Nutters, Drones, Cranes and Chaos.

FocusZing

A Sussex Police spokesman said: "Police at Gatwick Airport are continuing to assist airport security teams following a number of reports and sightings of drones in the vicinity of the airfield overnight on Wednesday and Thursday.

"The first report was made shortly after 21:00 GMT. Officers were deployed on to the airfield and surrounding areas and were joined by a National Police Air Service helicopter in seeking the drones and the operators."

bout 10,000 passengers have suffered disruption after the runway at Gatwick Airport was closed due to drones being flown nearby.

Flights in and out of the West Sussex airport were suspended at about 21:00 GMT on Wednesday after two of the devices were seen near the airfield.

Gatwick announced the runway had reopened at about 03:00 today, but 45 minutes later it was shut again after a further sighting of drones.

Chris Woodroofe, Gatwick's chief operating officer, said drones had been spotted over the airport as late as 07:00 GMT.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-engl ... x-46564814


That's a couple of million quid down the drain for the airlines. Incidents are getting to be more are more frequent now, airports are going to start requiring air defence systems.

FishFish

The nutters are no different - just that they have an increased toolset.

bianchimoon

It seems ridiculous that they don’t have a police helicopter flying that can track this drone back to user every time it lands

robert88

bianchimoon wrote:

It seems ridiculous that they don’t have a police helicopter flying that can track this drone back to user every time it lands

It does. But there could be a good reason why they can't.

It does highlight how as an increasingly tech-driven, high velocity society we are increasingly dependent on mutual good will and a reluctance to sabotage things.

Like using the roads, we put a lot of faith into the belief that no one wants cause mayhem and nearly all of the time that is justified.

photonic69

Drone Wars? Surely a bigger, heavier drone could knock the other out of the sky?

Or even one fitted with Laser Cannons, Mini Air-2-Air Missiles and Shark's Teeth with added Claws etc....

Jez mon

Robert88 wrote:

bianchimoon wrote:

It seems ridiculous that they don’t have a police helicopter flying that can track this drone back to user every time it lands

It does. But there could be a good reason why they can't.

It does highlight how as an increasingly tech-driven, high velocity society we are increasingly dependent on mutual good will and a reluctance to sabotage things.

Like using the roads, we put a lot of faith into the belief that no one wants cause mayhem and nearly all of the time that is justified.

Surely depends on the size of drone, how close the police can comfortably get to the drone, how built up the area is.

orraloon

bianchimoon wrote:

It seems ridiculous that they don’t have a police helicopter flying that can track this drone back to user every time it lands

How many airports? How many helicopters? Setting aside the capital costs, £1,700 per hour flying time. The drones are out of the bottle.

Pross

I would guess that eventually they'll be able to have something that blocks the relevant frequencies near airports. It seems nuts that something so small can create such chaos and it's virtually impossible to prevent.

bianchimoon

Jez mon wrote:

Robert88 wrote:

bianchimoon wrote:

It seems ridiculous that they don’t have a police helicopter flying that can track this drone back to user every time it lands

It does. But there could be a good reason why they can't.

It does highlight how as an increasingly tech-driven, high velocity society we are increasingly dependent on mutual good will and a reluctance to sabotage things.

Like using the roads, we put a lot of faith into the belief that no one wants cause mayhem and nearly all of the time that is justified.

Surely depends on the size of drone, how close the police can comfortably get to the drone, how built up the area is.

Those tracking cameras on police helicopters seem pretty impressive when you see them on tv documentaries, they wouldn’t need to get too close if they could get a fix on one, whether they can due to lack of heat/visual signature is another matter?

bungle73

I think it's pretty clear now that this is not just some thoughtless fruitcake, it is a deliberate attempt to sabotage the airport.

shirley_basso

Why not use a fu*kin shooter?

capt_slog

^^^
I suppose it depends on the surroundings, I could see a shotgun working fine at my 'local' airport. I have no idea about Gatwick, but I'd imagine it's not a lot different once you've passed the security fencing.

orraloon

Effective range of a shotgun, shot type, circa 200 feet. If target drone is at 201 feet then... Wasn't there a news report recently of drone encountered at 30,000 feet or similar?

cougie

Shooting it out if the sky is a silly idea. You'd likely miss and cause more damage elsewhere.

Where was it that they'd trained hawks to take down the smaller drones ?

If this is a commercial one then you'd need a different method.

timothyw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrato ... t_injuries

That fairly neatly sums up why (trying to) shoot them down isn't such a great idea.

I'd have thought in due course some kind of counter-drone drone will become standard at airports, perhaps with some kind of entanglement device/net to bring down rogue drones as safely as possible, although I imagine you'd then need the bomb squad to investigate for potential booby traps on the device - either way a big headache.

bianchimoon

simple, you need some old drain and chimney pipes and hey presto you have a laser gun
https://defence-blog.com/army/russian-s ... r-gun.html

Wheelspinner

Clearly deliberate disruption, since AFAIK *all* drones sold have firmware coding for GPS coordinates of the "no fly" zones around airports and other major infrastructure.

Basically you can fly them up to a virtual brick wall and they just stop at that perimeter.

Anything inside that therefore must have been hacked to bypass that.

Find the owner/pilot and charge the first few you catch with "terrorism" and 25 year jail terms and there may be a bit of a rethink by the tw@ts that do this. Same applies to the idiots with laser pointers aimed at incoming aircraft.

Jez mon

Wheelspinner wrote:

Clearly deliberate disruption, since AFAIK *all* drones sold have firmware coding for GPS coordinates of the "no fly" zones around airports and other major infrastructure.

Basically you can fly them up to a virtual brick wall and they just stop at that perimeter.

Anything inside that therefore must have been hacked to bypass that.

Find the owner/pilot and charge the first few you catch with "terrorism" and 25 year jail terms and there may be a bit of a rethink by the tw@ts that do this. Same applies to the idiots with laser pointers aimed at incoming aircraft.

Not to stereotype but I think there's probably a large overlap between the group of people into drones, and the group of people who would 'hack' into the firmware.

bompington

I know next to nothing about drones, but presumably it can't be that hard just to disable the GPS? Or are they set up to refuse to fly without an accurate GPS fix?

capt_slog

TimothyW wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire#Falling-bullet_injuries

That fairly neatly sums up why (trying to) shoot them down isn't such a great idea.

I'd have thought in due course some kind of counter-drone drone will become standard at airports, perhaps with some kind of entanglement device/net to bring down rogue drones as safely as possible, although I imagine you'd then need the bomb squad to investigate for potential booby traps on the device - either way a big headache.

Shotguns don't behave that way. The 'bullets' are 200-300 little balls of lead (shot) per load and around 2mm usually. If you get hit with any coming down, you feel it but don't normally get damage.

As said though, they have a short effective range. This makes them very useful if the drone is close enough because you don't have worry too much about the backstop, especially if shooting into the airfield, but useless if its not close enough.

laurentian

Guy on the radio this morning said that it is possible to block the signal used to control drones but the problem is that it is "indiscreet" meaning that all other gps signals etc in the area would be compromised.

The worrying thing with this is that it's been going on since yesterday - report on the 1pm news of a drone STILL flying above/around the runway - if you were doing this for a bit of "fun" (poor choice of word there), surely you'd see it on the news, know that you've caused a major problem and quit while you're ahead. Whoever is doing it appears to have a far more sinister agenda

darkhairedlord

laurentian wrote:

Guy on the radio this morning said that it is possible to block the signal used to control drones but the problem is that it is "indiscreet" meaning that all other gps signals etc in the area would be compromised.

The worrying thing with this is that it's been going on since yesterday - report on the 1pm news of a drone STILL flying above/around the runway - if you were doing this for a bit of "fun" (poor choice of word there), surely you'd see it on the news, know that you've caused a major problem and quit while you're ahead. Whoever is doing it appears to have a far more sinister agenda

You could hide a number of them around the area programmed to take off and whizz around the airport for a bit then go and hide again. half a dozen could keep this up all week, if you were a nation-state out to cause maximum economic impact while maintaining plausible denability.

timothyw

That would depend on them having the capacity to recharge themselves in some fashion (be it landing on a wireless charger or whatever) as drones typically can't last more than half an hour on a charge.

Not impossible though by any stretch.

bungle73

Apparently the police have requested "military assistance" from the MoD. No details on what that actually means though.

bendertherobot

Bungle73 wrote:

Apparently the police have requested "military assistance" from the MoD. No details on what that actually means though.

They're going to use their "unique capabilities" according to Gavin Williamson. Which means either that they have them or he has no idea what they're going to do.

verylonglegs

Given the MoD use drones you would like to think they've looked in to ways to counteract them too.

trivial_poursuivant

bendertherobot wrote:

Bungle73 wrote:

Apparently the police have requested "military assistance" from the MoD. No details on what that actually means though.

They're going to use their "unique capabilities" according to Gavin Williamson. Which means either that they have them or he has no idea what they're going to do.

We can scan the entire RF spectrum and see anything that's transmitting on all the frequencies and where exactly they are transmitting from so DF (direction finding) the culprits. It's more for the tech we have that can pick out any mobile phone position. Most civvy drones (don't confuse these with military drones they are mostly UAVs than a small remote controlled toy) work off a regular UHF & SHF channel which is very easy to intercept plus the higher the Freq the more power is required so the easier it is to trace to a particular place.

Matthewfalle

all the talk here of shooting the thing down. this bloke turned up earlier.

https://mobile.twitter.com/PeterHarley2 ... 04/photo/1

lets put it this way, he ain't part of the 5-0.

i don't want to be drone dude when they find him.

Matthewfalle

Bungle73 wrote:

Apparently the police have requested "military assistance" from the MoD. No details on what that actually means though.

i thought all the military assistancers were helping with no deal brexit?
someone's going to be getting a lot of TOIL.

trivial_poursuivant

Matthewfalle wrote:

all the talk here of shooting the thing down. this bloke turned up earlier.

https://mobile.twitter.com/PeterHarley2 ... 04/photo/1

lets put it this way, he ain't part of the 5-0.

i don't want to be drone dude when they find him.

Takes a brave man who authorizes the use of weapons to shoot down a drone over a civilian populated area. Bear in mind how high these things can actually fly not sure what you could actually use anyway.

timothyw

At this stage it would seem wrong to assume that they are being controlled, frankly - if it was a question of jamming/identifying radio control signals then that could surely have been done by now.

So they could still be getting controlled via cellular (as I've not heard anything about mobile phones being turned off) or they could simply be preprogrammed - the drone flies over the runway, returns to a rendezvous, gets a battery, flies over the runway, goes to the next rendezvous, etc - you don't need direct control to get it to do that.

Most obvious assistance the military can offer would be guns and other weapons that might disable the drones, and armoured craft that they might be more willing to commit to flying near these drones - military helicopters are designed to be shot at, after all - civilian helicopters not so much - along with their own perhaps more sophisticated drones.