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Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

nytimes.com

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Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#61

Post by darkpuma »

isostatic wrote: post #17
testplzignore wrote: post #6

> The airport said it had spent several million pounds to purchase the equipment. I feel like this is a problem some smart people could solve quickly if they were asked, similar to the healthcare.gov situation. Ask some MIT students to come up with a solution over a weekend and I bet they would deliver. Knocking a slow moving object out of the sky is literally not rocket science.

> Knocking a slow moving object out of the sky is literally not rocket science. No, but it's not a matter of some yahoos with a gun shooting them: https://twitter.com/sommervilletv/status/1080724993238069249

Pistols and rifles, not birdshot? RPGs? What a complete joke. If you put these morons in charge of hunting birds they'd probably conclude that shooting birds doesn't work either. Try hunting birds with pistols and rifles and you'll have the same result.

Meanwhile in Kentucky: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/judge-rules-in-f...

Meanwhile in Virginia: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/65-year-old-woma...

Meanwhile in Tennessee: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/man-takes-drone-...

And for the unaware, birdshot solves the "what goes up must come down" problem; the shot is light enough that when it falls back down the air resistance has slowed it to a harmless speed. In other words, the terminal velocity is MUCH lower than the muzzle velocity. Getting hit by falling birdshot doesn't bruise, let alone kill. If somebody were serious about solving this problem, instead of just trying to justify impotent anti-drone legislation (that won't stop bad actors from throwing together rc quads from scratch) they'd ask gunsmiths to create for them a fully automatic shotgun tuned to cycle with birdshot, with a large magazine capacity, and create radar systems that can distinguish between birds and drones (probably with a human in the loop.) Anti-drone micro-CIWS.

Other promising solutions include anti-drone falcons (potentially hazardous to the bird, I've seen what those props can do to human fingers...) and hunter-killer drones piloted by superior pilots. A good defense would be a defense in depth, adopt as many of these systems as is economical. Considering the economic harm that shutting down a major airport can cause, the budget should be large.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#63

Post by vorpalhex »

viraptor wrote: post #60
lordnacho wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Britain is covered in CCTV. Surely if there's a drone it will be visible in camera footage?

Yes, CCTVs in busy streets, sometimes in shop entrances. Not in Random places in the middle of an airport.

In a world with terrorism, I promise you that every inch of that airport is covered with CCTV feeds monitored by probably armed security.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#64

Post by AWildC182 »

To those wondering why we can't just take down the drones, it's not as simple as a jammer or a shotgun.

Jamming drones is a non starter for the most part. You can make a drone operate on just about any frequency you want and with modern equipment becoming more frequency agile, this will only get worse. A simple thought experiment would be a drone using GSM for video and control. Can you just jam all phones? Obviously not. Further, drones can fly without any command and control if they're configured correctly, just using GPS for guidance. Can you jam GPS at an airport where planes are breaking out of an overcast layer at 200ft AGL on a GPS approach? Nope.

Kinetic approaches: projectiles need to come back down. Even heavy bird shot could damage the super thin skin on an airliner when falling back to earth. Also, net guns and similar options are way shorter range than you think.

Birds of prey: stick your hand in a DJI rotor and report back. Now try an industrial drone. Come back when they re-attach all your fingers.

Drones catching drones: you'll need continuous line of sight to be able to chase the thing around. This also assumes it's a quad and not a 100mph+ fixed wing drone. Might be feasible if you have an automated way of detecting and following the drone (future mm band radar?).

Lasers: eye safety of the public and piloted aircraft.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#65

Post by _underfl0w_ »

adossi wrote: post #13
growlist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Knocking a slow moving object out of the sky is literally not rocket science. But perhaps doing it in a way that doesn't shower the runway with dangerous debris, is?

Don't they already shoot Canada geese at airports because they're such a nuisance? I imagine a similar tactic could be used for drones

They also hire people to covertly shoot the little birds that get stuck flying around inside Walmart (B&Q, $megacorp, etc.)

Met a guy while he was on the clock doing that, in fact.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#66

Post by mikerice »

tomchuk wrote: post #52
eponeponepon wrote: post #22

I kind of struggle to understand how there isn't enough equipment and electrical engineering expertise on site at a modern airport to pinpoint these drones really quickly - especially at Heathrow. Even a small drone surely makes a ton of radio noise just from its motors, no?

Tracking/jamming equipment is available [1] (and pretty cool). [1] https://www.aaronia.com/products/solutions/Aaronia-Drone-Det...

I suspect the last thing you want to do in the vicinity of one of the busiest airports in the world is to start jamming frequencies?

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#67

Post by joemi »

vorpalhex wrote: post #24
porphyrogene wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Heathrow bear a resposibility to prove anything to you or any other random person on the internet? You seem to be insinuating some conspiracy by asking vague questions.

Err, yes, yes they do if it's going to be used as justification to pass sweeping new police powers.

Isn't the responsibility on the law makers who are using the issue at the airport as justification, not the airport itself? Heathrow isn't somehow trying to pass laws themselves are they? (Caveat: Maybe I just don't understand how British law works?)

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#68

Post by sailfast »

AWildC182 wrote: post #64

To those wondering why we can't just take down the drones, it's not as simple as a jammer or a shotgun. Jamming drones is a non starter for the most part. You can make a drone operate on just about any frequency you want and with modern equipment becoming more frequency agile, this will only get worse. A simple thought experiment would be a drone using GSM for video and control. Can you just jam all phones? Obviously…

Smaller scale SAMs with close range burst capabilities seem like they might avoid all of these issues, but tracking would be critical. Ideally the blast would at worst minorly damage but not crash an airliner and at best leave some small dents in aircraft skin but take down a smaller-scale drone.

If you take your "reasons why not" logic too far, however, you end up asking "how do we take down an enemy jet" which, I mean, the air force has probably figured out by now.

Why are drones more of a threat than large scale model jet aircraft? If we can't really avoid this then at some point we're going to need to react in a more measured way instead of flipping out and shutting down the airport.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#69

Post by viraptor »

vorpalhex wrote: post #63
viraptor wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, CCTVs in busy streets, sometimes in shop entrances. Not in Random places in the middle of an airport.

In a world with terrorism, I promise you that every inch of that airport is covered with CCTV feeds monitored by probably armed security.

Fences, entrances, etc. and pointing at ground level - sure. Middle of the field, pointing high enough to get lots of sky, and with resolution high enough to tell a bird and a drone apart? - unlikely. But I'm happy to be proven wrong. Quick searches show even the external, globe cameras pointing primarily down and with the mount limiting any sky view.

Also my comment was responding to how Britain is different in CCTVs. Standard airport monitoring is going to be similar, regardless of country.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#70

Post by fitzroy »

pj_mukh wrote: post #10

Just as in Gatwick before this, the police and the airport are not able to produce even grainy footage of a drone that is supposedly "buzzing" the tower. Gatwick reported "67 sightings", but couldn't confirm if some (all?) were their own drones [1]. And now Parliament is tabling new powers for the police [2]. Was there ever any evidence presented that there was ever a drone present? Is there any evidence that this wa…

We must remain vigilant against deadly drones equipped with advanced holographic cloaking devices, making them appear as ordinary plastic bags!
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