the drone and follow it home. If the perp is careless, you may even get a pic of them.
Bullets are not magic. They are slowed down by air resistance. using a small, high-velocity round like a Nato 5.56mm or a slower, civilian .22LR, at the kind of steep angle required to shoot at drones (above about 35°) means the round will have shed all its muzzle energy before its reaches the ground again, about four miles away: it will be travelling at its terminal velocity—about as fast as if you'd dropped this tiny piece of jacketed lead from a plane. It might crack a window. It would sting like hell if it hit flesh. The chances of serious damage to thing or person is remote indeed. People in Crawley would be at far greater risk of being run over. (We're not talking about bigger bullets like 7.62mm or even .50-cal: they're just not necessary.)
As for the crippled drone, (a) every airport conducts routine runway sweeps for debris, and clearing up very obvious drone wreckage is hardly a chore compared with an airport shut for 24 hours, and (b) there are actually very few people exposed to the open air around the airport: the drones aren't flying over Horley or Crawley, they're flying—so we're told—over vast swathes of unoccupied runway and threshold.
The props of a drone are extremly vulnerable, and they are fragile. A few rounds through its blades will drop it like a sack of shit. Possibly the worst case is that the drone slews on the way down and hits a grounded plane. But these are not exactly parked wing to wing across the entire airport, they're mostly stuck at the jetways and on the ramps. That calls for some judgment about where to engage the drone; given the huge amount of open field space around Gatwick, this isn't a hard call to make, surely?
The arguments against using small-calibre rifles to shoot them down just do not stack up.
I am still dumbfounded that the idea of an anti-drone dropping a web-of-goo hasn't been fast-tracked. One big problem with bringing drones down is the risk of debris or an entire drone falling on a person or expensive kit. A way to get them down relatively slowly is ideal.
The answer is an anti-drone which flies above the offender, and dispenses a broad fan of quick-setting, expanding goo—like an insulating foam spray, but with more of a tendency to form threads. Enough of this gets sucked straight into the offender's props. On exposure to air it immediately begins setting. It goes from sprayed gloop to nasty, sticky, elasticky consistency in a few seconds and becomes really stiff after about 30 seconds. At first it is like entangling the props in spider's web, before getting increasingly thick and encumbering
You can picture the process. The enemy drone progressively loses prop motion and is forced down, but it is not simply deadweight: the landing, from a few hundred feet or so, is relatively soft.
(It would probably be possible to fire these things from the ground, as proximity-detonated splatter cartridges. But a drone dispenser would seem a practical first step.)
Forty, yes forty 'sightings' of the 'drones'. Not consumer drones, we are told, but 'large, industrial drones'. This was repeated throughout the incident.
Forty 'sightings', yet, during those forty 'sightings' nobody with a camera and a telephoto lens took a picture? Nobody said where the drone was, and directed, maybe a police helicopter/drone with infrared cameras to locate where is was going.
There was ONE video that reportedly showed 'the drone' but all it showed was something that looked like a DJI Phantom, which is NOT a large industrial drone. And we don't know where it was in relation to airport or whether is was one being used by the emergency services.
There were over 100,000 stranded passengers at Gatwick, plus all the staff and all the people in the surrounding area, yet no actual evidence of anything.
I also have doubts about what "industrial specification" means and what this craft might have been. If the person writing the statement knew their drones, it's fairly specific and there are a limited number of craft that such a description would cover. I suspect, however, that the person making the statement probably didn't know the subject and "industrial specification" probably means anything larger and more imposing looking than a DJI Phantom rather than a professional-use craft.
As a member of the multirotor (drone) flying community, I'd like to say the person doing this isn't representative of us. I don't know of anyone in our club who wouldn't grass the offender up if they knew who it was. I hope they are caught swiftly, made an example of by the law then sued into oblivion by the airport and airlines for their commercial losses. A court injunction prohibiting the person from owning or flying any kind of drone or model aircraft for life would also seem appropriate. The last thing that we, as a community, need is some knee jerk law passed because politicians and the Daily Mail think something has to be seen to be done. The things this person has done are already illegal under multiple laws. Those laws now need to be enforced severely and publicly.
I did wonder what rubber bullets, that Italian police used to be fond of using on English football fans would do to A: the drone, B: whatever they hit when they missed.
Presumably they are non-lethal but would they cause enough damage to the drone.
I would also assume that military helicopter pilots would be fine with the risk of having a drone flying at them - considering they've been intentionally used to trick missiles into flying at them rather than aircraft carriers.
OK let's say you come up with a safe and foolproof method of taking the drone(s) down - you still don't know who/ how /why do you?
so all the perp does is move to another airfield and do it all over again, having proved the concept beyond doubt.
icon - obvs!
The drone doesn’t need an operator for control (it could be pre-programmed) but it does need one for battery charging. So we need an Eye in the Sky military drone to video the entire airfield and surrounding area, and when it appears you rewind the recording to find it’s origin.
Or when it appears we send up a fleet of drones for aerial combat. Drones could be deployed to different areas in readiness, or they could maintain continuous monitoring at close quarters, and follow the thing home.
What was the real cause of all of this?
A couple of ne-er do wells flying a drone (drones) in heavy downpours? Problems: the rain was so heavy at times, the drones would not have been able to fly, they were (it was) up for unfeasibly long time, these things are a lot less dangerous than you think. If they hit a windscreen at 400 miles an hour, they will probably scratch it. If they go through a turbine, you get confetti.
This is not much of an excuse for the blind panic that seized "the authorities" causing them to close the biggest airport in the far south of England for that long.
So what was the real reason? Conspiracy enthusiasts would really like to know!
Why don't they simpy feed the datastream from accoustic sensors, signal triangulation, radar, lidar, IR and optical sensors on ground-based and high-altitude observation platforms into a neural network trained to detect drones, and present the results as tracks on a map?
Then all they have to do is go to the take-off point, tazer the operator and take control of the drone, or if they are not there, vaporize it with a laser or microwave beam. Job done, what is so difficult about that?
OK I am joking, but some of these elements could be developed to protect airports and other key installations from drones in the future?
"All they'd have to do is fly it into the rotor blades – or into the glass canopy protecting the pilots."
And would they be able to? I mean I'd expect the helicopter to make such a mess in the air flow that the drones would end up in somersaults. That is if the helicopter comes from above. I doubt the drones can fly as high so a copter coming from above might be able to catch the drones into a net without actually dropping anything to the ground.
Of opening the door on most lightweight helicopters. A story from NZ of analysis of a fatal crash of a Hughes 500 helicopter reckons a pair of overtrousers flew out of the cabin through an open door and into the tail rotor, stalling it and causing the crash. There are lots of reports of doors opening by themselves on flights of Hughes 500 helicopters.
Sure if its a big old Apache with a side gunner then for it, but for net throwing from a small one you want to be very careful. For a start what if your net gets tangled in one of the rotors?
Be careful out there.
It's been mentioned on here before but it will do no harm to revisit it. In 1942, when Britain had been at war for 3 years, the German Navy sailed most of its navy out of French ports in the Bay of Biscay, through the Channel and up the North Sea to home ports in Germany. While this 2 day voyage was going on, the British largely did nothing. And the reason for that inaction was the usual British disease of smugness; and infighting.
It will have been the same during the 2 days a drone has brought Gatwick to a halt. The warnings over the years about drones will have been ignored; that's the smug bit. We've had drones for 10 years or more, even the kind of idiot that rises to the top in British military and civil service institutions could have foreseen that problems were looming. But smugness would have been their comfort. "If it ever happens, old boy, they'll probably crash or something, get eaten by birds or simply fail to find the airport. And if it does, I'll send Barkiss down there with me Purdey to take the bastards out. Nothing to worry about, old chap, must be lunch time now surely?"
At the airport, the management will have been transfixed because no one has told them what to do or what to do it with. After all you don't get multi-million pound salaries for making decisions, well, definitely none that can be traced back to you. The police will be trying to find the right crime code on their reporting system while all the time saying it's the job of the RAF surely and advising that until they get a human rights decision from the CPS their hands are tied. The Army will be saying they could bring an artillery unit down in a week or so - probably get one back from Germany or something - and that'll be that. The RAF would help but they don't really want anything to do with drones, "No pilots, you see, not our sort of thing, old boy".
And all the various services will have stood around, each waiting for the other to take ownership of the problem so they can immediately start to brief against them on the grounds that they told them their plan wouldn't work and only a fool would have ever contemplated doing that.
Whoever the idiot with the drone is, he should have waited until early Sunday morning (like the Germans in 1942). If he'd done that, he could probably have shut Gatwick down until the new year. Pretty much anybody at any kind of senor level in British political, military or public service life will have been long gone for the Christmas break by the time Sunday rolls round.
In case it helps, the contact number for the West Sussex Council's Resilience and Emergencies team is 033 022 22400. Resilience and Emergencies advisers are on call 24 hours a day. Apparently.
>>While this 2 day voyage was going on, the British largely did nothing. And the reason for that inaction was the usual British disease of smugness; and infighting.
Absolute drivel. There is not a shred of evidence to support your claim of "smugness" and "infighting"! I suggest you might want to actually read about the subject you're wittering about before spouting this nonsense. The Wikipedia article is a good start - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Dash
I saw the opportunity to get a Demolition Man line in and I took it. With that said, why not send a drone up to take it / them down? If there isn't a drone in the army capable of doing this I'd be very surprised. I'm not talking about a heavily armed military drone but anything capable of heavy lifting able to hook it or snag it and pull it to a waiting plod would do. I don't understand the "debris might cause issues" excuse. Given what they're going to lose in terms of business and through compensation I think they could afford to pay a few people to go and thoroughly clean up any debris.
Perhaps you should have read all of the comments. If the thing(s) are radio controlled, it's likely to be in the 2.4GHz range which is incredibly busy, making it difficult to identify which radio signal is controlling it. 2. It could be on a pre-programmed flight path which requires no radio control input.
Interesting. I've read a lot of comments suggesting drone mounted shotgun, my thought is what would the rapid ejection of several grams of lead do to the poor bugger carrying it? My guess is it would send the thing spinning out of control and potentially damage it. The video looks pretty heavy on special effects, I assume your post was tongue in cheek.
Edit: Having read one of your other replies, I'm assuming my assumption was correct. Double assumption!
Also the gun sound reminds me of a unit from Command & Conquer: Red Alert. I forget which one!
Why haven't they launched an attack drone with a shotgun, radio triangulation equipment, nets, air-to-air guided missiles, a high powered laser, nuclear warhead, grappling hook and bird of prey?? Isn't it obvious? It's so simple toddler could have hunted it down within an hour. It's clearly a cover-up.
Fly another drone straight into it? For the future develop a fast flying drone with a an infrared camera to lock onto the offending drone. All it would need would be a hanging wire and to fly close over it. The real problem, however, is readily detecting the offenders. Could a drone lock onto the signal and locate them?
um, couple of thoughts....so called police routinely break the law every day, it's a job requirement...so that is hardly an excuse.
they don't cause a problem in places like Iraq and afghanistan, they shoot them down all the time...i suspect more likely arguments going on whether to deploy that tech as plenty of journalists about and they don't want known how advanced their tech is....
why no photos of this drone? surely somebody should have got some pics by now with a super duper lense?
just leaves me with very uneasy suspicion something bigger going on here that we're not being told about....
..and if you can't, use this as an opportunity to discover the reasons why.
Police follow leads. Before the police, people used to follow trails .. back into the midst of time where some creature would follow some other creature for some reason. Following is an evolutionary trait. The only hi-tech solution needed here is the ability to follow it.
I know the reason for the delays on blocking the signal, they wanted to track it, however, the likely hood of tracking it is possibly worse than finding a needle in a hay stack. I used to teach radio and radar etc and with digital a micro second burst of RF sets the action, so to find the signal is very remote (no pun intended) so really blocking is the only course of action OR putting a very continuous action so for example sending it away with a signal of about 10 watts could see the thing going so high that the machine cannot be seen and just runs out of juice or of course down so it crashes. a direction signal will just make the thing go around and around. For my bet it is best to transmit a high power signal that sends it up. All these machines that are purchased have the same digital parameters so unless it is a very clever and stupid person that builds the thing himself the methodology will be the same for all.
Get with UK authorities, you probably will not track it but sure as hell you can jam the machines.
There are two reasons that the Police (and others) didn't take down the drones:
1. There weren't any to start with - it was a total clusterfuck from start to finish; and
2. Had there been drones they were too stupid to think of obvious ways to bring down drones.
As Drones do have a significant potential use as attack weapons, carrying explosives say, then authorities do need to have designed ways to manage the risk. Drones are small and light, and probably have a negligible radar signature, so some form of optical spotting is probably needed. Shotgun or shotgun like weapons are the best use, using single projectiles (except maybe at long range) would seem an exercise in futility. So start with people armed with shotguns. Second attack the controls frequencies, and that would be pretty easy to saturate and block. And pre-programmed flight paths would be far less of a threat.
Finally, spoof attacks can be, as this demonstrate, highly disruptive, so well designed programs to sort out if there is a real attack and threat would be another obvious development.
A professional shot-gunner would have no trouble taking out the drone. And the article is wrong about spent shot representing a hazard as anyone who has been down-range on a shoot will testify.
The forward motion of the shot (where the destructive speed is involved) is exhausted in the upward arc and by the time it starts falling is pretty much gone... if it wasn't the shot would carry on travelling on the leading edge of it's parabola, but no matter once it peaks, the speed is gone - and it starts to fall, losing forward momentum all the time. Spent shot, in such a situation, is a rain of tiny pellets (mostly steel now-a-days), no worse than - and in my experience, much less than - a hailstorm. - Been there, done that.
I would have thought the answer was reasonably simple; armed counter-drone. Track signal, identify offending drone. Then using an anti-drone equipped with a lightweight double barrelled shotgun, closely pursue intruder to outside airport perimeter and shoot down.
Using an aerospace material (Titanium) for barrel, breech and some form of composite for the firing mechanism the payload for an Anti-drone need not be more than the weight of a high definition camera.
Or of course you could buy in the Israeli's 'Drone Dome' https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israeli-firm-unveils-Drone-Dome-that-defends-against-aerial-attacks-450915
Professional services exist which mostly concentrate on tracking devices that small accurately and deploying drones with nets to catch the devices. AFAIK the leader of such devices is British https://www.dronedefence.co.uk/
Ended up spitting out my coffee when the head of Gatwick said that the technology to stop drone attacks wasn't available yet. Such audacity in ignorance.
Monday 7 Jan: New anti-drone legislation announced (whether it will ever happen is a different question).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46787730
Tuesday 8 Jan: Just to make sure the message gets through, Heathrot airport is closed by reports of a drone sighting:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46803713
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