Can we all agree that whoever is flying drones over LGW right now is a complete a-hole, it’s causing absolute carnage.
yeah it's pretty stupid
I think the real question to be asked is why aren’t there more measures in place to stop it happening? Like yeah you gotta be stupid to do that in the first place but surely there’s a quick way of putting a stop to it?
There seems not to be a good plan how to stop it.
Shoot it down, easy.
it is hard to stop them
what are the options?
- shoot them down: with what? police with guns? what if you miss? stray bullets in a populated area? if you should a bullet in the air, it still comes back down to surface levels at about 60% of the speed, plenty enough to go through some stuff and certainly a skull
- interrupt the signal? so the drone might crash or it might initiate an auto-mode. if it just crashes, assuming the drone is not that 15 g thingy some of us might have at home but a big one, could still cause severe injury when crashing into your unsuspecting neighborhood
- hacking or overwriting the signal? would love that, don't know how hard it is, but obviously it is not happening,
not sure, it is that easy to find a viable solution
Airports employ bird management which in some cases means shooting the bird down. Why would it be harder to shoot a drone down? An accurate shot should have no problem when using an adequate shotgun. Probably this will not work with larger sophisticated drones but it will probably do it's job with anything from DJI or similar. Also as long as the drone is in the airport perimeter there is no problem with falling bullets and if it is outside only a bit of caution is needed.
I would rather say that the problem is that the UK is very conservative when it comes to guns. Don't get me wrong, I am not meaning that everyone should have a gun (America) but at least all Police should have guns and all airports should have the adequate shotgun to destroy any bird or drone.
Indeed, what if the drone was carrying explosives? The fact that it can reach the airport so easily and nothing is done about it is worrying.
Indeed, what if the drone was carrying explosives? The fact that it can reach the airport so easily and nothing is done about it is worrying.
Indeed, even a 1 kilo explosive would do great harm if it reaches a flying aircraft or a fuel tank (wing).
you are absolutely right about the potential damage, but who needs a drone for that. just drive up to the terminal with your car (where you can easily have way more explosives) or put it in a backpack and head into a subway....
I don't think that you stop these kinds of attacks at the spot of attack, but through intelligence work earlier on.
if every cop needs a gun is up for discussion.
regarding the "bird control" and usage of guns for that kind of stuff on the perimeter: I don't think they are shooting down any birds. they have other means of driving them away. and for the bullets, depending on gun and caliber, the bullet will fly for up to a few kilometer and will impact what ever it meets there with around 60% of its initial velocity. unless you are directly under the birds shooting straight up, where wind aside, you could make a reasonable guess on where the bullet is going to come down (only endangering yourself and everyone around you).
here is a brief article on what airports do to minimize the risk of bird strikes
True but terrorists seem to get aroused by bringing planes down, more than subways and other things. Security checks us passengers so well but they dont seem to have be able to stop an attack from the outside. With the modern, long range and accurate drones (even a DJI Phantom works), they could easily just fly up to the wing of an aircraft landing or taking off with an explosive and if detonated in time get a huge fireball and hundreds of dead. News are drooling for anything combining air disasters and terrorist conspiracies. Its an enormous danger and as seen in LGW law enforcement can't really do much. Really sad.
As a last resort "common birds" are shoot down, but only if no other method works.
Why explosives? Use a swarm of drones (10-20) and fly them in front of a 777/A380 and get them ingested into the engines. Even a quad has no chance if two engines fail just a few meters above ground fully loaded. Do it at night and the crew won’t even know what hit them.
There is simply no 100% security.
A swarm is too sophisticated, surely achievable but it is expensive and needs quite sophisticated coordination. With the rise in "lone wolfs" (individual mentally sick people) it would be way easier for one to get a single drone with explosives.
Hopefully nobody gets any ideas from reading this.