Drone sightings at Gatwick Airport grounded flights and caused major delays to thousands of travellers hoping to get away during the 2018 Yuletide break.
First sightings were reported on December 19, with the airport adamant that ‘there were multiple confirmed sightings of drone activity at the airport’. The airport announced resumption of flights on December 21, adding that its ‘patrols and surveillance systems…have provided us with reassurance necessary that it is safe to re-open our airfield’.
Gatwick reported that it was back to a full schedule of 785 flights by December 22, but the airborne threat reappeared again last week when Heathrow Airport temporarily halted flights following the sighting of a drone.
According to the Metropolitan Police, ‘significant resources, both in terms of officers and equipment, were deployed to monitor the airspace around Heathrow and quickly detect and disrupt any illegal drone activity’.
“Our priority is keeping the airspace over London’s airports safe for the thousands of planes flying in and out every week,” said Met Police Commander Stuart Cundy. “Any deliberate acts to endanger the airfield and aircraft are serious offences that can carry lengthy prison sentences. If flown into the path of an aircraft, a drone has the potential to cause great harm to those on-board. Anyone caught illegally operating drones will be dealt with robustly.”
In response to the disruption, the government said that police will be given power to land drones and require users to produce the proper documentation. The police will also be able to search premises and seize drones where a serious offence has been committed. At the Home Office, counter drone technology is set for test and evaluation.
A quick Google search shows that a drone can be purchased from a large UK retail outlet for as little as £30, so what action should be taken to prevent people from flying their new acquisition in sensitive areas?
For 42 per cent of respondents, telecommunications-based tech would solve the problem, followed by 31 per cent who advocate aerial interception. Despite their relative ubiquity, just under a fifth of respondents (18 per cent) think drones should be licensed and operators security vetted. Four per cent think no extra action is necessary and the remaining five per cent opted for none of the above.
In the numerous comments that followed, Tim said: “The better drones (maybe 0.3kg, £400) have GPS and airport zones built into the controls and therefore limit their own height and return to take-off location if they lose signal. From a legislation point of view, having that requirement on all drones over a “tiny toy” size would solve anyone accidentally causing problems if all is functioning OK. If it malfunctions then signal jamming would force it to return to take-off location (or at least to start to go home, so police know which direction to go).”
Tim added that legislation means nothing to those using drones for nefarious intent, a sentiment that resonates throughout comments. What do you think? Keep the conversation alive in Comments below, but please familiarise yourself with our guidelines for comment content before submitting.
Seems to me that a basic radio direction finder based solution would be the simplest, cheapest and best !
Place suitable detectors around an airfield and use triangulation to detect and locate the drone and the person flying it.
All the hoo-haa around the fiasco at Gatwick just highlighted the lack of foresight and incompetence that exists amongst those who run our infrastructure and those who police it. Unbelievable. It also highlights the scam of the expensive, but basically useless, military technology, costs millions of pounds but rendered useless by a less than hundred pound toy.
Trivial to defeat. A drone doesn’t necessarily need real-time control. Preset a flight path, delay its take-off until you’re way out of the area, watch the chaos.
Or just fly it through a 4G connection. From the other side of the world.
The criminal element will always find a way around the system. All legislation does is make it more difficult for the law abiding citizen. The changing of the law to increase the exclusion area will have the effect of criminalising little Jonny flying a small drone in his garden 4.9 miles from an airport, sledgehammer and walnut springs to mind.
A quick look at the options –
Telecom tec. yes this will work on the cheaper end of the market, however, some high end drones are autonomous, radio location of the operator will not work here.
Aerial interception, again on small craft this is a good solution, however, on larger and faster machines interception devices may not be fast enough or big enough to do the required job.
Drone licensing, again if the drone is going to be operated by the criminal element, then there will be little chance that it will be registered, not in their name anyway! or it is imported or stolen.
A change in the law to allow them to be ‘shot out of the sky’ (currently prevented by CAA rules I believe) may help, but then the fall out from them being shot down could cause problems.
I don’t have the solution and if I did and published it, then it wouldn’t be long till it’s circumvented.
Draconian rules that could effectively make it very difficult for responsible drone operators, would clearly not stop anyone prepared to flout the law. As far as I can see the only effective option would be to implement active methods to stop (jam / track) drones flying in restricted air space and despite the cost, it would more likely protect a multi billion pound industry and countless lives. So lets get the protection costs in proportion to that is being protected very similar to other airport security requirements these days.
Exactly. Even if the sales of drones was outright banned it is trivial to build a drone from components that are not and should not be regulated.
As has been mentioned, jamming is impractical and does not function at all against drone operating autonomously.
As such, aerial interception is the only option that makes sense.
Surely any UFO in a sensitive area should be destroyed immediately on sighting and questions asked after?
Catching and neutralising the perps comes next!
There is no need for additional regulations,as the equipment needed to build/fly/control a drone can be purchased for very little cost & no amount of regulation would prevent criminals but severely restrict hobby flyers(I’m one)from enjoying their hobby. I don’t own a drone(I consider them little more than flying batteries)but I do own several aircraft that have cameras relaying these images to me on the ground,my aircraft can carry considerably heavier payloads than a drone so if I wanted to use it for any illegal purpose…. they can also fly many miles away rather than drones which run out of battery power after 20-30 mins max of flight. The technology already exists to prevent this kind of illegal activity(geo-fence)& can be setup for little cost(program the onboard flight controllers before sale)The effectiveness of a geo-fence can be observed in-use already to monitor criminals with a tag,the equipment installed in the criminals home alerts the monitoring authority that the criminal has exited the door instantly. There are also technology available to “fire” strong radio signals that swamp the drone operators control transmissions causing their craft to crash,end of problem.
Unfortunately ‘swamping the signal’ does not work on ‘paired’ systems, without the pairing code from the transmitter the drone ignores any commands, cutting off the signal by extremely powerful signals would put the drone into RTB (return to base) mode.
Search and destroy, ask questions later. I think most people who had their Christmas holiday messed up before leaving Gatwick would agree.
The better drones (maybe 0.3kg, £400) have GPS and airport zones built into the controls and therefore limit their own height, and return to take-off location if they lose signal. From a legislation point of view, having that requirement on all drones over a “tiny toy” size would solve anyone accidentally causing problems if all is functioning OK. If it malfunctions then signal jamming would force it to return to take-off location (or at least to start to go home, so police know which direction to go).
Terrorists are by definition not going to follow the law. As John says, 4G and autonomous path-finding can obviate jamming and mean that the person controlling can be worldwide. You have to be able to intercept.
There are already many laws making the actions at Gatwick illegal and punishable by both fines and imprisonment. These are enacted under the Air Navigation order, and enforced through various CAA regulations.
None of the above or any further expansion of the same would have or will have the slightest impact on anyone with the mind to ignore the law.
One of the sections of the act make it illegal to deliberately endanger an aircraft; so unless those suggesting shooting down an aircraft (in this case a ‘drone’) wish to show the same disregard for the law that the Gatwick perpetrator did, they would be committing an act against the same laws as were not enforced in the incident in question.
Like Adam above, I too fly fixed wing unmanned ariel systems (UAS) to the regulations set out in
the Air Navigation Order. Unfortunately the technology allowing easy and autonomous control such as is available in the modern crop of multirotor craft has brought flight within the reach of the masses, and has tarred all unmanned airiel systems with the same moniker of ‘Drone’ and subject to same hysteria.
It is most regrettable that the media did not do a very small amount or research (dronesafe.org would be an easy start), as they would have found that there is already legislation in place and that there are already further rules agreed with EASA being put in place during 2019.
Perhaps if the media had devoted 1/10 of the airtime generated by ‘Gatwick’ sufficient of the populace would be aware of the existing rules (and penalties) and comply with them.
Agreeing with most of the above, that anyone having the intent to violate restricted airspace isn’t going to give a monkeys about the Law, the only soution is destruction.
Fortunately so far the incursions have only been with drones. What would happen if anyone, perish the thought, would arm an R/c aircraft for mal-intent and aim it at a critical asset? Do we have Rapier reactive missiles at our airports?
There are a number of organisations working on ways to bring down rogue, but none of those would have been effective at Gatwick.
The problem seemed to be locating the drones.
The obvious solution is to put cameras every 400yards around the perimeter fence. That’s 20 cameras. Gatwick will employ hundreds of people. As soon as a drone is in the vicinity, assign one person to watch each camera.
When you know where the drone is, a low tech shot gun could finish off the job.
There is still no actual evidence that a drone at Gatwick ever really existed.
Existing laws are sufficient, but they need to be policed and implemented properly.
Education is the key, I am afraid that the attitude that these are just toys is half of the issue.
It is a big issue for legitimate model flyers that have co-existed with full size aviation for as long as I can remember…but now due to idiots, we are all being grouped together.
One of the problems with shooting them down is the fallout. If your projectile (bullet, rocket) misses, where does it go next? I saw a video of an American gadget that shoots a rocket towards a drone then nets it and the whole caboodle parachutes to the ground. Presumably, if the projectile misses it will still abort and deploy the ‘shute and descend safely. Anyway, legislation is currently sufficient and the bad guys won’t care if we tighten up the law. Better policing and enforcement of the existing rules, together with a way of knocking these things out of the sky must be paramount. By all means find ways of tracking the controller too, but getting these things out of controlled airspace is the priority. With a good defence the bad guys will not bother any more with this tactic and tracking the controller becomes unnecessary.
We did wonder at the wisdom of siting surface-to-air interception systems near airports.
Not wishing to cast doubt on the recent sighting at Heathrow (6pm 8/1/19) how can anyone see it?
The few times I’ve seen drones is due to the fact that I’ve heard them first, at a busy airport I doubt anyone would hear them and as for seeing them at night, yes they have lights but at the range these have been spotted at … really? There was also little evidence of drones at Gatwick, mainly hearsay; the drones that were seen, the police have said may well have been theirs!
As a card carrying cynic, I would ask “what is the best way to deflect attention from other news stories that could be embarrassing for, say, the government ? “
I’m with Another Steve completely on this: (I have learned to disbelieve on principle any and all ‘official’ statements from any and all Government(s) bodies or spokes-persons- of any stripe..
I am also a fully paid-up and founder member of the “awkward squad”. I am delighted to report that I hear my sons (who probably disliked my saying this as they were growing up) telling our grandchildren exactly the same.
Apropos fake news relating to Drones (or not!) Perhaps ‘they’ could get away with this when the majority of the population were uneducated and simple: we are no longer!
Speaking as an engineer who was on a flight that was diverted to Liverpool because of this, and who grew up a few miles from the flight path, I believe this poll reflects a run before you can walk mentality.
1. Seems to me, after following the news, that we need to get a body of data on risks (not scaremongering un-informed guess work). What level of damage can be inflicted in to what systems by what size and weight object. From there you can more accurately spec the detection system and the response system.
2. The main risks to air traffic would be on take off and landing, which is a much smaller, better defined area than an airport perimeter based exclusion zone. This reduces the deployment area, the detection area, and allows a system to be put in place that protects the passengers lives at the point of greatest risk.
3. In terms of systems, this publication has run some interesting stories on the latest defense anti-missile systems for naval usage. Seems to me, that a CREW would not give the same level of physical debris as a solid projectile or soft projectile. On the assumption that the systems can be developed to allow it to accurately detect and target a risky sized object, and that this is tied in to the radar systems of the airport so that it fires when line of sight is clear, it would seem to be a reasonable, if not immediately available (or necessarily the cheapest) solution.
Why don’t jet engines have Weld-Mesh over their air intakes ??
I have been flying Radio-Controlled model aircraft for 40 years. These ‘rogue’ operators are threatening our sport, mainly because of knee-jerk reactions which fuelled by our media at all levels. All radio-controlled aircraft are classified as drones or UAVs. The aircraft in question are ‘multi rotors’ or quad copters. Etc. There are some 35,000 + model pilots in
The UK and 99.99% of us are responsible and are normally in a well-constituted model club which is affiliated to our national body the British Model Flying Association (BMFA). We are subject to CAA rules contained within CAP 658 and other Air Navigation Orders (ANO).
These problem people can go and purchase a cheap multi rotor online or elsewhere and not care about the consequences, just like bad car drivers. There are many responsible multirotor pilots out there, some using them for aerial photography, surveying etc.
My plea is, don’t tar all UAV (drone) operators with the same brush. These rogue people are very much a minority.
given the availability of ‘jailbreak’ drone software and the capability to pre-program a flight route, allowing the drone to observe radio silence, physical interception seems the most reliable option. I’d have thought the downdraft from a helicopter flying above the drone would be more than adequate to knock it down
I was both surprised and disappointed at the poor response to the drone incursion at Gatwick. It was inevitable that this would occur at some point. It seems there was absolutely was no plan in place regarding how do deal with it. After all, this is not new technology and countermeasures exist. As a designer and subscriber to the Engineer, hardly a month goes by with out someone demonstrating anti-drone technology, be it nets, EMC pulses or even trained eagles. I was really hoping for one of those ‘guys, this is the moment we’ve been training for’ moments – a team would appear, dispatch the drone and everyone would go about their day. I really feel someone has taken their eye off the ball here.
Unless I was tricked into doing all those jet engine entry air-flow calculations and experiments some 58 years ago, and such were irrelevant…it is because the characteristics of flow into such is as critical as any that occurs a few ‘feet’ later, when the ‘gases’ enter the turbine.
I hate to think of the multitude of interfering laminar flow, turbulent flow and laminar sub-layer flows that might be generated! And that is before the vortices that will be generated.
It’s only a matter of time before terrorists start using drones in this country, possible targets are unlimited. Look at what happened in Yemen today. Drones should be banned for public use and only allowed to be operated by fully licensed and controlled organisations.
As cars have also been used for terrorist use, should they be banned? Banning things does not stop the criminal element or terrorist doing something. for example knife crime is on the up yet it is illegal to carry a knife (with exceptions) without good reason.
(*) As we also do for ballistic weapons?
All of the above make good points to solve the problem, but miss the main point, that if a terrorist, criminal or idiot breaks the law, or disregards the laws, the laws are useless in solving this problem. example people driving while drunk or effected by drugs or alcohol, the laws say that they should not, but how many people are caught drink driving. What is needed is a combination of both Aerial Interception and Telecommunication based technology. The issue is a national defense issue, and must be given priority and the finance to solve this issue, It is said to think that any airport could be subjected to a complete shut down, by such a low cost drone.
I believe I have described before once attending a gathering where it was suggested that a roll of aluminium foil and a couple of AA batteries could persuade a $50,000 + missile that it was attacking a worthwhile target!
these drones come into our loving great country, and try to take sensitive photos of places WITHOUT CONSENT! Unacceptable. if i see one i’m gonna pull up along side it and let that .40 bang