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Given the shockingly naive comments about drone disabling being proposed, I'm going to assume only a very tiny handful of people who visit this site has ever fl

Given the shockingly naive comments about drone disabling being proposed, I'm going to assume only a very tiny handful of people who visit this site has ever flown or seen a drone before. Let's cure some of this naivety: - GPS jamming doesn't jam video feed. - Wifi and radio jamming doesn't stop landmark-driven/return-to-home navigation. - UK refusal to fire on the craft is absurd because rubber bullets, simunitions, and less-than-lethal rounds are more than capable of destabilizing the hull and structure of the craft... while inflicting no damage on distant landed craft or personnel. (I wouldn't expect HN to know this, tbh) -Sending piles of off-the-shelf consumer drones up to ram into it would have been sufficient as well. Because of those last two points, the bumbling incompetence of UK security forces suggests to me that this event is purely pretext for even more rigid anti-drone legislation in a country that already has extreme anti-drone legislation. If true, then the question is, "What has changed that has made Airstrip One suddenly paranoid about drones?"

CydeWeys 8y ago
The wild speculation happens for every subject area here. It's obvious in areas that I know anything about, and it also reminds me to take everything else outside of tech's core competencies with a huge grain of salt.
- AceyMan 8y ago
  Yup. I posited this when I was a young pup, then found out some dude beat me to it <wink>: see, Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect?wprov...
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
What "extreme anti-drone legislation" is that? Seems pretty common sense and light to me: https://dronesafe.uk https://dronesafe.uk Registration is a year away.
dogma1138 8y ago
>- UK refusal to fire on the craft is absurd because rubber bullets, simunitions, and less-than-lethal rounds are more than capable of destabilizing the hull and structure of the craft... while inflicting no damage on distant landed craft or personnel. (I wouldn't expect HN to know this, tbh) I think the only naive person here is you. Firstly rubber bullets like those used for crowd control are fired form either a special barrel break or from a 40mm underbarell attachment (grenade launcher). These are disks made out of steel covered with a thick layer of rubber and they are inaccurate as fuck, you will not hit a man sized target even at 50 yards with them yet alone a drone. The other option is various shotgun polymer slugs which have a slightly better accuracy but still hitting a drone size target is nearly impossible. You’re best bet is birdshot it then again you are limited with range. However you still have the issue that the police isn’t trained nor equipped to fire at drones and until they can be achieved they have no option. And even if you train those policemen to effectively hit drones those drones aren’t easily accessible and fly out of reach. The previous incident last week which also shutdown the airport had a drone at 10,000 feet, but even a few 100’s of feet would put the drone outside of the range of anything that you could plausibly use at an airport. That said since these drones only have a short loitering time and even if they are shot down the police still needs to investigate and clear the area to ensure that there are not other drones and to collect any evidence and statements you don’t gain anything by shooting them down the airspace would still be locked down for just as long. So when your decision is to try to shoot drones you likely can’t hit to cut their loitering time by 5-10 min at best while potentially endangering the field or people or to wait for them to fly back to their owner in the hopes of catching them it’s not a hard decision at all and doesn’t show any level of incompetence on the behalf of the British police. P.S. in every case effectively the shutdown came after the drones have left the area already, they are only there for a few minutes the airport is huge by the time the police can even get close they are gone but then order is then issued to ensure that there are no more drones in the area. Unless we will start putting on phalanx installations every couple of 100’s or yards around the perimeter of the airport there is no kinetic way to shoot these things down.
- Sir_Substance 8y ago
  I don't really wanna call this a "solved problem" because it's certainly not, but there /are/ off the shelf anti-drone munitions and have been for a while: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG7hUE2BZZo&feature=youtu.be&t=1563 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG7hUE2BZZo&feature=youtu.be... I too think it's very weird that the UK government apparently doesn't have /any/ specialized antidrone munitions around and refused to attempt to fire anything at these drones.
ddalex 8y ago
It seems to me that yourself miss a couple of points: - the drones were flying high. Show me any sharpshooter that can shot down a highly agile and impredictible target at 200m high. Clay pigeons are shot at 60m on a very predictable trajectory, and even that requires a lot of skill and training. - drones flying on preprogrammed path are impossible to intercept electronically, with the exception of GPS spoofing. Even that is difficult, never mind deploying GPS spoofers around the airport - it would make the airplane operations impossible, so can't fly while the GPS spoofers are running, and when they're not running, there is drone flying - the complexity of keeping drones in the air for long times (replacing batteries, field repairs, having spare parts) is not to be underestimated. This suggests a planned operation
- DBYCZ 8y ago
  I wonder if it is possible to disable a drone with a barrage of powerful air vortices. This would solve the GPS/camera navigation problem without disabling aircraft systems, and it would prevent any collateral damage caused by launching projectiles in the air. https://youtu.be/IN_N_J1yx-U?t=331 https://youtu.be/IN_N_J1yx-U?t=331 It would need to be vehicle mounted and automated to fire rapidly, but would be interesting to see in action. (And probably a lot of fun to operate)
bronson 8y ago
> - UK refusal to fire on the craft is absurd because rubber bullets, simunitions, and less-than-lethal rounds are more than capable of destabilizing the hull and structure of the craft... while inflicting no damage on distant landed craft or personnel. (I wouldn't expect HN to know this, tbh) What do you think the effective range of less-than-lethal rounds are? Now, how are you going get that close to the drone? (Without doing something truly insane like firing out of a helicopter that's trying to fly close to a drone of course) > -Sending piles of off-the-shelf consumer drones up to ram into it would have been sufficient as well. You're going to have piles of consumer drone pilots on call?
cmurf 8y ago
Illegal drone operations are similar to running a charity to commit fraud. The primary mode of operation is the honor system, not having a bunch of agents ready to stop criminal activity the instant it happens. But now that it's happening, the central motivation is to capture the perpetrator. That's a necessity to show there isn't some government conspiracy to expand power, that someone really did urinate in the swimming pool, and show the seriousness of the consequences. This isn't a case of larceny, it's wholesale asset and trust destruction. There's millions of pounds of costs associated with this event that cannot be recovered from the perpetrators. So throwing the book at them, however overcriminalized it might end up being, is going to be the main means of deterring future events. And that's because we don't have a drone police force, yet, to nearly instantly apprehend drones coming into an airport's perimeter. What are we going to do, deploy such things for thousands of airports? You really want people to be incentivized to adhere to the honor system, even if it's a coercive disincentive that you're going to lose your freedom if you decide to piss in the pool in this manner.

CydeWeys 8y ago

The wild speculation happens for every subject area here. It's obvious in areas that I know anything about, and it also reminds me to take everything else outside of tech's core competencies with a huge grain of salt.

AceyMan 8y ago
Yup. I posited this when I was a young pup, then found out some dude beat me to it <wink>: see, Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect?wprov...

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

What "extreme anti-drone legislation" is that? Seems pretty common sense and light to me: https://dronesafe.uk https://dronesafe.uk Registration is a year away.

dogma1138 8y ago

>- UK refusal to fire on the craft is absurd because rubber bullets, simunitions, and less-than-lethal rounds are more than capable of destabilizing the hull and structure of the craft... while inflicting no damage on distant landed craft or personnel. (I wouldn't expect HN to know this, tbh) I think the only naive person here is you. Firstly rubber bullets like those used for crowd control are fired form either a special barrel break or from a 40mm underbarell attachment (grenade launcher). These are disks made out of steel covered with a thick layer of rubber and they are inaccurate as fuck, you will not hit a man sized target even at 50 yards with them yet alone a drone. The other option is various shotgun polymer slugs which have a slightly better accuracy but still hitting a drone size target is nearly impossible. You’re best bet is birdshot it then again you are limited with range. However you still have the issue that the police isn’t trained nor equipped to fire at drones and until they can be achieved they have no option. And even if you train those policemen to effectively hit drones those drones aren’t easily accessible and fly out of reach. The previous incident last week which also shutdown the airport had a drone at 10,000 feet, but even a few 100’s of feet would put the drone outside of the range of anything that you could plausibly use at an airport. That said since these drones only have a short loitering time and even if they are shot down the police still needs to investigate and clear the area to ensure that there are not other drones and to collect any evidence and statements you don’t gain anything by shooting them down the airspace would still be locked down for just as long. So when your decision is to try to shoot drones you likely can’t hit to cut their loitering time by 5-10 min at best while potentially endangering the field or people or to wait for them to fly back to their owner in the hopes of catching them it’s not a hard decision at all and doesn’t show any level of incompetence on the behalf of the British police. P.S. in every case effectively the shutdown came after the drones have left the area already, they are only there for a few minutes the airport is huge by the time the police can even get close they are gone but then order is then issued to ensure that there are no more drones in the area. Unless we will start putting on phalanx installations every couple of 100’s or yards around the perimeter of the airport there is no kinetic way to shoot these things down.

Sir_Substance 8y ago
I don't really wanna call this a "solved problem" because it's certainly not, but there /are/ off the shelf anti-drone munitions and have been for a while: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG7hUE2BZZo&feature=youtu.be&t=1563 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG7hUE2BZZo&feature=youtu.be... I too think it's very weird that the UK government apparently doesn't have /any/ specialized antidrone munitions around and refused to attempt to fire anything at these drones.

ddalex 8y ago

It seems to me that yourself miss a couple of points: - the drones were flying high. Show me any sharpshooter that can shot down a highly agile and impredictible target at 200m high. Clay pigeons are shot at 60m on a very predictable trajectory, and even that requires a lot of skill and training. - drones flying on preprogrammed path are impossible to intercept electronically, with the exception of GPS spoofing. Even that is difficult, never mind deploying GPS spoofers around the airport - it would make the airplane operations impossible, so can't fly while the GPS spoofers are running, and when they're not running, there is drone flying - the complexity of keeping drones in the air for long times (replacing batteries, field repairs, having spare parts) is not to be underestimated. This suggests a planned operation

DBYCZ 8y ago
I wonder if it is possible to disable a drone with a barrage of powerful air vortices. This would solve the GPS/camera navigation problem without disabling aircraft systems, and it would prevent any collateral damage caused by launching projectiles in the air. https://youtu.be/IN_N_J1yx-U?t=331 https://youtu.be/IN_N_J1yx-U?t=331 It would need to be vehicle mounted and automated to fire rapidly, but would be interesting to see in action. (And probably a lot of fun to operate)

bronson 8y ago

cmurf 8y ago

Illegal drone operations are similar to running a charity to commit fraud. The primary mode of operation is the honor system, not having a bunch of agents ready to stop criminal activity the instant it happens. But now that it's happening, the central motivation is to capture the perpetrator. That's a necessity to show there isn't some government conspiracy to expand power, that someone really did urinate in the swimming pool, and show the seriousness of the consequences. This isn't a case of larceny, it's wholesale asset and trust destruction. There's millions of pounds of costs associated with this event that cannot be recovered from the perpetrators. So throwing the book at them, however overcriminalized it might end up being, is going to be the main means of deterring future events. And that's because we don't have a drone police force, yet, to nearly instantly apprehend drones coming into an airport's perimeter. What are we going to do, deploy such things for thousands of airports? You really want people to be incentivized to adhere to the honor system, even if it's a coercive disincentive that you're going to lose your freedom if you decide to piss in the pool in this manner.