Drone disruption at LGW

[Liam]

27 hours since our original take off time have passed....

[PMP]

The impact of drones has been well known for a good while hence there are some measures in place when this disruption occurs.

Geofencing has recently become widely used, however earlier 'MK1' drones weren't supplied with this software fitted so there will be some out there without this facility. The CAA in the UK as well as other countries were/are behind the curve as far as regulation and sales of these items in terms of tracking them

 

Drones are available RTR eg DJi types and others, but can also be scratch built from components available from normal RC aircraft outlets. A homebuild obviously won't have geofencing fitted, but like mobile phones a tech savy individual can disable geofencing software on RTR equipment.

 

These drones are small enough not to be visible on radar which is one of the big problems with them, and as TomE and hayfield mention the problem is with the illegal use of them, not the items themselves.

 

Armed police in public spaces such as airports? yes please.

[jjb1970]

On armed Police, it is one of those odd ironies given the normal perception of the USA and our traditional pride in having a Police force which does not carry guns that my quite a few of my American friends and colleagues who visit London for various reasons have commented that the presence of so many Police officers walking around in body armour and armed with machine pistols makes them feel very uncomfortable.

[PhilJ W]

I really can't believe its an amateur type of Drone like something you would buy from and commercial supplier as surely these would be picked up by monitoring equipment ( I'm presuming that a large airport would have that sort of thing in place) It was stated on the TV yesterday that there are devises that can disable drones from entering protected flight zones but it would appear that Gatwick do not have this tech in place. 

There is tech that can be used but there are ways of avoiding it. It is very easy to 'capture' a drone by taking over its control electronically but this is easily overcome by programming in a set of instructions for a pre-set course. Also this way the operator cannot be detected as there are no signals between him and the drone.

[Dunsignalling]

On armed Police, it is one of those odd ironies given the normal perception of the USA and our traditional pride in having a Police force which does not carry guns that my quite a few of my American friends and colleagues who visit London for various reasons have commented that the presence of so many Police officers walking around in body armour and armed with machine pistols makes them feel very uncomfortable.

I'd suspect the hardware carried by Police over here is considerably more accurate, and thus less likely to cause unintended casualties  than the 19th century technology evidently still beloved by many US officers.

 

John  

[ruggedpeak]

If, as the Army are said to think, it's too dangerous to despatch these devices using gunfire, some sort of miniaturised surface-air guided missile would seem to offer a solution. All the more effective if the target is made from metal.

 

If any of these drones have been "captured", it will be interesting to discover where they were made....

 

 

John

Shooting at a drone is like shooting at a flying bird e.g. pheasant, pigeon, grouse etc.

 

The weapons used by armed police do not generally include a shotgun, which is required to hit an airborne moving target. That and the associated clay pigeon type skills to hit them, which again I don't think armed police are trained in! Get the local farmers and shoots down there, they will soon blast them out of the sky!

[Dunsignalling]

Shooting at a drone is like shooting at a flying bird e.g. pheasant, pigeon, grouse etc.

 

The weapons used by armed police do not generally include a shotgun, which is required to hit an airborne moving target. That and the associated clay pigeon type skills to hit them, which again I don't think armed police are trained in! Get the local farmers and shoots down there, they will soon blast them out of the sky!

Trouble is, drones can fly high enough to be out of range of a shotgun.

 

John

[PMP]

theres no requirements for farmers or local shoots,(not withstanding the security elements that would need to be overcome), most airports have an in house capability fully licensed/trained and equipped for that kind of work.

[ruggedpeak]

Trouble is, drones can fly high enough to be out of range of a shotgun.

 

John

 

theres no requirements for farmers or local shoots,(not withstanding the security elements that would need to be overcome), most airports have an in house capability fully licensed/trained and equipped for that kind of work.

There is when there are drone operators are running around closing the airport and the police and army can't find them. Get all the local shotgun owners spread out in the land around Gatwick with permission to blast anything resembling a drone! Better chance of catching one taking off or landing.

[Liam]

We're now in a queue at Gate 12, and preparing to leave the airport, either by plane to Banjul or coach to somewhere else. But the good news is that today I have been on BBC Hereford and Worcester three times!

[pete_mcfarlane]

I always feel profoundly uncomfortable in UK airports and railway stations seeing police armed with what look, to my untrained eye, like machine guns (no idea what the correct technical term is - I have little interest in weapons). Quite how they think they can use those in a confined space full of innocent people is beyond me. Far from making me feel safer, they make me feel anxious.

 

 

Those weapons the police carry are semi-automatic, rather than machine guns, and can only fire single shots rather than bursts of fire. The bullets they fire are soft nosed and low velocity, which means they have a short range and will be stopped by the target's body rather than exiting the other side and hitting the person 50ft behind them as a 5.56mm round from a soldier's assault rifle would. So bad people will be hit by a small number of targeted rounds, rather than the police firing off their machine guns Schwarzenegger style.  

 

So yes, they do think they can fire them in an enclosed space full of people. 

[Trainshed Terry]

I personal feel that drones should have not been made available for the public to purchase as it was designed for miltray use. 

 

Terry.

Edited December 21, 2018 by Trainshed Terry

[caradoc]

On armed Police, it is one of those odd ironies given the normal perception of the USA and our traditional pride in having a Police force which does not carry guns that my quite a few of my American friends and colleagues who visit London for various reasons have commented that the presence of so many Police officers walking around in body armour and armed with machine pistols makes them feel very uncomfortable.

 

That seems strange, given that the chance of being shot by a Police Officer (or indeed anyone) in the UK is vanishingly small, compared to the USA.

 

Calls for increased regulation of drones, eg increasing the distance which they can be flown from airports, seem a bit pointless given that whoever was operating this/these drones was already breaking existing law, and while some form of electronic barrier around airports sounds good, is it practical, given the geographical extent of airports, and the need for other equipment to continue working ? 

[Nearholmer]

Thoughts:

 

- programmed, rather than remote-controlled? Although, using mobile 'phone technology to initiate self-guided 'sorties' might still be a bit of a bngger to deal with without shutting-off 'phone signals for miles around.

 

- possibility that it has sensors and software that could somehow detect aircraft movement and get itself into 'nuisance, but not directly dangerous' range?

 

- petrol/nitro-engined, rather than battery, to give longer flight-time? Or simply popping out to cause a nuisance, then parking to conserve energy?

 

- possibility that it is armed and able to return fire, or capable of scuttling-off and detonating somewhere very vulnerable?

 

- possibility that there is more than one in the area?

 

- possibility that it is very deliberate act of economic 'warfare', by an agency other than, say, environmental activists or daft-idiots-in-a-back-bedroom? To me it fits perfectly with the sort of very targeted 'needling' typical of ....... well, you can work it out.

 

There is photo on the BBC News website that shows the 'mitigating measures', and to me the device looks like a camera (heat? motion?) guided micro-missile system, something that might fire half-a-dozen darts about 500mm long x 50mm ......... maybe with a trawl-net?

 

My gut feel is that the security/military will be desperate to 'capture it alive', rather than blow it to smithereens.

[Joseph_Pestell]

An interesting couple of days.

 

If this was a "political campaign" action, I would expect someone to have publicised their actions by now. So I agree, probably an "economic" attack but perhaps for extortion purposes rather than geo-political.

 

The news reporting has clearly been restricted by the police/military/intelligence communities not wanting to divulge too much which might be useful to the culprits.

 

While I would love to see these people punished severely for wrecking people's travel plans, I am not convinced that the current law will suffice. For them to receive the 5-year sentence (inadequate?), it would need to be proved that they endangered an aircraft. I have not seen any evidence of that.

[Nearholmer]

This is quite interesting https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-46639099

[polybear]

Get all the local shotgun owners spread out in the land around Gatwick with permission to blast anything resembling a drone!

 

Better still, blast the operator.  That's  much more beneficial.

 

A quick scan of Youtube soon brings up videos of what some crankies are up to with these things:

 

 

[PMP]

it would need to be proved that they endangered an aircraft. I have not seen any evidence of that.

It was a clear breach of the Air Navigation Order. You’ve got to have an industrial thickness foil hat to think we’d close Gatwick for nearly two days of f there was no viable threat.

[Reorte]

An interesting couple of days.

 

If this was a "political campaign" action, I would expect someone to have publicised their actions by now. So I agree, probably an "economic" attack but perhaps for extortion purposes rather than geo-political.

Or just some idiot who thinks it's amusing. Unfortunately there are plenty of those around and more and more technology gives them more and more ways of being a parasitic waste of space now that they can do more than just smash a few bus shelters.

[Joseph_Pestell]

It was a clear breach of the Air Navigation Order. You’ve got to have an industrial thickness foil hat to think we’d close Gatwick for nearly two days of f there was no viable threat.

 

Definitely a clear breach, I agree. But reporting that it will lead to a long custodial sentence seems to me to be wrong. There was, of course, the possibility of an aircraft being endangered but that is not quite the same thing when it comes to court.

[Dave47549]

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Edited October 1, 2021 by Dave47549
Removed pointless guff

[TomE]

Get all the local shotgun owners spread out in the land around Gatwick with permission to blast anything resembling a drone! Better chance of catching one taking off or landing.

 

 

A civilian shooting down a drone is as liable to prosecution as the person operating the drone within the 1km airport boundary exclusion zone. Best leave that sort of thing to the police/military, although blasting it to pieces also risks loosing potentially vital evidence in tracking the owner. 

 

 

I personal feel that drones should have not been made available for the public to purchase as it was designed for miltray use. 

 

Terry.

 

 

The same could be said for a lot of other technology originally designed for the military. Microwaves, GPS, Superglue, Night vision, the internet.... There was a recently foiled terrorist plot in Turkey to use microwaves packed with explosives, so should all microwaves be taken off sale? As in so many cases, the technology is not in itself at fault, it's the manner in which it is being used by the person operating it. 

 

 

Calls for increased regulation of drones, eg increasing the distance which they can be flown from airports, seem a bit pointless given that whoever was operating this/these drones was already breaking existing law, and while some form of electronic barrier around airports sounds good, is it practical, given the geographical extent of airports, and the need for other equipment to continue working ? 

 

Some prisons already employ electronic jamming to prevent drones entering their boundaries, Guernsey for example. The problem with airports is there are many electrical signals & radio frequencies flying around that you really don't want to interfere with, which is one reason the 'drone guns' which block the signal between the controller and the drone forcing it to land, are not yet approved for civilian use in the UK. 

 

 

An interesting couple of days.

 

If this was a "political campaign" action, I would expect someone to have publicised their actions by now. So I agree, probably an "economic" attack but perhaps for extortion purposes rather than geo-political.

 

The news reporting has clearly been restricted by the police/military/intelligence communities not wanting to divulge too much which might be useful to the culprits.

 

While I would love to see these people punished severely for wrecking people's travel plans, I am not convinced that the current law will suffice. For them to receive the 5-year sentence (inadequate?), it would need to be proved that they endangered an aircraft. I have not seen any evidence of that.

 

The act of flying the drone into the now legally enforceable 1km airport boundary exclusion zone whilst the ATZ is active is probably enough to justify a charge of endangering an aircraft. The actual definition in the ANO is relatively vague anyway, presumably to allow some leeway for acts not previously considered a potential threat at the time it was written. 

 

Gatwick has been in the news not so long ago about it's plans to use the emergency runway for regular flights, plus it has a long held ambition to build a new second runway, so my first thought was either environmentalists or airport protesters (remember plane stupid?) trying to cause the airport financial loss but as you say, it's unusual no one has come forward to claim responsibility. 

 

Tom.  

[Nearholmer]

TomE - And, jamming measures are not likely to be effective against a 'well-designed' autonomous or semi-autonomous drone anyway.

 

47549 - Love the picture! The question of this incident "grabbing the headlines" from other issues is, to be callous, be a "fact of life", it was probably designed to do exactly that ........ shutting down any country's second-largest airport for c36 hrs is a big and immediate story by any stretch of the imagination. Clearly, people dying on the streets should be a big story too, but how it can be promoted to be one is beyond me.

 

Generally - I don't quite get the discussion of law and legal penalties, because whoever did this clearly doesn't care a fig for the law, probably because either they are: well beyond its reach; too daft to know/care; or, expect to get caught and punished, but are actually quite happy about the idea. Smearing deadly poison on door handles is, presumably, illegal too, but it still happened.

[raymw]

By the time you got close enough with a shotgun, the drone would be long gone. A bit different shooting something that can see you, and dance out of the way, compared to wildlife, or clays, which have fairly predictable speeds and flight-paths. Anyway, assuming you can shoot that one down, cheap enough to launch another. There is no answer to this type of problem, without a change in outlook and behaviour of all concerned. It is, in fact very easy for a few oddballs to cause havoc in any system, in particular something that is supposedly organised in its operations, such as a country.

[Nearholmer]

Given alleged US use of drones in Syria, one motivation for this might be to demonstrate "we also have autonomous drone capability".