Army called in to tackle rogue drones amid travel chaos at Gatwick Airport

[EnterpriseSovereign]

The Army has been drafted in to help tackle drones which have grounded planes at Gatwick Airport, causing chaos as the Christmas getaway begins.

More than 110,000 passengers have been affected after the airport was forced to suspended all flights due to drones spotted flying close to the runway.

The Ministry of Defence said police were in talks with the Army about assisting with the operation to find the gadgets, which were first spotted at around 9pm on Wednesday evening, and the people operating them.

Speaking to reporters, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson confirmed that Sussex Police had requested assistance from the Armed Forces, but said he could not specify what role they would play.

Police had earlier ruled out shooting down the drone due to safety fears concerning stray bullets, but armed officers were spotted near the runway by mid-afternoon on Thursday.

Link.

[Elheru Aran]

One would think bird-shot would be quite sufficient to knock down most drones without incurring collateral damage?

[Zaune]

One would think bird-shot would be quite sufficient to knock down most drones without incurring collateral damage?

British armed police don't go in for shotguns much, but in any case they've got to worry about the drone itself landing on someone as well. If it goes through the windscreen of a moving car then it could do more damage than if it got sucked into an airliner's engine.

[Crazedwraith]

That's got to be actively intentionally malicious on part of the drone operator right?

[Elheru Aran]

That's got to be actively intentionally malicious on part of the drone operator right?

Would depend on how aware they are of local airspace regulations. It could well just be someone enjoying an early Christmas present. That said, if it's multiple drones and they've been messing with the airport, then that does speak to malice rather than an accident.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Definitely, the drone/s have been reappearing periodically so it's clear they know what they're doing. The numbers of passengers that have had their journeys fucked up so far is well into six figures.

[Vendetta]

Welcome to a test case for how easy it is to shut down a major international airport.

[White Haven]

One problem that emerges in this situation is that some of the most effective means for countering drones (in particular GPS jamming fucks with a lot of them, badly) isn't really something you can get away with at, say, an airport. That said, I'm disappointed that this particular outbreak has revealed a essentially zero preparations made for dealing with drones. Let's be real; this was always going to happen. Drones are cheap, drones fly, drones are difficult to trace back to their controllers, and people are somewhere between assholes and malicious. Anyone working security in a field drones could interfere with damned well knew this was coming, probably air travel most of all. Definitely air travel most of all, given the rush to regulate drone traffic away from airports and no-fly zones and all that sort of thing.

Now, it's not an easy problem, and like any security issue the solutions are going to evolve and change over time as the threats do. I wouldn't be disappointed in the response if their planned measures hadn't panned out, but from the sound of things there just...weren't any. To make matters even more hilarious, there are calls for stricter regulations on drones, as if being MORE ILLEGAL would in any way stop an activity that is already illegal. Oh yes, and someone quoted in the article is advocating the use of geofencing, which A) is probably already done, it certainly is in the US, and B) amounts to a codified request for drone pilots to not enter a given airspace. A request which many drones can simply override in the flight interface or in other cases can be overridden by erasing the contents of the file containing the flight restrictions. Both of these are doable with current drones, so even if you clamp down on standards for new drone software, you're still left with the problem because existing drones don't somehow disappear in a puff of logic.

Ultimately, your choices amount to jamming of some type that proper aircraft can tolerate and drones cannot or some sort of shootdown, be it by bullets or deployed nets or, deploying trained birds (unlikely to be a good idea for the same reason that the drones being in air port airspace are a bad thing...) or whatever. Legislation can't fix it because making something illegal more illegal isn't terribly helpful, and modifications to drones going forwards...yeah no. And every unprepared security specialist at every airport that isn't Gatwick is breathing a sigh of relief because someone else was revealed to be a useless dipshit before they were.

[bilateralrope]

A request which many drones can simply override in the flight interface or in other cases can be overridden by erasing the contents of the file containing the flight restrictions.

I expect that overriding the geofencing will be seen as proof that flying in restricted airspace was intentional. If they can trace the drone back to whoever is controlling it.

[White Haven]

Which is great after the drone has been stopped. It does precisely fuck all to stop the drone in the first place, which is the point I was making in to begin with. Making droning an airport more illegal doesn't stop drones flying over airports, it just lets you fuck people harder after they do it. The object, however, is to stop people droning airports. Fucking people is at best tangentially related.

[Mange]

That's got to be actively intentionally malicious on part of the drone operator right?

Would depend on how aware they are of local airspace regulations. It could well just be someone enjoying an early Christmas present. That said, if it's multiple drones and they've been messing with the airport, then that does speak to malice rather than an accident.

Uhh... The drones, which were of "industrial" specs, were flying over the airport for more than 24 hours. Yes, they knew what they're were doing.

[Sea Skimmer]

Flights have resumed in the past hour, after being shut down 32 hours.

Each the reopening of the runway was announced the drone would reappear. So obviously intentional, it would go away after a brief period before its user could be tracked down.

Given how weak the control signals for this kind of drone are it's doubtful even calling in the military for help was ever going to solve anything. They could no doubt broadband jam it out of the sky with an aircraft mounted system but that'd be tremendously disruptive to other services across the south London region, well actually probably the whole London region period. I dunno if the British Army has any of the more directional anti drone jammers in service, most of those have proven ineffective at useful ranges, though the bigger vehicle mounted ones are okay.

Really this is going to be the textbook case cited when airports finally start being equipped with microwave or laser weapons to bring down these kind of threats out of hand, as they are on track to get more and more capable simply because lithium batteries keep improving and even cheap drones a lot more autonomously capable of flight. The idea of police shooting it down with bullets which was apparently official announced is lol bad idea, those bullets come down somewhere. Laser or microwave doesn't as long as you check that the background is clear.

Be like 10 million dollars to put a suitable system at each major airport, but it won't take that many disruptions like this to start to justify paying for that at say, the top couple airports in a given country.

The person behind this present series of act though I reckon will just get away with it unless they are really stupid and never stop until caught red handed.

[Esquire]

I've seen an alternative system based around drone interceptors proposed - basically just a fast drone designed to crash into and/or grab a drone that isn't where it's supposed to be, then deploy a parachute or something to try and preserve data for investigation. Presumably something like that, with radar + a few interceptor stations at suitable intervals around an airport perimeter would be cheaper, at least as a lump sum?

[Elheru Aran]

That's got to be actively intentionally malicious on part of the drone operator right?

Would depend on how aware they are of local airspace regulations. It could well just be someone enjoying an early Christmas present. That said, if it's multiple drones and they've been messing with the airport, then that does speak to malice rather than an accident.

Uhh... The drones, which were of "industrial" specs, were flying over the airport for more than 24 hours. Yes, they knew what they're were doing.

Huh. That’ll teach me to read the article.

[White Haven]

I've seen an alternative system based around drone interceptors proposed - basically just a fast drone designed to crash into and/or grab a drone that isn't where it's supposed to be, then deploy a parachute or something to try and preserve data for investigation. Presumably something like that, with radar + a few interceptor stations at suitable intervals around an airport perimeter would be cheaper, at least as a lump sum?

Interesting idea, but I'd see a problem with debris landing on runways. Even a fast drone is a relatively slow intercept, and that means the hostile drone may well be close enough to a runway to land debris from both colliding drones onto it. Better than just allowing the drone free reign, but crashing disposable cheap drones onto a runway is still a pretty good way to disrupt an airport.

[Captain Seafort]

Here we go again

[Captain Seafort]

And it's open again

I do wonder whether this business of "it's on...it's off...it's on again" might cause more disruption than continuous closure, and whether the individual(s) responsible are thinking the same thing and acting accordingly.

[Sea Skimmer]

I suspect the person behind it needed to go to bed as much as any other factor, also possible helicopters had started searching too close to where the moron was so they took cover for a while.

On-off would be more disruptive to a point, but if the airport reopens at all the airlines can at the least move the planes stuck on the field off, which is a big win for them operationally in terms of what this is doing to disrupt flights world wide. The question is at what point an airline would call uncle and actually shift the flights to somewhere else, given how busy say Heathrow is, that could mean going to the north or west of england.

[Zaune]

I suspect the person behind it needed to go to bed as much as any other factor, also possible helicopters had started searching too close to where the moron was so they took cover for a while.

On-off would be more disruptive to a point, but if the airport reopens at all the airlines can at the least move the planes stuck on the field off, which is a big win for them operationally in terms of what this is doing to disrupt flights world wide. The question is at what point an airline would call uncle and actually shift the flights to somewhere else, given how busy say Heathrow is, that could mean going to the north or west of england.

They'd have to be extremely desperate to consider that. Birmingham or Luton would be somewhat manageable, but much further afield than that and passengers might well start cancelling altogether: The train fare from Manchester to London costs more than some flights.

[SpottedKitty]

Would depend on how aware they are of local airspace regulations. It could well just be someone enjoying an early Christmas present. That said, if it's multiple drones and they've been messing with the airport, then that does speak to malice rather than an accident.

Something that doesn't help is a bit quoted from (I think) an airline pilot on the news last night. IIRC the exclusion zone around runways is 1 km — the pilot said that at that distance, a plane on normal landing approach is usually at a height of half of the legal limit for civilian drones. Sounds like a rewrite of the legislation is in the offing. Hopefully not a quick and kneejerk rewrite (this time)...

[Crazedwraith]

There's been a couple of arrests this morning.

[SpottedKitty]

There's been a couple of arrests this morning.

No longer suspects and released without charge, according to BBC news. Also, police found a damaged drone near the airport; with a bit of luck it's the same one causing the mess in the first place, and there might be forensic evidence to point towards an ID of the owner.