Dutch police training anti drone eagles

[Sky Captain]

What kind of use terrorists would have for small drones that bird can take out without killing himself in the process? Readily available drones lack payload capability and range to carry meaningful load of explosives. Anything posing serious threat would most likely be custom built incorporating suitable RC airplane parts and guidance systems probably more resembling tv guided cruise missile than slow and fragile quad copter.

[Elheru Aran]

I don't know that it's so much 'terrorists' as 'hey those asshole parapazzi are trying to get photos of what we're doing here, let's take that down' or 'hey someone's trying to bust our operation, take that down' or some such.

Frankly when you see something as exotic as bloody eagles, I suspect it's at least partially a publicity stunt...

[biostem]

I don't know that it's so much 'terrorists' as 'hey those asshole parapazzi are trying to get photos of what we're doing here, let's take that down' or 'hey someone's trying to bust our operation, take that down' or some such.

Frankly when you see something as exotic as bloody eagles, I suspect it's at least partially a publicity stunt...

If we're talking about something like papparazzi using quadrotors to get pics, then the question becomes whether they are in public or private airspace, and what the legality is of being there in the first place. If they are legally allowed to be in that area, then the police/military using attack eagles to knock them out would be illegal, and they could be held accountable.

[Simon_Jester]

Drones intruding on private property and/or buzzing around in a way that threatens the safety of bystanders are hardly unprecedented problems.

As to the counterterrorist issue, while "terrorist drones" probably aren't a very major problem (at least, not ones small enough to be hunted by eagles), it is realistic that terrorist groups might use small drones for surveillance to acquire information on the security around a target, or the like.

[Purple]

They don't even have to do that. Imagine what would happen if say a drone dragging a small ISIS flag was to fly into the White House front lawn in full view of onlookers and land in front of the president as he is taking a walk. The media fallout and popular panic would be enormous.

[Borgholio]

They don't even have to do that. Imagine what would happen if say a drone dragging a small ISIS flag was to fly into the White House front lawn in full view of onlookers and land in front of the president as he is taking a walk. The media fallout and popular panic would be enormous.

Not...really. It could easily be spun as, "We're beating ISIS so badly that they've resorted to using toys carrying tiny flags to try and scare us."

[Broomstick]

No, these days it would be mass panic.

[Gandalf]

They don't even have to do that. Imagine what would happen if say a drone dragging a small ISIS flag was to fly into the White House front lawn in full view of onlookers and land in front of the president as he is taking a walk. The media fallout and popular panic would be enormous.

Not...really. It could easily be spun as, "We're beating ISIS so badly that they've resorted to using toys carrying tiny flags to try and scare us."

"This time it was a flag. Next time it's a grenade (or whatever)."

When was the shoe bomber? For how long did American airports require people to remove their shoes?

[Borgholio]

Point taken. Didn't think of that.

[Sky Captain]

Drones intruding on private property and/or buzzing around in a way that threatens the safety of bystanders are hardly unprecedented problems.

As to the counterterrorist issue, while "terrorist drones" probably aren't a very major problem (at least, not ones small enough to be hunted by eagles), it is realistic that terrorist groups might use small drones for surveillance to acquire information on the security around a target, or the like.

Yeah, it could work against small paparazzi and spy drones, but ones powerful enough to carry meaningful bomb like this one would quickly maim or kill an eagle. Those propellers are carbon fiber and each motor puts out several kW. It is the same power a heavy duty angle grinder or circular saw have and those if mishandled can cut off limbs in a fraction of second.

[LaCroix]

To answer some points:

"rubber" props - in my rc circles we refer to plastic "safe" props that bend as "rubber props". Might not be a common term, my bad. Most drones use them instead carbon, because drones tend to hit objects, and with a "rubber" prop they stay airborne, while a normal one would break. Also, safety. Such a prop would cause a bruise but would not cut into skin...

And I am well aware that you can make rc airplanes that can outrun and -maneuver an eagle, and that military drones exist, but we were talking about "drones" in the commercial sense - small multi-motored hovering thingies. And that's what the eagles are trained and used for. I'm pretty sure that I could have evaded most birds with any of my (sensible built - the witch on a broomstick always had a murder of crows circling and attacking her ) model planes, even the crappy stock ones.

Yes, people can build their own drones that would not be harmed (easily or safely) by a trained eagle - but if they have the skill to build a proper flying one and control it, they would most likely use an rc jet airplane, instead. Faster, vastly longer range, and MUCH more payload - that would be much better to cause harm. These eagles are intended to get the multitude of commercial off-the-shelf-any-kid-could-fly drones under control that start to clog the skies these days. Especially the ones that come equipped with cameras and creeps use to spy into windows.

I am pretty sure that if a drone operator sees something like the 'Snowboard drone' buzzing around, he'll call for a helicopter with a net/ having an officer with a net gun (or birdshot shotgun, like skeet shooting), or any other step of escalation, instead of sending his eagle up. People are intelligent, and there are more than one way to deal with these things.

99% of the time, the solution would be to just find the guy at the controls - most of these things only have a control range of a couple hundred meters, less in urban area where signals overlap with lots of noise, and people usually need to keep them in LOS, unless they are really adept at flying with camera only. Only if you can't find him (like in a huge highriser park with hundreds of flats in range and a camera-operated drone), you'd need the bird.

[Sky Captain]

Yes, people can build their own drones that would not be harmed (easily or safely) by a trained eagle - but if they have the skill to build a proper flying one and control it, they would most likely use an rc jet airplane, instead. Faster, vastly longer range, and MUCH more payload - that would be much better to cause harm.

That would essentially be something like this. Someone with experience to scratch build fast RC jets would have little difficulty to build crude cruise missile. Nowadays hardware components for such project has become much more cheaper and more accessible than in 2002 when that article was written. Since no terrorist organization to date have used RC airplane or DIY cruise missile to attack something despite the fact that technology to do that is available for over a decade I would speculate that people with necessary skills are very unlikely to get interested in using their skills to wreak havoc.

[Broomstick]

Just remember - until 2001 we could say the same about airplane pilots, too.

Fortunately, since then not many pilots have been interested in mayhem. Even when possible, it seems airborne terrorism isn't terribly appealing for some reason.

[Zeropoint]

Honestly, I've found myself wondering from time to time why a "low cost cruise missile" hasn't already been used in a terror attack. I guess that in general, technically minded people aren't interested in doing terrorism?

[Balrog]

Honestly, I've found myself wondering from time to time why a "low cost cruise missile" hasn't already been used in a terror attack. I guess that in general, technically minded people aren't interested in doing terrorism?

Given the number of well-educated people, including those from the STEM fields, who have either attempted or succeeded at terrorist acts, I kinda doubt it's simply a matter of them being too technically minded to fall for the ideology.

[Broomstick]

Honestly, I've found myself wondering from time to time why a "low cost cruise missile" hasn't already been used in a terror attack. I guess that in general, technically minded people aren't interested in doing terrorism?

I think it's more that car bombs and suicide vests are cheaper to make for several reasons, like the sheer number of cars and idiots in the world. Also, driving a car around is so mundane as to not be noticed, carrying around a home-made missile not so much. Being so common as to be essentially invisible does make delivery a bit easier.

[LaCroix]

The main problem is that in order to use such a Low cost(*) cruise missile, ou have to put a lot of knowledge and work into a project that will carry a minor amount of explosives into a target, compared to a car bomb, which any idiot could set up.
(*The car would most likely be much cheaper than a single one of those, let alone R&D expenses.)

Such a missile would only be useful for a direct assassination, and for that to work (precision guidance and stuff), you'd need to test a couple of prototypes to make a working guided one one.
Or a lot of operator training if it is remote controlled - which would fail, for I am sure that, for example the White House, is surrounded by a white noise generator for most frequencies (and even defense systems, I'd presume).

So you need to make a missile that can use gps or other means to find it's target. (And get destroyed during most of these tests, so you need to build acouple of them. And frankly, building and testing such a thing is going to get noticed, pretty soon.

[Sky Captain]

The main problem is that in order to use such a Low cost(*) cruise missile, ou have to put a lot of knowledge and work into a project that will carry a minor amount of explosives into a target, compared to a car bomb, which any idiot could set up.

I think this is the main reason. Car bomb or backpack bomb placed in crowded area are just so much easier. However a DIY missile would have appeal because of terror factor. It would be a new mode of attack (don't even have to be particularly successful) that would likely cause government to panic, crack down on RC hobbyists, blow tons of money on various countermeasures to combat a minor threat.

[Adam Reynolds]

While there are technical problems with ideas like this, there is a much deeper one. The truth is that terrorists are idiots. Nearly anyone smart enough to build a DIY cruise missile is smart enough to realize it is not worth it. Terrorism as a strategy is not very effective, especially without any real political framework to back it up.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

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.

Attack pteradactyls. Now that would put the fear of the Gods into your average criminal.

The idea of using eagles to deal with drones is an interesting one. A more precise and less lethal means of dealing with them, I imagine.

[Zeropoint]

Preface: The following idea is one about human behavior and err, population biology of wild animals, which are topics that lies outside my core skill set, so I don't really know how big a deal this may or may not be, but:

I've seen it suggested that training anti-drone eagles will be bad for eagles in general--because it will give criminals a motivation to try to kill eagles.

Would it really? Would people start taking potshots at non-drone-defeating eagles? Eh, obviously SOME idiots would take out their frustrations that way. Would it be a problem for eagle populations? I have no idea.

[Purple]

That depends on the number of Dutch people who happen to be armed, anti government, like shooting birds and drone enthusiasts. And somehow I do not see there being that many that fit all of that.

[LaCroix]

Yeah. That concern is almost guaranteed to come from the US world. The chances of Dutch people retributing against wild eagles for that are not only zero, but pretty much negative. They are the happiest bunch of treehuggers, even for european standards... )

[Broomstick]

We already have some issues out west with people who shoot eagles, even bald eagles which have some pretty draconian legislation protecting them (which was necessary to ensure the survival of the species in the lower 48). The operating phrase is "shoot, shovel, shut up" - there are still ranchers who want to slaughter any eagle they see on the assumption they kill livestock (more likely, they're seen scavenging already deceased livestock, particularly if it's a baldie because they're more fish-hunters than sheep-killers. Not impossible for them to take livestock, but not their normal habit, and even if they're evolved to be hunters they won't pass up a free meal i.e. road kill or some other predator's kill.)

People like that are already ignoring the law.

Meanwhile, yes, it might prompt the bad guys to shoot eagles/hawks/whatever out of the sky, but presumably these are, you know, bad guys with mayhem intended anyway.

Nuisance drone-idiots, on the other hand, probably would be stupid enough to provoke a wild eagle, untrained or not, which has pretty good odds on the birds attacking something they perceive as either an intruder or a threat. My own parrots generally attack anything flying in the house on sight, including toy drones, as we found out the hard way, and if they catch it they will tear it to pieces (I was able to repair the ornithopter but not one of the quads). We have to lock up the birds to fly quads in the house.

So... probably not effective against military-grade drones, but it could be a viable way to cut down on nuisance operators.

[Purple]

Is it wrong that I find the idea of pet parrots assaulting a toy helicopter incredibly cute to the point of cuteness overload?