PeterC Posted December 20, 2018 Share Posted December 20, 2018 Surprising the police havent tracked down the radio signals controlling those drones. They could loacate pirate radios amny years ago. Or can domestic/professional drones , as ooposed to militray, be controlled via satellite phone signals? Peter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rod1883 Posted December 20, 2018 Share Posted December 20, 2018 I was thinking the same Peter. If we can't detect the drones themselves, or the signals controlling them, then how can we defend our airspace? A poor and worrying state of affairs, and a dereliction of duty by someone in authority. The new type 45 destroyer radar systems are supposed to be able to track anything the size of a cricket ball travelling at mach two or three. Seems that all our airports need one of those. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulAA Posted December 20, 2018 Share Posted December 20, 2018 Agreed, Peter. There is something mighty odd about the situation, that one of Europe's busiest airports can be held to ransom and the authorities seem helpless. The police don't want to shoot it down, because of the risk of stray bullets (eh?) and 24 hours after it started, the drone(s) are still able to land, recharge and take off again with impunity... seems there must be more to it than a couple of hooligans with a Parrot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnD Posted December 20, 2018 Share Posted December 20, 2018 The prison service has just, successfully, tested a drone exclusion system, SkyFence, at Guernsey ( Why Guernsey?). So its just a matter of money. John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterC Posted December 20, 2018 Author Share Posted December 20, 2018 Maybe the drones arent recharged, just dumped and another flown the next day. The controller could be anywhere on the planet, activating drones put in place well beforehand. I think there is more to it than a scally's prank. Peter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeTRacted Posted December 20, 2018 Share Posted December 20, 2018 The problem in intercepting drone control signals is that they are in the same frequency bands as used for Wi-fi, hence there are a huge number of transmitters in most locations and sorting out which one is the drone controller is not simple. (Incidentally I don't think it was ever the police which did RDF, but rather the technical branch of the Home Office.) Detecting the presence of the actual drone is probably easier even though it may be largely plastic and hence a low radar reflector. However, the problem is what do you do once you have detected it? Using any sort of gunfire has been ruled out because of the risk of collateral damage but what else is readily available ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterC Posted December 20, 2018 Author Share Posted December 20, 2018 Perhaps the police need to chase renegade drones with their own exploding drone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeTRacted Posted December 20, 2018 Share Posted December 20, 2018 34 minutes ago, JohnD said: The prison service has just, successfully, tested a drone exclusion system, SkyFence, at Guernsey ( Why Guernsey?). So its just a matter of money. John According to the blurb, SkyFence uses small local transmitters which overload the drone's receiver causing loss of control. Most large drones I believe are programmed to automatically return to base in that event. Protecting a whole airfield perimeter with that method may not be without problems and it cannot protect against drones which are using an autonomous mode where they follow a pre-determined path using GPS. Blocking GPS near an airfield to prevent that too is maybe not a good idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeTRacted Posted December 20, 2018 Share Posted December 20, 2018 36 minutes ago, PeterC said: Maybe the drones arent recharged, just dumped and another flown the next day. The controller could be anywhere on the planet, activating drones put in place well beforehand. I think there is more to it than a scally's prank. Peter Yes the persistence of the attack does smack of more than just some lad 'having a laugh'. Could this even be a proof-of-concept for a wider campaign by some organisation opposed to air travel? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterC Posted December 20, 2018 Author Share Posted December 20, 2018 53 minutes ago, DeTRacted said: Yes the persistence of the attack does smack of more than just some lad 'having a laugh'. Could this even be a proof-of-concept for a wider campaign by some organisation opposed to air travel? Could be - but it wasnt flying a GreenPeace banner ! Proof-of-concept wont have been missed by all manner of anti-govt groups. The cat is truly out of the bag. Peter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scooter Posted December 21, 2018 Share Posted December 21, 2018 Drones, the better commercial ones, can fly autonomous prepogramnrd routes. no signal to track. this is not the work of kids. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick B. Posted December 21, 2018 Share Posted December 21, 2018 I seem to remember that the dutch police had trained some 4 og 5 eagles to intercept drones in the air and bring them down. Perhaps a call to Amsterdam would be in place? (Don't mention the war brexit) Cheers Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zetecspit Posted December 21, 2018 Share Posted December 21, 2018 I wondered if there was some sort of extortion involved. Or thinking very laterally, could somebody with anti-drone tech want to create a market very quickly. Probably not. But that Elon Musk... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnD Posted December 21, 2018 Share Posted December 21, 2018 Gatwick re-opened, thanks to "mediations" provided by the military, who would be the only agency that could bring anything on site in a short time. The Airport CEO on the radio this am would not explain what those "mediations" (!!) were, but clearly they ain't eagles. Electronic means must be the most likely with possible electromagnetic weapons, as illustrated above. DeTRacted, do you have expertise in this field? John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Jones Posted December 21, 2018 Share Posted December 21, 2018 They said on the news last night that jamming technology is available but not legal in the UK. Reckon that might change pronto! The aforementioned jail trial on Guernsey is apparently the only UK use of the tech to date. Actually I reckon it’s a Tory tactic to distract attention....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zetecspit Posted December 21, 2018 Share Posted December 21, 2018 Of course, the hunter/killer drone does not have to be particularly "high tech" Remember the drone with a chainsaw? Replace that with a 12 bore......Probably been done already. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Jones Posted December 21, 2018 Share Posted December 21, 2018 Struck me that handing the perpetrator over to the waiting passengers would have done away with any need for expensive trials and jails...... Would have been torn to pieces....... How long to the the next one......? which airport? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnD Posted December 21, 2018 Share Posted December 21, 2018 Did someone say 100,000 people marooned? Surely not Gatwick alone? But they report 45.6 million passengers in 2017, which is about 125,000 people a day! The shere volume of transport these days is difficult to grasp. J. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulAA Posted December 21, 2018 Share Posted December 21, 2018 Peter's point that the drone(s) can controlled remotely from anywhere seems to be a key issue. However, the duration of the interruption indicates that either multiple drones were involved, being run to battery exhaustion, or they were somehow recharged on the ground. I hate to engage in conspiracy theory, but there appears to be more to this than meets the eye. The capacity to lock onto and track a single microwave-emitting device, surely, is not beyond the capacity of the combined civil and military security services..? Hopefully, it will now be as difficult to get a drone operating license as it is to get a gun license. Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulAA Posted December 21, 2018 Share Posted December 21, 2018 Just now, JohnD said: Did someone say 100,000 people marooned? Surely not Gatwick alone? But they report 45.6 million passengers in 2017, which is about 125,000 people a day! The shere volume of transport these days is difficult to grasp. J. Gatwick estimated the figures late last night at 102,000 people affected, including collateral disruption, but the Daily Fail managed to pump that figure up to 350,000. Nothing like a bit of hyperbole to keep the news hot. Even more entertaining was the Telegraph somehow identifying that the perpetrators were "eco-warriors". Ha! Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeTRacted Posted December 21, 2018 Share Posted December 21, 2018 'DeTRacted, do you have expertise in this field? ' Unfortunately not in depth John, just general electrical/electronic stuff - my specialism was control and instrumentation not RF systems. The drone transmissions are in the same part of the radio spectrum as used for wi-fi so any blocking countermeasures can interfere with that as it involves swamping the drone receiver with a large interference signal, which would probably have to be wide-band to ensure all possible control frequencies are covered. You can make the interfering transmitter very directional but there is still bound to be some energy scattered widely. The local residents are not going to like it if their Netflix keeps dropping out every time its triggered ! Paul - it is possible to 'lock on' as you say once you can determine which of the many transmitters is the one you want. In the wi-fi bands there are lots of them - maybe one for every house router in the vicinity plus one for every mobile phone or laptop with wifi enabled. Quite few of those at an airport. Not impossible to sort out but it probably takes some time and practice. Getting the necessary kit to Gatwick and setting it up would take time too but now this has happened perhaps there will be some in-situ at all airports in future. Consumer drones sold in the UK are supposed to be limited in transmitter power and hence range but that is fairly easily hackable and there are other methods for remote operation. As for licencing - anyone wanting to do this kind of thing is unlikely to be deterred by lack of a licence any more than other criminals are deterred from the use of firearms. Rob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulAA Posted December 21, 2018 Share Posted December 21, 2018 52 minutes ago, DeTRacted said: Paul - it is possible to 'lock on' as you say once you can determine which of the many transmitters is the one you want. In the wi-fi bands there are lots of them - maybe one for every house router in the vicinity plus one for every mobile phone or laptop with wifi enabled. Quite few of those at an airport. Not impossible to sort out but it probably takes some time and practice. Getting the necessary kit to Gatwick and setting it up would take time too but now this has happened perhaps there will be some in-situ at all airports in future. Consumer drones sold in the UK are supposed to be limited in transmitter power and hence range but that is fairly easily hackable and there are other methods for remote operation. As for licencing - anyone wanting to do this kind of thing is unlikely to be deterred by lack of a licence any more than other criminals are deterred from the use of firearms. Hi Rob I didn't express myself properly - I meant lock onto the drone, since, presumably, it will be a radio emitter as well as receiver. Fantasy, of course - another of my extensive fields of ignorance. More idle speculation, then: if this was a bigger issue than an idle scally up to some mischief, was Gatwick a random choice or was it selected for its combination of traffic volume and relative weakness of defence? Would Heathrow have been a harder target? Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AB|W Posted December 21, 2018 Share Posted December 21, 2018 I see a larger problem. OK it was a drone, but it could have been an accident, a ground crew strike, power outage, fog, whatever the problem but the airport seems to have limited disaster planning in place to divert its flights / bus its passengers to alternative airports when it could no longer function autonomously in order to keep a large part of its service delivery operational. I appreciate that some flights were diverted but from the media reports that a large percentage of passengers were left waiting with little information to guide them at probably is one of the busiest times of the year a scenario that has been repeated many times over the last few decades. Sitting a problem out appears to be the preferred solution over developing collaborative inter-airport disaster contingency agreements. Alan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtuckunder Posted December 21, 2018 Share Posted December 21, 2018 Inspired by tonight's NewsNight..... Oh, oh, ohLet's go fly a droneUp to the highest heightLet's go fly a droneAnd send it soaringUp near the aerodromeOh, let's go fly a drone Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtuckunder Posted December 29, 2018 Share Posted December 29, 2018 As a final flourish you might like this, its from the Telegraph via MSN so the veracity is in doubt, but.... https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/gatwick-drone-sightings-may-have-been-of-police-equipment-chief-constable-admits/ar-BBRyLdO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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