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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

#81

Post by jen20 »

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…

Given the authoritarianism of the current Prime Minister, as well as her history as Home Secretary, I'm not sure an accusation of conspiratorial power grab would be particularly controversial.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#82

Post by lighttower »

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…

This was very funny. Thanks

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#83

Post by EamonnMR »

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…

Drone chasing drone is probably the most realistic, especially if they could use radar similar to a guided missile. You'd want to be able to recover the drone for evidence, so using a missile, while possible, probably isn't the best.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#84

Post by Sol- »

pwaivers wrote: post #5

As the article says, it is surprising how easy and cheap it is to shut down a world-class airport and disrupt 100,000's of people. They haven't even caught the last person.

Seems like this was a thing before drones too, though. Call in a fake bomb threat, leave an empty bag suspiciously lying around, etc. All things that could asymmetrically disrupt the airport.

Granted, the chance to get caught is smaller with drones, but it's still fairly risky. I guess the only defense here are publicized arrests to dissuade the "prankster" category of attacker and the fact that statistically only very few people are crazy enough in the first place to try such an attack.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#85

Post by bdamm »

setquk wrote: post #56
bdamm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but not at well defined frequencies, and it's competing with every other laptop fan, vacuum cleaner, refrigerator, sliding door, and electric stove as a source of RF noise.

Drones are likely flying around in pretty well defined frequencies. And the noise isn’t a problem because the receivers are receiving.

Noise is definitely a problem for receivers.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#86

Post by mianos »

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…

Birdshot has such small energy when falling you hardly feel it. It is more like rain. No way it would damage the skin of an aircraft.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#87

Post by atombender »

randyrand wrote: post #8

Part of me wonders if this is a long term problem with solving - causing so much annoyance with so little effort - or if this is just a fad. Time will tell. One thing is for sure, it's very easy to cause a lot of harm. Much of our society relies on assuming people are good. Sabotaging infrastructure is as easy as loosening or cutting bolts on a bridge.

There's also the related observation, demonstrated in Eric Frank Russell's Wasp [1], that merely leaving behind the signs of tampering is enough to cause fear and panic.

In the novel, which is written as a deliciously dark satire in the vein of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., a single agent causes havoc in a foreign country by subtly creating evidence of a mass sabotage by an underground guerilla force: Spreading rumours, distributing provocative stickers and posters, leaking assasination target lists, strategically leaving surveillance equipment to be discovered by the authorities, and so on. He doesn't actually perform any acts of sabotage.

If Wasp had been written in 2019, flying drones at airports would have fit right into the narrative.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasp_(novel)

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#88

Post by sjg007 »

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…

Train birds to chase drones.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#89

Post by ironic_ali »

jen20 wrote: post #81
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…

Given the authoritarianism of the current Prime Minister, as well as her history as Home Secretary, I'm not sure an accusation of conspiratorial power grab would be particularly controversial.

Since I began to become aware of politics as a late teenager in the mid 80's, there was conspiracies of power grabs that mostly all came true in hindsight.

It doesn't seem controversial to say that nothing has changed other than improved technology to further their power grabbing goals.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#90

Post by [deleted] »

setquk wrote: post #54
sschueller wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really would not take long for the airport to launch a drone to look for the other one. Maybe a minute? They could have a experienced pilot on staff at the tower. Costs a lot less than shutting down the airport for hours. I would even say a skilled pilot with a trackable drone in communication with the tower could safely fly to investiage without a shutdown of the airport.

Then they get lots of calls from other people saying they’ve seen it and it’s actuslly the search and destroy drone...

[deleted]
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