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Gatwick Airport: Drone sightings cause delays
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoThese big commercial drones have been easily available for, what, 5+ years? And people have been talking about an attack like this for at least as long. It's absolutely mind boggling that we don't have any way of dealing with this other than sending police officers out on the street to see if they can spot a dodgy-looking individual holding a drone controller. Flights have been cancelled for 15 hours and counting now. I hear some prisons have electronic defences against drones, why not one of the busiest airports in the world?
- bencoveney 8y agoAssuming the prison system uses signal blocking, my uninformed guess would be that there would be concerns about it interfering with flight systems.
- simias 8y agoI'm not sure what type of electronic defences you have in mind but if it's jammers I assume that it's a lot easier to deploy those in the relatively quiet, well bounded and controlled environment of a prison and much more difficult in a very large airport hosting thousands of people and companies using thousands of devices. I think people want their cell phones and wi-fi to work correctly within the airport. And of course you don't want to risk messing with the electronics inside the planes. If you play the thought experiment of "how could somebody kill many people easily and without requiring a lot of money" unfortunately you'll find that it's pretty damn easy. You have to find a balance between avoiding attacks and preserving freedom.
- dingaling 8y ago> why not one of the busiest airports in the world? Is it mandated by law? No, so they're not going to pay for it.
- vizzah 8y agoDoes drone need back-to-home signal when flying on a pre-defined route? I guess it only needs GPS and that is what might need to be jammed to stop it from following the course.. but how you jam GPS in the sky? hmm.. I also wonder how many drones are actually there as one would only fly for, how long, less than 1 hour? before battery is dead? If it returns to the base, it shouldn't take 10 sherlock holmes to track it?
- rogerthis 8y agoSome don't even need GPS, just an inertial measurement unit onboard.
- Leherenn 8y agoI highly doubt there's a commercial drone out there capable of doing that for more than a few seconds. And if there's one, the cost of the IMU alone would be a pretty strong deterrent against what just happened.
- angry_octet 8y agoIt is perfectly fine to fly without GPS, it isn't part of the control loop. You can navigate with a compass and a clock, it just has increasing errors. Many systems for resetting drift using SLAM techniques, or star observation at night in country areas.
- sgroppino 8y agoYou can jam GPS, but then it'll probably mean planes can't fly, either...
- subway 8y agoPlanes already can't fly if the drone is in the air...
- icebraining 8y agoPlanes can fly without GPS.
- sol_invictus 8y agoThe title feels like a big understatement. Huge damages done with an extremely easily accessible attack surface and cheap means of conducting an attack. Good times ahead for anti-drone technology manufacturers.
- krona 8y agoAnd falconers, the far cheaper option.
- dewey 8y agoBigger drones are not that much more expensive though and probably won’t get attacked by a bird after a certain size.
- Chris2048 8y agoAnd makers of falcon Armour (TM).
- adrianN 8y agoTrained falcons are probably not particularly cheap.
- bogle 8y agoThe Dutch police are training eagles. The article is some 3 years old but is now trending on the BBC News website, for some reason.
- misterdata 8y agoThey have actually stopped that programme. https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/politie-stopt-met-inzetten-van-drone-roofvogels-en-snuffelratten~a4f1f967/ https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/politie-stopt-met-inzetten-van-...
- bogle 8y agoThanks for the update. It did seem like a bit of an unlikely prospect.
- arethuza 8y agoI wonder how they reliably identify something as a drone and not some birds? Edit: I wouldn't have thought you'd be able to hear a drone (airports being somewhat noisy) and at night it must be pretty tricky to reliably identity one and I haven't seen any pictures or videos?
- kortilla 8y agoAll birds file flight plans with the FAA after the Sully mishap.
- Sharlin 8y agoThat doesn’t help much at Gatwick though.
- moonbug 8y agoBinoculars.
- entity345 8y agoIn this case they quite simply saw the drones... It seems to be the most common way of identifying them.
- joncrocks 8y agoIt's probably good to note that this was at 9pm, at night, coming up on the shortest day of the year. So while it's possible they were seen, it's not going to be as cut and dry as during the day.
- entity345 8y agoI have read the article, which mentions that the drones were "seen" and "spotted flying over the perimeter fence", that the runways were closed due to "further sightings". So...
- 8y ago
- aaron695 8y ago> Police say drones are a "deliberate" act to disrupt flights at Gatwick Airport, but say there's nothing to suggest terrorism, as hunt to find operator continues Ummmm that's the exact definition of terrorism. Scare people disproportionately. Possibly one of the most damaging drone terrorist acts so far? 13+ hours later still unable to stop it? They make it to easy.
- rdl 8y agoIf they can't shut this down in ~2 hours, MOD/IC signals services should be fired. You can go for kinetic kills against the drone (shotgun if low, something more expensive if it's larger/higher), but should be able to find/fix/finish the transmitter fairly easily with equipment I'd hope national-level police would have, but certainly could get from the military (along with operators) in something of this severity. Plus the full range of commercial anti-drone companies, some of which are based in Europe (a couple in UK I think).
- gambiting 8y agoUnless, of course, the drone had a pre-programmed flight path. Then there is no signal to track. You'd need to find out where it landed, probably by scanning through every possible CCTV camera in the area(which no doubt the Police are doing).
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoExactly. I seriously doubt there is some guy standing at the airport fence with a handheld controller. This thing has GPS coordinates programmed in advance.
- cstross 8y agoPer other news reports, kinetic kills were ruled out because of unacceptable risk of bullets/shells hitting something they shouldn't — the whole of South-East England is populated at a density that Americans would call suburbia. (All of England is only one and a half times as large as Greater Los Angeles County: lots of small towns, villages, and homes in the vicinity of Gatwick.) I'm surprised they don't have specialist anti-drone transmitters, but as Police spending in England and Wales has been cut by over 30% since 2010, maybe it wasn't seen as a priority. Tracking down the operators should be possible, but this looks like a well-planned attempt to shut down the airport: whoever is behind it probably planned to move around in order to evade the Airport Police.
- deadbunny 8y ago> whoever is behind it probably planned to move around in order to evade the Airport Police. If it were me and I wasn't using a preprogrammed route I'd just set up a transceiver that either replays or relays controls. Hide it in a bush and be on the other side of the country while everything is going off.
- bdz 8y agoI wonder if there will be drone hunter jobs in the future. Or are already? Also how do you even shoot down a drone? Netguns? Laser? Frequency jamming?
- ddalex 8y agoIf I'd be asked to develop technology for this, I'd look at a building a directional EMP gun. Frequency jamming won't work if the drone is flying autonomously (waypoint following is trivial). Netguns have limited range (how do you shoot something up 200m in the air?). Laser is not powerful enough, or, it it is, it's very dangerous to those in vicinity. Directional EMP pulse that disables the electronics seems the best bet.
- bencollier49 8y agoThe police don't want to fire bullets. Even directional EMP sounds a bit on the dodgy side at an airport.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoOr radar. Wouldn't a military-grade radar be able to essentially fry a drone if focused at close range?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- DerekRobot 8y agoAt least in amateur radio, antennas too close can damage a radio if they're on the same band. I've heard the F-18's radar can kill animals. AFAIK, most drones use 2.4Ghz radios, or just pure wifi.
- wongarsu 8y agoIf I would be asked to develop technology for this I would buy an Iron Beam [1] system and call it a day. Iron Beam is basically a laser weapon for destroying short range rockets with 4-second laser bursts. It would make short work of any drones and I can skip the research and development skip. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Beam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Beam
- tim333 8y agoYou'd think someone could just hop in a Cessna 150 or similar and take the drones out by bashing into them. I learnt to fly in one of those and it would be great fun as long as someone else fixed the dents in the propeller. The minimum speed is about 45mph so it wouldn't do the sort of damage you'd get with a large jet hitting. I guess really you'd want to bash them with the landing gear for minimum plane damage. Or even tow a net.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoI'd be more inclined to go for something twin-engined, but I guess I must be less of a thrill seeker than you ;)
- tim333 8y agoGuess I was thinking of the cost. At a quick glance a C150 is about £99/hr and a twin £350 which is quite a lot to take out a stupid drone. Though I see the police seem to be mucking about in fancy helicopters at the moment.
- tsukikage 8y agoCompared to the amount of cash being lost every hour that all of Gatwick stays nonfunctional these don't seem like significant sums.
- sago 8y agoEven a modest hobby drone is much more manoeuverable than the Air Force's most nimble fighter. I really don't fancy your chances of piloting a Cessna 150 into one.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoIf it's GPS programmed then its flight should be predictable; if it's locally controlled (line of sight) the control signal should be easy to triangulate; if it's distally controlled, eg video feed, then the feed should be traceable?
- Chris2048 8y agoI'm imagining a "catch the pidgeon" / keystone cops scenario here.
- peteretep 8y agoThis drone operator has probably created good in the long run, as much as I wouldn't want to be stuck in Gatwick right now. This is going to lead to actual action being taken by the airport operators, one would think. Almost worth a false-flag operation by MI5 given that (presumably) nobody is going to get hurt this time, and it will almost certainly lead to better defenses.
- cjrp 8y agoMPs trying to pass a law requiring mandatory backdoors for police control of drones in 3.. 2..
- quickthrower2 8y agoThen crims won’t buy those drones. But they’ll appreciate the backdoors in other people’s drones. But yes I can see such a law passing. Aussies can help UK draft it.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoOr the criminals are caught via Facebook/ISP/smartphone and mandatory backdoors will make future incidents resolvable within seconds ... could be a Five Eyes win to get encryption backdoors. #tinfoil
- mnw21cam 8y agoFor an idea of some of the damage that can be caused to an aircraft hitting a drone, this [0] was just a few days ago. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fts9u5ND24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fts9u5ND24
- yakshaving_jgt 8y agoOnly thing that'll stop a bad guy with a drone is a good guy with a drone.
- angry_octet 8y agoCounter-drones? With nets? Shotguns? Polymer filament glue? Drones on CAP around airports? (I'm thinking cyborg titanium falcons, à la the Rat-Things in Snow Crash.) Given the cost of delaying operations at a major airport for even an hour, it can't be too long before some legislation promising violent penalties, and allowing drone takedown. (What happens at Ben Gurion International? They also had to shut down all flight ops. http://www.thedrive.com/aerial/17918/israels-ben-gurion-airport-grounds-all-flights-due-to-intrusive-drone http://www.thedrive.com/aerial/17918/israels-ben-gurion-airp... )
- angry_octet 8y agoSo far, up to 3 days of interruption, 650/720 flights cancelled. Even assuming smaller planes with ~200 passengers, a modest cost per day of $300 (nonrefundable hotel bookings, accom for stuck passengers, taxi fees, etc): 200×650×900 = 117,000,000 And I think this is an underestimate, because those passengers still have to fly eventually, possibly on other carriers. By the time it's done, could be $500M. I wonder if they have been asked to pay a ransom?
- farmerinthecity 8y agoMaybe deploy a very fast drone that's purpose built to hunt down other drones. It could 'lock' on to the target drone via some combination of image recognition and operator input, and then deploy some kind of netting/arresting functionality when within close range. Sounds like a fun project.
- darkhorn 8y agoThere should be at least 2 escort drones just in case the illegal drones attacks back.
- ralphhughes 8y agoI'm surprised this isn't higher on HN given the tech nature of the attack. Gatwick is one of the busiest airports in the UK and having flights suspended for 24 hours is major disruption. A few quotes from the BBC's live incident page at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-sussex-46564814 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-sussex-46564814 "An airline source has told the BBC that flights are currently cancelled until at least 19:00 GMT" "Police have made a formal request to the MoD for military assistance to deal with the Gatwick incident. A defence source would not go into any detail of what that support would entail." "The Prime Minister's spokesman said a cross-Whitehall meeting of officials is taking place in response to the drone incident. The meeting of officials, but not ministers, is taking place in the Cabinet Office and began at 15:00, the spokesman said. Officials from the Department for Transport, Home Office, the police and the Civil Contingencies Secretariat are among those involved in the meeting."
- jeffwass 8y agoAgreed, I’m surprised at the HN relative silence because there are so many other drone stories that warrant such HN attention. In this case all flights from Gatwick (the next busiest London airport after Heathrow) have been cancelled for nearly 24 hours. That’s 110k passengers on 760 flights during one of the busiest travel periods of the year!
- 3chelon 8y agoI can understand they're wary of flying any manned aircraft near them to take them out, but I can't understand why they haven't yet deployed a fleet of suicide drones to knock them out of the sky? Is there something we're all missing here?
- 3chelon 8y agoActually, thinking about this, I'd assumed the drones must be autonomous or controlled via cellular networks, to make them harder to trace or jam. But now I'm thinking they're being controlled via more standard remote frequencies, and they're being left there while the authorities home in on them. That's the only explanation I can come up with for not having taken them out by now.
- randomsearch 8y agoHow has this gone on for so long? AFAIK most drones can’t fly for long periods without recharging/refuelling. Makes no sense.