'Peregrine falcon'-style drone swarms could help defend UK against Gatwick copycat attacks The British government has funded 18 anti-drone projects as part of its £2m push to stop a repeat of the Gatwick drone fiasco of 2018 – including a friendly drone swarm that will employ "peregrine falcon attack strategies" to down errant unmanned flying things. Among the ideas that have scooped up to £800,000 each in funding …
Now, now. The correct term is military industrial complex, which we were warned about by an American president, who happened to be a former general. Just because it's rooted in an economic entanglement with the Pentagon doesn't mean that every American is so overjoyed to be protected in that way.
And don't forget that old economic trope about the demand, which to some degree pulls in every country that buys military hardware, though I have to admit that all kinds top-heavy markets involve some degree of bully factor.
And, then there are the ones want to stop it with some non-western military industrial complex, pitting weapons against weapons. Oh, yes, you did point that out.
I just want to help us get the labels right. But then, we don't live in a world where a balanced, non-polarized view can have much voice. Oh, well. Can't wait to see what way the votes go, as I have yet to be able to predict such things.
> When an intruder drone is spotted, normal flights in the area are put on hold whilst the seek-and-destroy squadron swarms out and kills the interloper.
And when they can't find it (because it's imaginary, after all), they'll get frustrated, so the scenario becomes "When an intruder drone is spotted, normal flights in the area are put on hold whilst the seek-and-destroy squadron swarms out and kills the flights on hold."
If the "bad actor" drones are preprogrammed (no signals to interfere with) and in large numbers then, bar EMP (which would nobble the defensive drones & much else) the defence drones are fighting a losing battle (especially if preprogrammed drones have plenty of unpredictability in their movements (not a nice predictable straight line)
"Among the successful bidders were defence multinationals BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Thales and MBDA,"
Why are companies like this getting funding? This is just the type of project they should be working on anyway because there are customers out there waiting for these solutions and willing to pay. The fear is already in place, they just need a product to sell to allay the fear.
So, since they are getting MoD funding for the R&D, does this mean once a product is developed, the MoD will get royalties based on the funding? Or discounted prices to claw back the funding?
"The fear is already in place"
Funny that is the the first thought I had reading the first paragraph. And then reading there is some tall cash being offered for solutions...
An incident, that may or may not have really happened has now generated a "security need" which is being funded by the same group who declared the incident in the first place.
Cause ~ instill fear
Effect ~ play on that fear ~ Profit!
if I was a conspiracy freak, I would be certain that the Gatwick fiasco was a plot by BAE and other drone manufacturers to spread FUD. In other words, plant a drone, and watch it germinate, in the meantime, busy-busying to provide a perfect, long-term solution to this phantom menace.
that said, those drones in Saudi Arabia were, allegedly real. Perhaps we should watch out, post-brexit, you know, them pesky, continental "friends"...
The Dutch tried using eagles to control drones, but it turned out that the eagles were almost impossible to train.
It seems like getting them up to terminal velocity helps make the landing more survivable for them!
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/11/domestic-cats-can-fall-from-any-height-with-a-remarkable-survival-rate/
So you need to make sure your cat-a-pults are up to the job.
The biggest problem I can foresee is actually the injury rate to the poor 'handlers' that have to load them into the cat-a-pults! Those poor people will end up suffering quite a blood loss on the average day!
Not only that but peregrins swoop down from above at very high speed, I have seen a Peregrin take a pigeon out of the sky and hit the ground with it before grabbing it again and taking off for a meal.
So swarms of Peregrin bots hovering over airports to negate drone incursions makes excellent sense, no?
My preference would be to clone Colin Furze and station Furzebots around airports on the ground armed with potato cannon, fit a grill on the end of the barrel so that the potatoes come out as chips achieving a shotgun effect. The chips that missed would be environmentally friendly and rot away or feed passing seagulls........ no wait
If they can be silly, so can I, can I have my money in Euros please?
So we are designing drones to combat other drones, when those other drones were never there in the first place? Obviously something like the Gatwick incident could happen, but do we really need authorities to obsess about it to this extent, considering that they said that it basically never happened?
The first, and best, forum for IT ornithologists.
I'm listening to awful fireworks, scaring animals for no good reason. New Year in Amsterdam, 1999, and I passed a tree full of terrified parrots. The Dutch are really violent with their fireworks, they fire them at each other.
The Guy Fawkes mask from the Alan Moore graphic novel 'V For Vendetta' is now synonymous with protesters, but purely by chance.
It was first used at a protest about 15 years ago by Anonymous, protesting against Scientology outside a London court. To hide their identities because Scientology is OCD evil.
Alan Moore was very proud when he heard, even though he hated the movie. It was utterly accidental though. I knew the comic and recognised the mask so I asked the protesters if they knew it's providence. They didn't, hadn't heard of V For Vendetta, just chose it because a local shop was selling them cheaply.
It is a very good comic book.
Apparently Fawkes would have blown up the whole of Westminster, the district not just the palace.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/11/guy-fawkess-misunderstood-legacy/601336/
If the Falcon has a large Brillo pad in each claw , it could tangle two rotors. Taking out two rotors on the same side should be enough ( so it cannot fly on chinook style) but “controlling”where it come so down still a problem.
Another thought - the magnets inside a disk drive are very powerful (disassemble one and “Ouch!”) would that be enough to disrupt the flight control electronics?
There's a real asymmetry to the cost and complication of the problem and the solution.
I can buy, online, the parts to build a drone for a few hundred quid. A drone I could preprogram to launch, fly north 1000m, loiter for five minutes, fly west 1000m and ditch in the lake/river/woods/other place nobody will find it. No remote control needed, no GPS needed. Nothing to jam. If the loiter location was over the main runway at ($airport), how long would that put the airport out of action? Or, put another way, how many times would I have to drive by in a pickup and repeat this action with next to no chance of being spotted to bring the airport to a standstill at ($holidaytime)? Hypothetically?
Realistically the only way to combat this is some kind of directional EMP, if such a thing exists. And in any case, against any kind of organised group or even single person doing this you'd be playing wack-a-drone potentially for weeks. The only other thing you could do is some kind of blanket CCTV surveillance of the surrounding areas, but how far out do you go? Drones can fly FAST, which means they can fly far. The perp could launch from a moving vehicle conceivably MILES out from the target loiter point, and the drone could leave said vehicle extremely fast, making your window of opportunity to connect the one with the other a matter of a couple of seconds, if that.
To be honest, I'm amazed nobody has done it already.
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