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Shooting a rifle would definitely be a very bad idea. Bullets can travel for several miles if they're aimed even slightly up, and a drone isn't going to slow it down much.

Shotgun pellets would be better but you'd still have a good amount of risk for injury. Beanbag rounds though might be the best option, aside from an actual netgun.

Ok I have to wonder this: could a real helicopter get above these things and use it's tremendous down wash from the rotor to litteraly force these things down? Anyone whose even seen footage real helicopters knows they produce an extremely hard downward wind force.

For those who need a citation for everything...



If a real helicopter could get above one of these the down wash might be enough to cause it to tumble and crash. Is that an option?

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
If a real helicopter could get whose one of these the down wash might be enough to cause it to tumble and crash. Is that an option?

The force would probably do it, if you could line it up and the drone was low enough to not be able to recover before crashing. The hard part would be getting right on top of it and not flying into terrain in the process of trying to chase down a low-altitude drone. The real question is if you're in position to blow it down why not drop a net on it and ensure a kill.

The real reason not to do that is the same reason the drones are shutting down the airport in the first place. Don't want your heli to have a collision.

I had the idea that you could build a wide incinerator, something like a giant cooker gas ring, on the back of a van.

Drive it under the drone, and the draught of hot air will reduce the drone's effective lift, causing it to lose altitude.

It's sound in terms of physics, but impractical as a real device.

Apparently eagles are quite good against drones.

The University of Delft is having a "Drone Clash" event at which teams are trying to brainstorm anti-drone measures. The organiser was on Radio 4 last night, and said that the things you need to do to counter a drone are.

1. Spot it.
2. Recognise it as a hostile drone.
3. Engage it to capture or destroy.

Eagles can do this already. The problems are they need training and handling, and could be injured when attacking a drone.

The ira attacked downing Street with a mortar back in the day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit: I see that was already mentioned.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The real reason not to do that is the same reason the drones are shutting down the airport in the first place. Don't want your heli to have a collision.

I think we can trust professional, experienced pilots to not fly into a building.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
The real reason not to do that is the same reason the drones are shutting down the airport in the first place. Don't want your heli to have a collision.

I think we can trust professional, experienced pilots to not fly into a building.

A collision with the drone, which could result in a crash. And maneuvering at low altitude is dangerous, and a lot harder than you might think. It's very easy to get focused on a target and lose situational awareness, and at low altitude you have very little margin for error.

A couple have been arrested.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
I think we can trust professional, experienced pilots to not fly into a building.

 Peregrine wrote:
A collision with the drone, which could result in a crash. And maneuvering at low altitude is dangerous, and a lot harder than you might think. It's very easy to get focused on a target and lose situational awareness, and at low altitude you have very little margin for error.

Peregrine is right, and I want to expand on this a bit - zipping around at low altitude in a rotorcraft is actually pretty dangerous. The same downforce you're using to force the drone down can crash the helicopter if you descend into it - it forms vortexes at the tips of the blades that cause you to lose lift, and increasing throttle just accelerates the process. It's called vortex ring state. It applies to rotorcraft regardless of size - drone pilots can crash their drones line this too if they descend straight down too fast, which is why commercial drones come down so slow when doing automatic landings.

You can just fly out of it (in any direction but increasing throttle), but you have to be aware it's happening, and have altitude to do so. I understand the argument "the best military pilots would be trying to do this", but the US sent literally the best chopper pilots in the service to fly in for the Osama Bin Laden raid, and that's exactly how they crashed one of the choppers (it was overweight, which didn't help either).

So it's not a terrible plan, but it's certainly not trivial, either. I presume they weight the hassle of people not flying vs the possibility of a chopper crash and decided to try other options, which seem to have worked out.

Additionally, the drone can simply just fly away; I've seen this exact thing when a police helicopter tried to force down a drone in this manner in a national park on Youtube.

‘D-notices’ are not enforceable but the media tend to abide by them, British media anyway. If they didn’t they’d probably be bottom of the pile for any sort of interviews and the like afterwards to deter them, but there’s not a legal penalty.

But they’ve not been called “D-notices” in years.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Apparently eagles are quite good against drones.

The University of Delft is having a "Drone Clash" event at which teams are trying to brainstorm anti-drone measures. The organiser was on Radio 4 last night, and said that the things you need to do to counter a drone are.

1. Spot it.
2. Recognise it as a hostile drone.
3. Engage it to capture or destroy.

Eagles can do this already. The problems are they need training and handling, and could be injured when attacking a drone.

They were actually doing this in the Netherlands for about a year. They wound up scrapping it for the reasons you listed - it was expensive, required training, and some drones have carbon fiber props which means that the bird is essentially trying to grab an open blender if they comefrom overhead. The birds also sometimes would get distracted, but I'm going to blame that on the training; I imagine we're not as good at falconry as we once were.

Anyway they eventually decided they didn't have enough rogue drones to be worth all of that.

 Ouze wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
I think we can trust professional, experienced pilots to not fly into a building.

 Peregrine wrote:
A collision with the drone, which could result in a crash. And maneuvering at low altitude is dangerous, and a lot harder than you might think. It's very easy to get focused on a target and lose situational awareness, and at low altitude you have very little margin for error.

Peregrine is right, and I want to expand on this a bit - zipping around at low altitude in a rotorcraft is actually pretty dangerous. The same downforce you're using to force the drone down can crash the helicopter if you descend into it - it forms vortexes at the tips of the blades that cause you to lose lift, and increasing throttle just accelerates the process. It's called vortex ring state. It applies to rotorcraft regardless of size - drone pilots can crash their drones line this too if they descend straight down too fast, which is why commercial drones come down so slow when doing automatic landings.

You can just fly out of it (in any direction but increasing throttle), but you have to be aware it's happening, and have altitude to do so. I understand the argument "the best military pilots would be trying to do this", but the US sent literally the best chopper pilots in the service to fly in for the Osama Bin Laden raid, and that's exactly how they crashed one of the choppers (it was overweight, which didn't help either).

So it's not a terrible plan, but it's certainly not trivial, either. I presume they weight the hassle of people not flying vs the possibility of a chopper crash and decided to try other options, which seem to have worked out.

Additionally, the drone can simply just fly away; I've seen this exact thing when a police helicopter tried to force down a drone in this manner in a national park on Youtube.

i wonder how good the drone pilots are...

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:

 Elemental wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
I think drones will be targeted for more control due to their ability to make public statements that those in power donct like. I understsnd in Britain anything the government doesn't want said gets a D notice stuck on it and that's that's it, it can't be discussed or else.

I'd love to know where you got that idea from.

I'm going to guess it's informed almost entirely by that time Churchill tried to "slap" a D-notice on The Mirror. Even though that failed, it's the most famous example of a D-notice.

Maybe Profumo.

Also, FWIW, while they're generally respected, a D-notice is not legally enforceable.

I've seen English movies where some official says "D notice situation" and the media is forced not to report on it.

Is this a serious remark?

nfe wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 filbert wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
I think drones will be targeted for more control due to their ability to make public statements that those in power donct like. I understsnd in Britain anything the government doesn't want said gets a D notice stuck on it and that's that's it, it can't be discussed or else.

A drone with a loudspeaker could blare it out over a crowded area for some time, or carry a banner making an unapproved statement, of even use a laser projector to project a forbidden message on a building.

A drone can be used to make a public act of defiance and as such they'll be regulated by those in power before chainsaws which can only kill or injure a few peolle at most, so the state doesn't care.

What on earth are you banging on about? I don't know where you get your info from but you are severely misinformed.

So you deny the D notice exists?

It's an entirely voluntary system applying only to major media outlets. Though people can face prosecution for broadcasting certain statements after the fact, no one in the UK is prevented from making 'unapproved statements'. Even on the state channels.

Does england have anything like our No fly list? If so he may be on it possibly wrongly and as such is retaliating against what he sees as his persecution. Again I don't know if england has a no fly list. If it does i'm sure British police are investigating peolle on it.

Or maybe he was a fired worker at the airport with a grudge. Again I donct doubt authorities are looking at that.

But I think he bad a grudge against air travel or this airport. If he wanted mass panic the red powder idea that anyone smart enough to pull this off would have thought of would be a better option and more likely to produce some casualties as people fled in utter terror.

The UK does have a no fly list but I don't think it likely that it's a protest against it. Most likely seems, to me, to be an environmental protest. We have a years long ongoing dispute about the expansion of airports in London.

Now look, I saw video of a women being surrounded and arrested by English coos for standing in public and quietly reading out loud a list of British soldiers killed in Iraq, because itcs illegal to list British dead in military actions apparently because it's "bad for morale". So don't tell me Britain doesn't have censorship.

I don't believe you.

Britain does have censorship and no one has suggested otherwise.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4507446.stm

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4507446.stm

Well, that's rather different from the version of the story you presented, isn't it? Protesting where she was is the crime, not the protest itself, nor its content. Certainly no nonsense to do with restricting war dead due to morale. Everyone of them is read out in parliament at PMQs broadcast on the flagship political news show on the state broadcaster and on the 24 hour parliament channel.

There are multiple issues with trying to shoot down drones, they’re either out of range or the risk of missing is too great.

I’m guessing their preferred methods are electronic countermeasures that cause it to crash or paralyse it long enough to shoot down more safety, measures like those used to prevent IEDs being radio/phone detonated while being defused. But the exact techniques/technology used against IEDs are somewhat secretive.

I wonder if these people were arrested on the basis of some technological tracking or simply by a call from the public witnessing them taking off/landing. The former would give you more assurances.

I see a couple people have been arrested but mostly american media is talking about some thy else now so I doubt Ivan get the story here soon.

 Ouze wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Apparently eagles are quite good against drones.

The University of Delft is having a "Drone Clash" event at which teams are trying to brainstorm anti-drone measures. The organiser was on Radio 4 last night, and said that the things you need to do to counter a drone are.

1. Spot it.
2. Recognise it as a hostile drone.
3. Engage it to capture or destroy.

Eagles can do this already. The problems are they need training and handling, and could be injured when attacking a drone.

They were actually doing this in the Netherlands for about a year. They wound up scrapping it for the reasons you listed - it was expensive, required training, and some drones have carbon fiber props which means that the bird is essentially trying to grab an open blender if they comefrom overhead. The birds also sometimes would get distracted, but I'm going to blame that on the training; I imagine we're not as good at falconry as we once were.

Honestly whilst a large bird of prey could take them down chances are the biggest training issue is that the best place to attack the drone is from underneath whilst most birds of prey prefer to attack from the top. A flying bird has all its danger (beak and claws) on the underside whilst its vision is also best there. A drone instead has all its danger on the top with the rotors.


Airports have made extensive use of birds of prey, both as a live threat (fly the bird every so often to scare off others) and in hunting down pigeons and other birds that can sometimes nest in hangers and warehouses (trains and other companies also use falconers for this). Distraction is always a risk with any trained animal that has to operate remotely from the person issuing orders.

That said I suspect the falconers aspect is the same as in any animal training situation in that many now take it up as a hobby later in life rather than being born into a family who work with them every day. Ergo an adult generations ago would have been trained in how to handle and training birds since they were old enough to walk, so by the time they were an adult they'd already have a good 15 years training during the period in life where we most readily learn.

...oofff course.

Every Chris Grayling touches turns to gak. The man is an idiot.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is no situation Grayling cannot make worse.

The two people arrested on suspicion of the “criminal use of drones” that caused severe disruption at Gatwick airport this week are a 47-year-old man and a 54-year-old woman, both from Crawley in West Sussex, police have said.

,,surely this cannot be "just" a protest against noise or expansion ?

 reds8n wrote:

,,surely this cannot be "just" a protest against noise or expansion ?

It could be - as we've said several times in this thread, this level of disruption isn't exceptionally complex nor beyond the average person to be able to achieve. Also I'd have expected a more major/serious terror/disruption group to have put out noise and claim the disruption as their own - using it as a platform to advertise their issue/agenda. So the lack of any actual noise about it and its continued impact with no noise suggested it was a small, possibly isolated group

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
The real reason not to do that is the same reason the drones are shutting down the airport in the first place. Don't want your heli to have a collision.

I think we can trust professional, experienced pilots to not fly into a building.

A police helicopter did precisely that in Glasgow a few years ago. There was also one in London which collided with a crane and fell into the street. And those things they hit weren't moving around and trying to collide with them.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Every Chris Grayling touches turns to gak. The man is an idiot.

Want to tell us about him?

And just to perfectly illustrate my earlier point that the existing law is entirely adequate to deal with instances like this(from the Guardian article on the arrest):

The man and woman are being questioned “on suspicion of disrupting services of civil aviation in a way likely to endanger the safety of operations or persons” – offences that carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment on conviction.

Seriously what more deterrent can you get in a civilised country than sodding life imprisonment?

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
You can get a credit card even without a credit history because everyone has to start somewhere, it would be limited in size and the interest higher, but you’re not unable to acquire one, you choose not to.

What good is a credit card you can't afford to use?

1) Obtain low bar credit card
2) Use card to make a purchase you would have made anyway each month, such as groceries.
3) Pay off balance in full, because you already had the money and were spending it anyway.
4) Watch credit rating grow and your access to cheaper credit with it.

I've previously thought the best way to get rid of drones is with other drones. When I think "drone" I tend to think of a quadrotor, but something like a sling-launched turbojet or rocket powered drone that itself carries nets, short ranged projectiles or maybe even just crashes through quadrotors might be a way to go.

Maybe something human assisted, so a human points it in the general direction of a drone and then automated targeting systems take over and propel it at high speed at the drone you're trying to get rid of.

As fun as it sounds shooting down drones with rifles/helicopters/eagles/whatever, you'd think kids these days would be able to come up with something smarter to take them down.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-46665615?ns_source=facebook&ns_mchannel=social&ns_linkname=news_central&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ocid=socialflow_facebook

A man and woman arrested in connection with drone sightings that closed Gatwick Airport have been released without charge.

The 47-year-old man and 54-year-old woman were arrested on Friday night on suspicion of "the criminal use of drones".

Flights were grounded for more than 36 hours when the device was first spotted close to the runway on Wednesday night.

Sussex Police said the pair were no longer suspects.