Dutch police training anti drone eagles

[Zor]

News article

Rather nifty.

Zor

[biostem]

I don't quite understand how this is more practical than, say, having a sniper just take out said drone.

[Sea Skimmer]

Is the concept that bullets are real and keep going when they hit thin stuff so hard to grasp?

[Broomstick]

I don't quite understand how this is more practical than, say, having a sniper just take out said drone.

Well, eagles have far better vision than we do, they fly better than we (or our drones) do, and they are the product of millions of years of improvement on a hunting animal.

We've long trained animals to assist us in many ways, why not this one?

[biostem]

I don't quite understand how this is more practical than, say, having a sniper just take out said drone.

Well, eagles have far better vision than we do, they fly better than we (or our drones) do, and they are the product of millions of years of improvement on a hunting animal.

We've long trained animals to assist us in many ways, why not this one?

Well, if the eagle gets clipped by one of the propellers, you are talking about a very costly loss of productivity, while a drone can be much more easily replaced. Also, there are scopes and various other tools that can easily compensate for our lesser visual capabilities.

[biostem]

Is the concept that bullets are real and keep going when they hit thin stuff so hard to grasp?

Then use rubber bullets, or some other form of munition that will break up on impact. Heck, you could probably just shoot some sticky foam or modified paintballs to disrupt/bring down the drone.

[Broomstick]

I don't quite understand how this is more practical than, say, having a sniper just take out said drone.

Well, eagles have far better vision than we do, they fly better than we (or our drones) do, and they are the product of millions of years of improvement on a hunting animal.

We've long trained animals to assist us in many ways, why not this one?

Well, if the eagle gets clipped by one of the propellers, you are talking about a very costly loss of productivity, while a drone can be much more easily replaced. Also, there are scopes and various other tools that can easily compensate for our lesser visual capabilities.

Eagles have to avoid being bit by prey animals when they hunt - I'm pretty sure they can handle drones, especially if taught where to strike for maximum lethality and minimal risk to themselves. Raptors aren't the brightest animals but damn they sure are sponges for hunting information.

[biostem]

Well, eagles have far better vision than we do, they fly better than we (or our drones) do, and they are the product of millions of years of improvement on a hunting animal.

We've long trained animals to assist us in many ways, why not this one?

Well, if the eagle gets clipped by one of the propellers, you are talking about a very costly loss of productivity, while a drone can be much more easily replaced. Also, there are scopes and various other tools that can easily compensate for our lesser visual capabilities.

Eagles have to avoid being bit by prey animals when they hunt - I'm pretty sure they can handle drones, especially if taught where to strike for maximum lethality and minimal risk to themselves. Raptors aren't the brightest animals but damn they sure are sponges for hunting information.

I'm not doubting that eagles *can* take out drones, I'm questioning the efficiency/cost-vs-result logic behind using them in this manner.

[Broomstick]

On the upside - very efficient hunters, require minimal programming by humans, reproduce themselves.

Downside - it's a wild animal which may or may not cooperate on a given day, killable.

I think it's a interesting twist. We use animals to assist us in many ways, some of them not so obvious. I mean, why bother with police horses? Turns out they fill a nice niche in crowd control. That sort of thing.

[The Romulan Republic]

Interesting. I have no idea how effective eagles will be at this sort of thing, and I suppose animal rights people will often object to this sort of thing, but of course, animals have been used in war in various capacities for a long, long time.

Also, given what is now known about birds' ancestry, this effectively means that the Dutch police are training attack dinosaurs.

Yes, that's how I choose to think of this story. It just makes it sound even cooler.

[Jub]

Also, given what is now known about birds' ancestry, this effectively means that the Dutch police are training attack dinosaurs RAPTORS.

Yes, that's how I choose to think of this story. It just makes it sound even cooler.

Fixed that for you.

[biostem]

KFD - Kentucky Fried Dinosaur!

[Napoleon the Clown]

Is the concept that bullets are real and keep going when they hit thin stuff so hard to grasp?

Then use rubber bullets, or some other form of munition that will break up on impact. Heck, you could probably just shoot some sticky foam or modified paintballs to disrupt/bring down the drone.

Rubber bullets can still cause significant injury or even death. "Sticky foam" or paintballs have vastly limited range. Stuff that will "break up" can still miss the target and, you know, badly injure a person...

An eagle or hawk will not only have sharper vision than a human, but also have a greater field of view than someone with a scope that lets them see distant objects as clearly. They have faster reflexes. A bullet's trajectory is altered by the wind. By updrafts. By gravity. Snipers don't have magical gifts that allow them to shoot a flea off a rhino's horn at one mile while the rhino is running full tilt in a hurricane. Drones are small enough and move enough that a sniper would have a hell of a time hitting one under good conditions using a shotgun loaded with birdshot, much less a load that isn't a massive liability issue.

And I imagine people don't particularly like random gunfire.

[Darmalus]

While trained eagles sounds pretty cool, somehow drones armed with nets seems like the kind of idea that would scale better and could be deployed faster, plus being able to record a drone-eye-view of the intercept in case of an "oops".

[Iroscato]

If they don't scream "RELEASE THE EAGLES!!" every single time they're used then I just can't get behind this.

[LaCroix]

Eagles are very agile and tough. They slam into the ground with full force onto a 'fighting for their life' prey, and do this without injuring themselves.

They are trained to take down commercial available drones. These usually have rubber props for weight and inertial reasons.

The problem is that you can buy them everywhere (that particular one I have seen on sale for much less than 100$), which makes them so troublesome. They can be taken out easily, but they are very small and hard to hit without an intelligenent pursuer. E.g. a drone or a trained animal. If the bad guy has a camera on it, he could fly as far as his radio transmits, while the interceptor drone pilot would need eyes on target to steer his drone, and need a significantly faster and more agile drone to catch it. The eagle is born to do that kind of stuff, and no drone can outfly a bird of prey, yet.

If you get something bigger that could hurt the eagle (debateable, for even the biggest drones have been made with safety and weight precautions, and the motors have very little torque as a result of being geared extremely high to produce sufficient lift), it is also very expensive (which limits the availability), much harder to fly, and can be shot down easier for target size. it also usually has more area for the eagle to attack.

Also, eagles are not dumb. if they get smacked by a rubber prop during training, once, they learn to grab their prey at places that don't 'bite'. That's basically what they are getting trained for - attacking those things, and doing in a way that doesn't hurt them.

[Ziggy Stardust]

While trained eagles sounds pretty cool, somehow drones armed with nets seems like the kind of idea that would scale better and could be deployed faster, plus being able to record a drone-eye-view of the intercept in case of an "oops".

Eagles are faster and more maneuverable than drones. Depending on exactly how the eagles are trained to attack the drones, it may also be possible that it would be very difficult for even a camera mounted on the drone would even see it coming far enough in advance to do anything about it. If the eagle does its usually M.O. (fly up real high and dive), the camera would not give you enough warning to avoid it, even if you were fast enough.

[Zixinus]

The real bottleneck to this idea is trainers: the birds have to be taught to obey human commands and fetch. How long does one need to study to become a fully-fledged falconer that can do this job and how long does it take them to be able to train a bird for the job?

Compare with drones with nets, which just needs the equipment and less-specialized skills.

I don't quite understand how this is more practical than, say, having a sniper just take out said drone.

If a sniper misses the bullet can go anywhere and potentially kill anyone by accident. If an eagle misses, they can just try again or get another eagle.

[Broomstick]

The final problem here is keeping the birds interested in hunting something they can't directly eat.

At the end of the day you still have a wild animal that is in a sort of business relationship with humans. Raptors remain with their falconers because the birds perceive benefits: they can take larger prey than on their own, they get fed even after a bad day of hunting, and so forth. Raptors aren't dogs, they don't give a fuck about human approval or affection, they're in it for the food.

So how to "pay" the birds for their efforts, in a way that gives the birds motivation to hunt drones, is probably an interesting problem.

[LaCroix]

My brother is a falconer. The birds never get to eat their prey. They are always fed solely by the trainer, the hunting is just a play/instinct thing after a while.

[LaCroix]

And as a rc pilot I can assure you - it will most likely take you a lot longer to learn to operate a drone so that you can potentially intercept another one than training a bird.

You need to learn how to get even close to the target by estimation with no reference point - which is a HUGE problem. The moment you look at the target (if you can efen see that small thing in the sky), you loose contact to your own vessel and fly blind. Then you have to find your own vessel again (which is HARD once you lost sight for it's fast and small), and then try to match the course (again by estimation, since you aren't up there) with the last position of the target you remembered. Then you have to find the target again, check if it has changed course, etc...

A on-board camera doesn't really help until you managed to get really close, and if your target leaves the FOV, you need to look up and eyeball everything again.

All of that takes place in an environment where you most likely do not have line of sight at all time, and having a target that barely contrasts against the sky and is fast and tiny and most likely far away. If the other guy is aware of you and tries any sort of evasive maneuver, he'll get away. Certainly. For he has just to fly erratic. Only a sneak attack has a chance.

And if it is automatic and following gps waypoints, it becomes even harder - for a RC drone needs to stay close to the operator, so you don't have the problem that it might get out of range of your own drone. if they just set it up to follow some zig-zag course, a manual operator will most likely not manage to catch it.

Also, you need a very powerful drone to catch anything, with the drag of the dangling net, and be attentive to not snag it somwhere along the way.

[Broomstick]

My brother is a falconer. The birds never get to eat their prey. They are always fed solely by the trainer, the hunting is just a play/instinct thing after a while.

Yes, but when they do the hunting they get fed. The point is, the activity still leads to food. Stop feeding the bird and it will soon go elsewhere.

Also, according to falconers I've spoken to here in the US and Canada the birds DO eat what they hunt... just not immediately. The trainer had yummy bits pre-cut with which to feed the bird, but saves the downed prey to convert into yummy bits later. So the bird really is still hunting its food, even with the human intervention.

Basically, you have to convince the eagles that hunting drones is going to result in dinner for them - if not directly, then pretty immediately.

[Borgholio]

In case anybody is wondering, this already happens naturally. Birds of prey are documented to have attacked and damaged / downed drones and RC Aircraft that invade their territory. Here's an example of a hawk beating the crap out of a quad-copter. There are other videos of R/C aircraft being attacked and pursued for some distance by angry raptors.

[Me2005]

They are trained to take down commercial available drones. These usually have rubber props for weight and inertial reasons.

What kind of drones are you flying? All the models I'm aware of use wood, plastic, or carbon fiber props. Metal props aren't out of the line of possibility, and there was a story recently about a little boy loosing his eye because a drone crashed into him.

The problem is that you can buy them everywhere (that particular one I have seen on sale for much less than 100$), which makes them so troublesome.

Bigger problem that isn't really relevant to this discussion: You can pretty easily build them out of really readily available RC parts, and so it'd be impossible to do anything like 'require manufacturers' to do anything specific.

The eagle is born to do that kind of stuff, and no drone can outfly a bird of prey, yet.

No commercial drone. I'm pretty sure the Predator/Raptor drones can 'outfly' a bird of prey (faster, higher, or both), and it wouldn't be beyond imagination that home-built drones/rc aircraft could fly faster straight-line. A BoP is going to have better maneuvering response though.

If you get something bigger that could hurt the eagle (debateable, for even the biggest drones have been made with safety and weight precautions, and the motors have very little torque as a result of being geared extremely high to produce sufficient lift)...

[/quote]

The biggest drones are military, government, Google/Amazon/other coorperate experiments, or homebuilds. Even a commercial drone can have a stronger blade slapped on though. Then you're talking about a piece of material spinning at a few thousand RPM. I don't care what it's made up of, it can cut. Whether it'd be a danger to an eagle, I do not know.

All that said, I do agree that Eagles are a better way to take malicious drones out than shooting them. They're apex-hunters of the sky. Think of them less as fragile little birds and more like sky-lions. Whereas shooting the drone is like duck hunting, which usually isn't something you do over populated areas where malicious drones are more likely to exist.

I feel a *better* way to take malicious drones out would be to relax restrictions against jamming though. Even if the thing isn't programmed to home or land or whatever on signal loss, jamming it should stop it and/or crash it. And it's easy to equip existing law enforcement with jammers, it isn't easy to train, keep, and distribute Eagles (unless they can self-teach, and this effort will cause a great world war between the sky-lions and the robotic intruders to their turf).

[Broomstick]

They are trained to take down commercial available drones. These usually have rubber props for weight and inertial reasons.

What kind of drones are you flying? All the models I'm aware of use wood, plastic, or carbon fiber props. Metal props aren't out of the line of possibility, and there was a story recently about a little boy loosing his eye because a drone crashed into him.

Actually, there are considerable stories over the past decades of people losing limbs or even lives to RC aircraft that were mishandled, much less maliciously handled. It's only in the past 10-15 years or so I've seen models that were relatively idiot-proof and safe due to small size and materials.

The problem is that you can buy them everywhere (that particular one I have seen on sale for much less than 100$), which makes them so troublesome.

Bigger problem that isn't really relevant to this discussion: You can pretty easily build them out of really readily available RC parts, and so it'd be impossible to do anything like 'require manufacturers' to do anything specific.

Yep. Building "drones" isn't rocket science. People started doing it very early on in aviation. And hobby rockets, while actual rocket science, aren't that difficult either to do in your basement.

No commercial drone. I'm pretty sure the Predator/Raptor drones can 'outfly' a bird of prey (faster, higher, or both), and it wouldn't be beyond imagination that home-built drones/rc aircraft could fly faster straight-line. A BoP is going to have better maneuvering response though.

Oh, yeah - I've seen scratch-built RC airplanes that cruised at several hundred kph. Not a beginner model, obviously, either to build or fly, but they've been around for decades. The ones I've seen had mini jet engines. I always wondered if the owner/operators got strange looks going to airports and asking for a half gallon of JetA fuel to go. Said very fast models also have a bitch of a wide turning circle, and people aren't really wired to work at those speeds. We can, of course, find a way to do it with practice and training, but really, speed of reaction and maneuverability are two areas birds are still better than humans, even with our machines. Yes, we can go absolutely faster but sheer speed isn't everything.

If you get something bigger that could hurt the eagle (debateable, for even the biggest drones have been made with safety and weight precautions, and the motors have very little torque as a result of being geared extremely high to produce sufficient lift)...

The biggest drones are military, government, Google/Amazon/other coorperate experiments, or homebuilds. Even a commercial drone can have a stronger blade slapped on though. Then you're talking about a piece of material spinning at a few thousand RPM. I don't care what it's made up of, it can cut. Whether it'd be a danger to an eagle, I do not know.

Pretty sure at least some of them could pose a danger to eagles. On the other hand, they're birds of prey, they risk injury on a fairly regular basis just doing what they do. As noted, if the training teaches them what part of the drones can "bite" they'll be careful to avoid getting bit.

As noted, raptors have already been known to attack drones and RC - it's a matter of teaching/communicating that you want them to do this on a regular basis, which ones you want taken out, and that the birds will get something meaningful to them out of it.

Yes, training and maintaining eagles isn't easy or cheap. On the other hand, neither is building intercept drones and training/maintaining pilots for them. The birds have more than one natural advantage over us in doing this. Do those compensate for the downsides of working with eagles?