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Gatwick Airport, the seconnd main airport of London, has been closed for hours due to two drones flying around inside the perimeter and over the runway.

Flights carrying 10,000 people have been affected, unable to take off, or diverted to different airports. It is the beginning of one of the busiest weekends of the year.

Teenage idiots or industrial sabotage? If the police catch them, there is the potential of a 5 year jail term for this offence.

This was always going to be a problem. I saw a stand at the defence vehicle demo this year showing net lauchers and anti drone cannons, that are currently deployed or in the process of being deployed at UK airports, and there are anti drone jammers being deployed to warzones, but not currently allowed to be deployed on UK soil.

Rightly so on the Jail term front. if one of those things gets sucked into a turbojet intake the results could be catastrophic.

I found the airport's response interesting:

Gatwick chief operating officer Chris Woodroofe said police had not wanted to shoot the devices down because of the risk from stray bullets. He added: "The police are looking for the operator and that is the way to disable the drone."

So the airport isn't going to do anything and just leave it up to the police? Surely they have plans in place to deal with drones...

They might have plans, but sometimes until something happens plans are just theory talked about the boardroom table. When it comes to an active situation the complexities start to come out and sometimes an earlier "good idea" starts to appear to be less than good.
It might also be that investment in things like drone nets, have not yet been made. Perhaps they wanted to wait and see how other places and wider testing faired before making the investment themselves.

That said one could surely use a longer range BB gun? I would think they'd have enough force to damage/take down a drone without the same risk of live bullets flying around. Of course if the drone is on the perimeter that's fine; if its flying around near the planes then any attempt to shoot it down might be a risk if engines are still running.


Drones are a hazard and I can see them being regulated and requiring a licence. Unlike model airplanes, which have been around for years, drones are very cheap (comparatively speaking) and the computers inside make them very easy to fly. So its low price low skill which opens the floodgates to a much wider population. Plus they've been marketed a lot more heavily so people are aware of them - I can't even recall seeing an advertisement for functional model aircraft that wasn't already on a store that specialises in such products.


The RSPB and other groups have already restricted/banned the use of drones over their land due to disturbance and they've had issues in the USA of people chasing wildlife with them leading to similar bans.

beast_gts wrote:
I found the airport's response interesting:

Gatwick chief operating officer Chris Woodroofe said police had not wanted to shoot the devices down because of the risk from stray bullets. He added: "The police are looking for the operator and that is the way to disable the drone."

So the airport isn't going to do anything and just leave it up to the police? Surely they have plans in place to deal with drones...

Apparently their plans were to stop flying. Anti drone tech is quite new, and I would guess you would need it to be well tested before using it near an airport.


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 Overread wrote:

That said one could surely use a longer range BB gun? I would think they'd have enough force to damage/take down a drone without the same risk of live bullets flying around.

A BB gun, not a hope. An air rifle? Possibly, but there is not much diffrence between a high power air rifle and a 22lr in terms of power. Either way you would risk hitting someone, and you would need a reasonable amount of power to ensure thay you did not need to be that close that they could just move away from you (22lr and FAC air rifles have an effective range of between 50 and 100 meters).

I cant imagine them getting authority to start loosing off projectiles into the sky. plus firing solid shot at flying targets is notoriously difficult, and would require skilled shooters. an alternative would be to get clay/pigeon shooters to take them down with shotguns.

I should have thought they could put police marksmen with shotguns on a helicopter, fly above the drone, then shoot down at it so that any missing pellets would hit the ground rather than an aircraft or building.

They also might be able to follow the drone when it returns to base for new batteries.

These ideas would not work at night, of course.

There are 110,000 people wanting to use Gatwick today, including my two pod mates. One's mother is flying in from Lithuania, the other is flying home to Venice, for Christmas. But probably not, now.

This is not how we want Britain to present itself to the world as a modern open country for business and tourism.

I suppose the only problem with shooting the drones down is that once they are down the operators will just leave. So I can see why they might let them remain in the air so that they have a greater chance of catching the operators.

Whilst it leads to more disruption, it sends a much more powerful message if you catch the people doing this and give them a heavy punishment; than if you simply shoot down the drones and keep going.



Another angle is that if the drones are cheap enough and those causing the disruption dedicated enough; shooting down one drone or two might make the operators release more. So instead of stopping the incident it just creates more confusion.

You make a good point. There is no use shooting down a drone, starting flights again, then another drone arriving and hitting a plane in the air.

I think these drones definitely are professional sabotage. I can't imagine a couple of stupid teenagers putting so much effort into what basically would be a silly prank.

The fact that a drone was in the air for 12 hours must show it was a planned setup potentially with multiple participants, otherwise what the hell are they flying, Reapers?

I'm all for the idea of prosecution of the culprit and measures put in place to stop this, lest it becomes a common strategy for troublemakers, terrorists or even protestors. Want to protest Heathrow's third runway? Just fly a few drones nearby and shut the place down.

Can't see shooting being a viable strategy however, my hopes would lie in signal jammers and such.

Years ago in america we had morons aiming high power laser pointers at airplanes, targeting the cockpits in some cases. Serious penalties were imposed.


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Years ago in america we had morons aiming high power laser pointers at airplanes, targeting the cockpits in some cases. Serious penalties were imposed.

My Italian colleague's flight has been cancelled. It was schedule to depart 20:30 tonight, so clearly the airport management think they are out of action for the day..

Next available flight is 26th Dec. She's going by train instead. Total journey time will be about 18-20 hours.

My immediate thoughts were about how they were keeping them up for so long, as I use drones for work and the battery life is rubbish, but it transpires that they keep disappearing and reappearing (they've thought they were clear to fly several times before they were spotted again) so they're presumably landing them and changing batteries.

Going to have severe legislative repercussions for drone ownership and sales in the UK, I imagine.

Even without this incident I can see them being heavily regulated. What's fun for some is a distraction or danger to others.

And yeah they are likely landing and relaunching, plus considering how big an area an airport is and how fast some drones are it could be that they are sweeping them in and out through deceptive angles and also operating from a vehicle so can move around between launchings. One driver and one or two pilots and they could keep two drones in the air for ages - longer if they keep the car engine running and top up the batteries from the car power ports.

Plus its not like they have to keep hovering for ages; darting in and out is enough to keep the planes grounded. The risk of just one going through an engine intake is just too great.

Worrying that its been so effective - can see it happening again

If we're going to be serious about clamping down on this level of sabotage, and let's be honest, that's what it is by now, then we need to send out a zero tolerance approach.

5 years? Give them 30 lashes in public with the cat o' nine tails and stick them in the jail for 10 years. Minimum.

Harsh, yes, because it's meant to be. The alternative is jets dropping from the sky and hundreds of people getting scrapped off the tarmac and/or being burnt to death by aviation fuel.

The most effective way to prevent this is what is called geofencing. Drone manufacturers should be forced to build in software into their drones that prevents them from working near airports and other restricted areas. Many drones already have this kind of software built in, but not all of them do. It is also something that is still pretty new, so it does not always work perfectly yet.
Another effective solution is to register (and possibly require a license for) all drone owners, and make unregistered possession of a drone a crime.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The most effective way to prevent this is what is called geofencing. Drone manufacturers should be forced to build in software into their drones that prevents them from working near airports and other restricted areas. Many drones already have this kind of software built in, but not all of them do. It is also something that is still pretty new, so it does not always work perfectly yet.
Another effective solution is to register (and possibly require a license for) all drone owners, and make unregistered possession of a drone a crime.

If they're not GPS enabled and are just being flown manually from the onboard cameras then geofencing will do zip.

Registration would definitely be a good idea, possibly even with the owner linked to a code broadcast by the drone while it is operating.

Just makes them a higher priority for thieves.

BBC News are reporting these are thought to be 'industrial' drones, larger than those Joe Public might have access to.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Just makes them a higher priority for thieves.

BBC News are reporting these are thought to be 'industrial' drones, larger than those Joe Public might have access to.

So who would stand to benefit?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Just makes them a higher priority for thieves.

BBC News are reporting these are thought to be 'industrial' drones, larger than those Joe Public might have access to.

Not suggesting something Joe Public could look up and then use to target owners for thievery etc. More like, say, broadcasting a 128-bit key that is tied to the owner in the presumably secure national drone registry database.

 War Drone wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Just makes them a higher priority for thieves.

BBC News are reporting these are thought to be 'industrial' drones, larger than those Joe Public might have access to.

So who would stand to benefit?

Train companies, Ferry operators, environmentalists, anarchists, anti-Western or anti-capitalist groups.

 Valkyrie wrote:
The fact that a drone was in the air for 12 hours must show it was a planned setup potentially with multiple participants, otherwise what the hell are they flying, Reapers?

I'm all for the idea of prosecution of the culprit and measures put in place to stop this, lest it becomes a common strategy for troublemakers, terrorists or even protestors. Want to protest Heathrow's third runway? Just fly a few drones nearby and shut the place down.

Can't see shooting being a viable strategy however, my hopes would lie in signal jammers and such.

I'm no expert on radio frequency equipment and what channels these things are controlled on, but I cant see Jammers being used in the UK for a while. the ones I saw were only allowed to be deployed overseas on operations. When we want to deploy ECM on EOD jobs in the UK permission has to be granted by the home office as they have the potential to interfere with lots of different types of equipment.

I wold personally support a ban on public sales of them. I know that's punishing responsible users but I think the risk they pose outweighs that.

Jammers will be installed before Easter...
They're directional, and can be made to track before activating.
Jammers facing into the site, or up from the ground into the air, can avoid affecting anything legitimate.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The most effective way to prevent this is what is called geofencing. Drone manufacturers should be forced to build in software into their drones that prevents them from working near airports and other restricted areas. Many drones already have this kind of software built in, but not all of them do. It is also something that is still pretty new, so it does not always work perfectly yet.

Easily disabled, I'm afraid.

An army spokesman said specialist equipment is being deployed at Gatwick Airport.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The most effective way to prevent this is what is called geofencing. Drone manufacturers should be forced to build in software into their drones that prevents them from working near airports and other restricted areas. Many drones already have this kind of software built in, but not all of them do. It is also something that is still pretty new, so it does not always work perfectly yet.

A sufficiently motivated person would have that disabled in a couple nights of messing around with it.

Another effective solution is to register (and possibly require a license for) all drone owners, and make unregistered possession of a drone a crime.

We do that in the states for drones heavier than a couple ounces. The libertarian in me is horrified, but I reluctantly see the point. Unfortunately, it also depends upon people playing by the rules, as right now the only thing compelling people to register their drones is a willingness to operate within the law.


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This reminds me of a funny story. Back in the 90s when I was a kid, my dad and I were flying a homemade kite in a park somewhat near the local airport. We actually got the thing high enough that someone came out to ask us to take it down. I don't know how high we actually got it, but I know that we had multiple lines tied together to get it up further than just one would allow. No trouble came of it, and we brought it down as quick as we could. I don't think it occurred to us that we were close enough or high enough that it would even be noticed.

Absolutely unacceptable that this has gone on for so long now. And very typical that something like this has to happen before any kind of reactionary process is put in place. I'm actually amazed it hasn't happened before now.

Obviously shooting regular weaponry would be foolhardy, but why couldn't they use rubber bullets?

Or I saw a news real from an anti-drone-drone in Japan. The Yakuza were using drones to transport drugs across the city - the Police made a bigger drone with a net, flew after them and captured them!

Or even someone leaning out of a helicopter with a stick? *

Why is it so hard?

* actually, I would have thought even hovering above, the downdraft from a suitably large helicopter would do the job..

So who would stand to benefit?

I did wonder if it was to do with proposed airport expansion at Gatwick, but upon reading the extra runway was rejected in favour of Heathrow. They are planning extra capacity and more flights from the airport - maybe that is something to do with it?

It feels unlikely that it's terrorists trying to bring down a plane, as presumably they would wait for flights to resume before sending in something surreptitiously. Rather than randomly hovering around (which makes it feel like the objective is to keep the airport shut down).

 Pacific wrote:
Absolutely unacceptable that this has gone on for so long now. And very typical that something like this has to happen before any kind of reactionary process is put in place. I'm actually amazed it hasn't happened before now.

Obviously shooting regular weaponry would be foolhardy, but why couldn't they use rubber bullets?

Or I saw a news real from an anti-drone-drone in Japan. The Yakuza were using drones to transport drugs across the city - the Police made a bigger drone with a net, flew after them and captured them!

Or even someone leaning out of a helicopter with a stick? *

Why is it so hard?

Deputy chief constable Serena Kennedy, lead on drones and criminality for National Police Chiefs' Council, said the police have been working with government departments for a while on the issues of drone misuse.

"We are testing equipment to make sure we understand the full capabilities of that equipment, to make sure we don't take out other equipment that's needed in relation to hospitals," she said.

"We absolutely have to put public safety number one."

She said they also faced legislative issues and there was a need to make sure the police, the private sector and the military have got the ability to do what they need in situations like today.

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 War Drone wrote:
So who would stand to benefit?

I'm thinking it's a political/activist group making a point. I was wondering if it was a 'test run' for something more serious, but it's gone on too long for that (IMHO).

Currently having first hand experience of this, was meant to be getting a flight at 10am this morning to be told not to come to the airport because all flights are cancelled.

Due to the fact it's Christmas there are literally no flights that I can afford to get back to Ireland in a reasonable time frame so I'm currently booking it to Holyhead to get a boat for this evening at 8pm (by booking it I mean getting a train). So that gets me as far as Dublin but my car is in Belfast which requires another train to go there.

I understand why they shut the place down but man is it a ball ache, not to mention the trauma involved with getting compensation.

Not the first time I've experienced a shut down at Gatwick. The building got evacuated a few years back because a toaster went on fire in departures.