Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport • Hacker News Board

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#111

Post by trhway » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:41 PM UTC

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…

Russian airbase in Syria is regularly [according to them] attacked by drones

https://www.rt.com/news/415454-drone-attack-syria-turkey/

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2018/08/16/drone-attacks-ru...

Russian military jamming equipment is pretty powerful though, and these systems are also supposedly deployed there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantsir_missile_system (the key in this case is the 30mm radar guided autocannon).

I think the laser based systems like the ones that US Navy have deployed recently (https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/17/politics/us-navy-drone-laser-...) would be the future here - those military lasers are supposedly using something like adaptive autofocus on the target, so it seems to be pretty easy for such a radar guided system to make sure that only target gets the focus and only when the line-of-sight is clear of anything else.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#112

Post by dpark » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:45 PM UTC

jwbensley wrote: post #108

president wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially a real-world denial-of-service attack.

No, 1 million people didn't try to get on the planes at the same time.

Forcing a shutdown of down airport service is literally a denial of service attack.

DoS attack doesn't necessarily mean high request volume.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#113

Post by LeoPanthera » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:45 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #51

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…

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

CCTV cameras tend to point down.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#114

Post by jackweirdy » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:50 PM UTC

HarryHirsch wrote: post #94

jackweirdy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were not all of their drones, because reports were coming in before the police had launched any drones. Among the people reporting drone sightings before the police turned up at Gatwick were pilots

* the people reporting drone sightings before the police turned up at Gatwick were pilots* Considering that a passenger jet on final approach has a speed > 300 km/h and that a household drone is something like 30 cm wide you wonder how many of these drones were in fact hovering kestrels on the hunt for voles. How can you distinguish the two?

Kestrels tend to not be lit up after sunset. Also note this was not a household drone, police believe it was to "industrial specification" based on visual description from ATC staff who saw it. (That's also likely as a lot of drones e.g. DJI have geofencing around airports)

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#115

Post by dpark » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

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…

Are "industrial drones" and "100mph+ fixed wing drones" real concerns? I would think idiots with consumer drones are the major concern.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#116

Post by dTal » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:55 PM UTC

jwbensley wrote: post #108

president wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially a real-world denial-of-service attack.

No, 1 million people didn't try to get on the planes at the same time.

You are thinking of a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS).

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#117

Post by qwerty456127 » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:57 PM UTC

pnw_hazor wrote: post #93

qwerty456127 wrote: post #78

Do they really have to be so paranoid about drones?

Yes. How else are they going to prevent plebes from lawfully owning them. note: will be buying my drone today before the US FAA gets any brights ideas.

Why not just build one yourself when you really feel you want? Won't it be twice (or more) the fun? Isn't a previously bought one going to be equally illegal after such a "bright idea"? Be careful and have fun anyway.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#118

Post by cronix » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 11:00 PM UTC

AWildC182 wrote: post #72

sailfast wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

I think the important difference is in the case of a drone, you're dealing with the possibility that it's going to get sucked into a jet engine (which by multi-engine standards should still be "safe"). Therefore the solution can't be worse than the problem and firing off missiles (which may fail and not self destruct correctly) or guns is a bit of an over-reaction. In the case of a military SAM engagement, you go int…

> the possibility that it's going to get sucked into a jet engine

I've often wondered why the turbine intakes don't have some sort of "filter" in front to prevent larger objects from entering? Birds have been a problem forever. Why isn't there a simple solution? Even a grid in front like a common 4"x4" chainlink fence would provide. Is there some reason why they're all just wide open?

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#119

Post by AWildC182 » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 11:10 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #115

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…

Are "industrial drones" and "100mph+ fixed wing drones" real concerns? I would think idiots with consumer drones are the major concern.

Supposedly the Gatwick drone was a larger, possibly industrial type. I made the point to illustrate the bounds of the problem. It's easy to assume it'll always be quads but it's very likely we'll see a variety of different configurations in the future and any solution should be flexible.

Re: Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport

#120

Post by Haydos585x2 » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 11:12 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #115

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…

Are "industrial drones" and "100mph+ fixed wing drones" real concerns? I would think idiots with consumer drones are the major concern.

I agree and think OP's comments about industrial drones are probably a bit of overkill. The majority of cases will be some consumer level drone, probably a lower-mid range one because it's nearly guaranteed to be lost.