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 Kilkrazy wrote:
Yeah, I don't see why it couldn't be shot down with bird shot. Millions of rounds a year are shot off into the sky for clay pigeon, and for shooting, and no-one gets hurt except the occasional beater.

Because where people shoot those there is clear space for the pellets to fall. This airport, and indeed most airports, are in dense cities.

Yeah, in order to shoot down a drone in maximum possible safety you'ce need to have an apevacuation and advisory to nearby people to stay inside at time X. In such a case the drone operator would likely evacuate his drone too.

Is there any fresh news on this?

Also airports are very large open spaces, don’t the drones have cameras? If people get close, they’ll just move away. The guns people are suggesting don’t have the range to be effective. If it was that easy to locate and shoot them down I’m sure they would have.

Anyway, it’s gone very quiet now so I wonder if their investigation is going anywhere or if they are waiting long enough for the media to move onto something else before they admit they spent most of the day the airport was shut chasing their own tail.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Also airports are very large open spaces, don’t the drones have cameras? If people get close, they’ll just move away. The guns people are suggesting don’t have the range to be effective. If it was that easy to locate and shoot them down I’m sure they would have.

Shotguns definitely have the range. Now the operator might see the cops sneaking up with a shotgun, they may not. And it would doubtlessly be effective. The reason it hasn't been done is because it would be an unacceptable risk to safety to fire shotguns in an upward direction in an urban environment.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Also airports are very large open spaces, don’t the drones have cameras? If people get close, they’ll just move away. The guns people are suggesting don’t have the range to be effective. If it was that easy to locate and shoot them down I’m sure they would have.

Shotguns definitely have the range. Now the operator might see the cops sneaking up with a shotgun, they may not. And it would doubtlessly be effective. The reason it hasn't been done is because it would be an unacceptable risk to safety to fire shotguns in an upward direction in an urban environment.

What sort of range does birdshot have? My understanding was typically less than 40 yards, even if it were 100 yards that’s probably not far enough, a drone could just fly at a 100m altitude, and even if it were lower an airport is a big place, a 747 is around 80 yards long, so you’d be chasing it around trying to get within a decent range all the while paying attention to what’s behind the drone and whether it’s safe to actually take the shot.

I think hard rubber pellets could impact a drone hard enough to disrupt and crash it while minimizing risk to people as they fell.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Yeah, I don't see why it couldn't be shot down with bird shot. Millions of rounds a year are shot off into the sky for clay pigeon, and for shooting, and no-one gets hurt except the occasional beater.

Because where people shoot those there is clear space for the pellets to fall. This airport, and indeed most airports, are in dense cities.

The range of bird shot is under 500 yards. Gatwick Airport is about 4 Km long and between 3 and 1.5 Km wide. Also, it is mostly surrounded by countryside.

Of course there are buildings and planes inside the perimeter, but a great deal of it is open ground.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Spoiler:

 War Drone wrote:
1st Para, I felt a "twinge" of sympathy (I've had FAR worse)

2nd Para, I really thought "Yay for Xeno! Happy!"

3rd Para, it kind of felt like you got your junk out and smeared it all over the inside of my forearms without me knowing ...

I am unsure which orkmote to choose ...

It wasn't that bad because I had a lot of fun in Dublin. Still a huge pain.

Saw some pictures in the paper with English soldiers would shoulder mounted rocket launchers patrolling an airport...Like seriously - you don't need that kind of firepower LOL. Had some laughs at a pub with some nice guys from England showing a video of a drone being destroyed flying over a football match via a roll of toliet paper

. Sorry for disgusting you in such a way but do you really think it's reasonable that a 1500 dollar remote controlled aircraft should be shutting down large international airports?

Who said I felt disgusted?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Spoiler:

 War Drone wrote:
1st Para, I felt a "twinge" of sympathy (I've had FAR worse)

2nd Para, I really thought "Yay for Xeno! Happy!"

3rd Para, it kind of felt like you got your junk out and smeared it all over the inside of my forearms without me knowing ...

I am unsure which orkmote to choose ...

It wasn't that bad because I had a lot of fun in Dublin. Still a huge pain.

Saw some pictures in the paper with English soldiers would shoulder mounted rocket launchers patrolling an airport...Like seriously - you don't need that kind of firepower LOL. Had some laughs at a pub with some nice guys from England showing a video of a drone being destroyed flying over a football match via a roll of toliet paper

. Sorry for disgusting you in such a way but do you really think it's reasonable that a 1500 dollar remote controlled aircraft should be shutting down large international airports?

Who said I felt disgusted?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Yeah, I don't see why it couldn't be shot down with bird shot. Millions of rounds a year are shot off into the sky for clay pigeon, and for shooting, and no-one gets hurt except the occasional beater.

You'd have to clear up all of the shot that went near a runway, and perform a safety inspection on any aircraft that might have got hit. You'd spend hours dealing with the fall-out.

Much easier to fire a net and recover it.

Shells filled with rock salt. Its sort of a myth as far as home defense effectiveness (and legality) goes, but it would be perfect in an application such as this. No cleanup, no chance of anyone getting hurt, but still enough of a punch to mess with the propellers on the drone.

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:
Shells filled with rock salt. Its sort of a myth as far as home defense effectiveness (and legality) goes, but it would be perfect in an application such as this. No cleanup, no chance of anyone getting hurt, but still enough of a punch to mess with the propellers on the drone.

i don’t see how salt shot could possibly have the required range to take down a drone.

It seems to me any conventional firearm with a usable range to shoot down a drone is also going to have an issue with being inadvertently dangerous at a much longer range.

It has about the same range as birdshot (give or take 5 meters), but much less force when it gets there. Most likely enough to break or destabilize a prop, but it it isn't you really aren't risking anything other than some paperwork.

One of the best methods to prevent drone overflights from closing a major international airport is to be sure that the overflights are actually happening.

Is there a radar system that can track drones or are they too low and close for radar to pickup effectively?

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
Is there a radar system that can track drones or are they too low and close for radar to pickup effectively?

You could mount some RADAR lower to look for them, but it would be very difficult to distinguish a Drone from a bird or any number of other objects. Plus you would have interference from any structures in the area.

It would be far more cost effective and easier to simply give roving security teams a net gun while they patrol the runways.

These things have to generate heat while working so maybe an IR system could be set to loom for small, slow, airborne heat sources, but then I suppose that millions of dollars, pounds, francs, etc will have sot beslent on dealing with drones because of a few dickeads....

I will defend the british police and government here tho. They may have overreacted a tad, but one good sized drone going into a jetliner's engine during takeoff could result in hundreds dead and tens of millions or more in property damage, so, even if they, in retrospect, did over react a tad I will forgive them, admittedly from afar, especially given the series of terrorist attacks england has been subjected to

So, is this story going to just fade away with no real resolution and be forgotten the next time some prominent figure gets accused of looking at someone in a manner they were uncomfortable with?

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
So, is this story going to just fade away with no real resolution and be forgotten the next time some prominent figure gets accused of looking at someone in a manner they were uncomfortable with?

Well yes, that's how our modern media works.
News outlets will give us minute by minute updates whilst so something is hot and fresh and often negative. Once its into the resolution phase or even resolved the stories vanish fast to be replaced with the next disasters/trouble/war/evil in the world.


That said there's also likely very little to actually say other than "investigations are ongoing" esp as the news is already going to get its arm bitten by the family who are very likely to sue the newspapers who leaked their name and home to the world. At this stage there likely isn't much of anything to really say. The next update might be a new policy for the airport; new equipment; new training measures - the news might report if someone gets caught or if new legislation is going to be put into effect, but that would be all I'd expect.

Gatwick and Heathrow Airports have announced they are going to purchase military-grade anti-drone technology, according to the BBC yesterday (4th Jan.)

I don't think new legislation is needed. The law already provides for five year's imprisonment for flying a drone into unauthorised airspace, and life for interfering with air safety and endangering life.

There is now a new licensing code for professional level drone equipment and operator training. It would be sensible to adopt this into law, however it is being adopted anyway by responsible professional drone companies. It's unrealistic to think about mandatory training and licensing for private individuals buying £100 drones from Curry's.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm trying to imagine what the idea anti-drone technology should look like in operation.

At the moment I envision a vicious bright laser beam, which lashes out and explodes the drone into a ball of smoking fragments.

Anyone got any other dramatic ideas?

Tractor beam.

Just cover the airport in a giant net so that the drones can't get in.

Simples.

And have really big holes in the net to let the planes out!

I like your thinking. You’re wasted here, you should be advising Chris Grayling!

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Tractor beam.

I like it!

What about kamikaze explosive pigeons?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
A flyswatter the size of a mediaeval trebuchet.

I've actually thought quite a bit about how hard it would be to make a small surface to air missile with off the shelf components. I'm talking the size of a big model rocket, 4 or 5 feet long tops.

You could have a cartridge-style engine component, a lightweight raspberry-pi style electronics package that guides towards the radio signals commonly used by drones, and instead of just a parachute after explosive charge, it's a few ounces of birdshot, or even hard plastic pellets (the props on most consumer drones are pretty fragile so you don't need a shotgun-powered blast to take one down, the speed of the props will do the work for you).

The tube and electronics package could be reloaded and reused to keep costs down. You'd really only need to reload the engine, explosive charge, and pellets.

I honestly don’t see that working for lots of reasons. Even if it did know to fly towards a radio signal, how would it know when to detonate or burst? It might just be better to build a drone that has a bit more protection on it and ram the other drone.

I used to make model rockets and the motors typically used in those only give a second or so burst (which is longer than it sounds, small ones go quite high and then blow away on the wind if you’ve a decent parachute, so you lose your model).

But a big rocket really wouldn’t go very far at all, not in terms of an airport. Also any added weight, like explosives or some form of shrapnel, which really hits any distance they can achieve. And they tend to go in a straight line very rapidly, meaning a bigger motor just makes it go further/faster in a straight line, but either way it wouldn't have a lot of time to manoeuvre in the right direction, the window of time between it taking off and being near it’s target is going to be tiny, it’s just not going to steer anywhere effectively. Most rockets only steer to correct their course a little they aren’t good over short distances. Their flight is strongly determined by a gust of wind too, and once the rocket burst is gone they fall pretty much plummet and as they don’t glide so you can’t pilot them towards a drone on their decent either.

Sorry Ouze, I think it would be incredibly difficult to build an effective ground-air missile from off the shelf components, I imagine it could be done worth a big budget but there just has to be more cost effective ways.

 Ouze wrote:
I've actually thought quite a bit about how hard it would be to make a small surface to air missile with off the shelf components. I'm talking the size of a big model rocket, 4 or 5 feet long tops.

You could have a cartridge-style engine component, a lightweight raspberry-pi style electronics package that guides towards the radio signals commonly used by drones, and instead of just a parachute after explosive charge, it's a few ounces of birdshot, or even hard plastic pellets (the props on most consumer drones are pretty fragile so you don't need a shotgun-powered blast to take one down, the speed of the props will do the work for you).

The tube and electronics package could be reloaded and reused to keep costs down. You'd really only need to reload the engine, explosive charge, and pellets.

OK, and what are its arming parameters? How will it detect the drone? I've rigged PIR systems into IEDs (Training of course) and while not difficult to do, the systems themselves are large, unwieldy and have no way of specifying a target.. They are effectively indiscriminate. There's a reason missiles like that are made by aerospace companies, and not been recreated by terrorists.

Neighbors started to Fly one around now too......
Makes pictures with it too even though people told him to stop.

Time to Stock up on ammo for the bb gun.

You see that dark car parked across the street from where you live? ...

 Ouze wrote:
I've actually thought quite a bit about how hard it would be to make a small surface to air missile with off the shelf components. I'm talking the size of a big model rocket, 4 or 5 feet long tops.

You could have a cartridge-style engine component, a lightweight raspberry-pi style electronics package that guides towards the radio signals commonly used by drones, and instead of just a parachute after explosive charge, it's a few ounces of birdshot, or even hard plastic pellets (the props on most consumer drones are pretty fragile so you don't need a shotgun-powered blast to take one down, the speed of the props will do the work for you).

The tube and electronics package could be reloaded and reused to keep costs down. You'd really only need to reload the engine, explosive charge, and pellets.

Would you even need a payload? Just the impact of the rocket itself could do a lot of damage to a drone.

The real question is if you could get relatively precision steering in a model rocket sized package.