Gatwick chaos as drones causes runway to close

Grey Havoc

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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/20/gatwick-chaos-drones-cause-flights-cancelled-live-updates/
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-46623754
 
It takes a special kind of A$$**** to endanger and strand thousands of people trying to get home for the holidays at an airport :mad:
 
It could also be a way to easily target UK economy (not a w.e day or holiday that would be the signature of a prank).

On the Airport management side it's a shame that no proper countermeasure were in place It's not like the market hasn't been pushing frwd for that. I understand that plenty of the solution offered are over-priced, overkill or ridiculous but with a simple directional jamer and a pickup truck, this thing could have probably been brought down quickly.

EDIT:
As a matter of facts:
The British did, however, announce in August that it had spent $20 million to urgently acquire an anti-drone systems from Israeli company RADA Electronic Industries.

In a statement at the time, the Israeli firm said it expected to complete delivery of equipment by the end of this year. There is nothing to suggest the system, known as the Drone Dome, has been deployed, but its urgent procurement does signal the growing threat that small UAVs pose to civil and military sites

https://www.defensenews.com/unmanned/2018/12/20/british-army-deploys-in-country-to-fight-rogue-drones/

EDIT2:
House of Parliament reaction:
[...] opposition member Angela Smith expressed dissatisfaction with Sugg’s [UK aviation minister] responses to queries as to the nature of the incident and measures to prevent a similar event at other UK airports.

“Given the length of time that this incident has been going on, and the scale of the disruption, it is clear that it has not been caused by a teenager playing with an early Christmas present,” said Smith.

“It is obviously malicious. The government has to address serious issues.”
 
TomcatViP said:
On the Airport management side it's a shame that no proper countermeasure were in place It's not like the market hasn't been pushing frwd for that. I understand that plenty of the solution offered are over-priced, overkill or ridiculous but with a simple directional jamer and a pickup truck, this thing could have probably been brought down quickly.
It depends on the drone; although there doesn't seem to be any public photos of the drone (which seems odd to me; surely someone has a half decent camera near the airport? A public request for help to find the owner would be a lot easier done if there was a photo to), reports seem to indicate that it appeared "industrial" in size and form, which could imply that it's a hobbyist-built system.

If the multicopter is using an autopilot software such as the open source ArduCopter / ArduPilot (which runs on various autopilot hardware platforms), then there exists the option of the drone navigating via dead-reckoning (using INS + compass) and without a data link; you could import a series of waypoints flip it to auto mode, and it'll fly those waypoints to the best of its ability, regardless of whether you jam its radio links or GPS.

At that point, your only options are kinetic interception (bullets, nets, other drones, etc) or directed energy weapons (lasers or high power microwave), assuming you can't locate the owner / person launching the drones.
 
Dragon029 said:
At that point, your only options are kinetic interception (bullets, nets, other drones, etc) or directed energy weapons (lasers or high power microwave), assuming you can't locate the owner / person launching the drones.

While it's satisfying to imagine blasting the thing out of the sky kinetically, I suspect that mounting a Phalanx or two at an airport is going to irritate the locals: all those bullets gotta come down *somewhere.* So lasers seem better. But how practical and affordable would a civilian anti-drone laser system be? You might well need a number of them scattered about the perimeter of the airfield, probably rated a hundred kilowatts or so, and tuned to get through fog. Sounds like a fun project that probably won't get anywhere.
 
Orionblamblam said:
While it's satisfying to imagine blasting the thing out of the sky kinetically, I suspect that mounting a Phalanx or two at an airport is going to irritate the locals: all those bullets gotta come down *somewhere.* So lasers seem better. But how practical and affordable would a civilian anti-drone laser system be? You might well need a number of them scattered about the perimeter of the airfield, probably rated a hundred kilowatts or so, and tuned to get through fog. Sounds like a fun project that probably won't get anywhere.
When I talk about kinematics, I'm thinking more along the lines of shotguns already used to deal with persistent birds in some country's airports. They might not be particularly effective if the drone is on the move and a few hundred feet high however. You could also use a net launcher, or a drone-mounted net / net launcher, etc (as has been tested in Japan, etc).

For lasers, major airports probably could actually afford one (or it might be funded by homeland security, etc funding); I'm sure you could get sufficient coverage by putting it on a tower as well (maybe the ATC tower) to only require a single system, but frankly I don't realistically to expect to see anything like this for decades.
 
Not for the first time, awful tabloid rag The Daily Mail provides material for an SP post: first *alleged* images and video of a drone over the airport:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6513923/Chaos-Gatwick-drone-spotted-near-airport-SHUTS-runway.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490

, looks like the usual little quad which would be just about expected in comparison to sensational news reports of ‘industrial’ size drones and sinister motives.

Pics of these camera-shy lads with their shotties and casual wear started appearing yesterday: less Met Police marksmen, more ‘Sports And Social’ Army response I think...

Local Schools broke for Christmas holiday around the same time as *drones* started appearing...: cue shocked kid’s bedroom getting raided in next few days.
 

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Every anti-drone system seems to have problems:
1) Shotguns: simple and cheap, but max altitude is probably too low
2) Rifles: harder to hit the target especially if it's moving; the bullet, even if it hits the drone, will continue on and come down somewhere
3) Lasers: expensive, possible issues with atmospheric conditions such as fog, smog and smoke
4) Nets: altitude.
5) Hawks/falcons: possibly one-and-done... a bird might be able to attack a drone, but those blades will do it no favors
6) Electronic interference: possible range issues, possibility of disrupting other electronics such as aircraft

I do wonder about the possibility of a man-portable *really* simple SAM system. It need not even be a solid fuel rocket; compressed air/water might be adequate. Perhaps even simple optical tracking, since you will almost always be looking more or less up at the target. No warhead needed; hit to kill would be probably 100% effective *if* you could actually hit the thing.

Simple RC aircraft might work great. Cheap electrically powered plane made out of foam (or inflatable structures), held together with kevlar strings. Break up on hitting the drone, the strings tangle up in the props.
 
Mr London 24/7 said:
, looks like the usual little quad which would be just about expected in comparison to sensational news reports of ‘industrial’ size drones and sinister motives.

Same issue with UFO's. People see *something* in the sky with absolutely no scale references; the tradition is the greatly over-estimate size, distance, speed.
 
Orionblamblam said:
I do wonder about the possibility of a man-portable *really* simple SAM system. It need not even be a solid fuel rocket; compressed air/water might be adequate. Perhaps even simple optical tracking, since you will almost always be looking more or less up at the target. No warhead needed; hit to kill would be probably 100% effective *if* you could actually hit the thing.

This actually seems a decent idea. If not compressed air/water, a simple model-rocket type motor might work (technically solid fuel, but not terribly scary and fully spent early in flight). You could further reduce collateral damage issues by including a model-rocket style recovery system -- once the rocket passes max ordinal, it pops out a parachute and lands relatively gently.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Every anti-drone system seems to have problems:
1) Shotguns: simple and cheap, but max altitude is probably too low
2) Rifles: harder to hit the target especially if it's moving; the bullet, even if it hits the drone, will continue on and come down somewhere
3) Lasers: expensive, possible issues with atmospheric conditions such as fog, smog and smoke
4) Nets: altitude.
5) Hawks/falcons: possibly one-and-done... a bird might be able to attack a drone, but those blades will do it no favors
6) Electronic interference: possible range issues, possibility of disrupting other electronics such as aircraft

I do wonder about the possibility of a man-portable *really* simple SAM system. It need not even be a solid fuel rocket; compressed air/water might be adequate. Perhaps even simple optical tracking, since you will almost always be looking more or less up at the target. No warhead needed; hit to kill would be probably 100% effective *if* you could actually hit the thing.

Simple RC aircraft might work great. Cheap electrically powered plane made out of foam (or inflatable structures), held together with kevlar strings. Break up on hitting the drone, the strings tangle up in the props.

Great summary of what is available today in the kinetic option (but you'll need to put the emphasis more on directed energy and electronics). For my part I had a persistent low kinetic drone killer conceptualized in 2013 but that was not sadly selected to compete further on. I still think my design had some superior potentials at the low end range of the cost equation (what matters too in the kind of appropriate response to the strategy applied by your adversary).

It is obvious that high kinetic/high energetic response is to be banned for obvious public safety concerns. When I saw at the time said-so serious business offering laser firing canons that got financed for their work it made me scream of disarray. Here is the result today. An embarrassing situation where no national solution has been left to emerge for such a simple problem to deal with, basically.
 
I've read in one news report that the regulations say you can't fly a drone within a mile radius of the airport. But at YYC in Calgary Alberta, it's 7 km radius. Is it the norm' in the UK for the no-fly zone being so close.
 
I'm curious as to what happened to the HPM/HEL counter-MANPADS airport protection systems that DHS sponsored
a decade ago.

No warhead needed; hit to kill would be probably 100% effective *if* you could actually hit the thing.

Given that they added a proximity fuze to Stinger because hit-to-kill against small drones was hard I'd say it's a very big *if*
 
There are a number of systems out there designed for exactly this sort of situation such as https://www.droneshield.com
 
marauder2048 said:
Given that they added a proximity fuze to Stinger because hit-to-kill against small drones was hard I'd say it's a very big *if*

Maybe. One *possible* issue *might* be that the Stinger is moving so fast, trying to hit a tiny target. A slower SAM *might* be better.

For this application, putting high explosives on board might be considered a Very Bad Thing, for a number of reasons (civilians firing warhead-equipped guided rocket projectiles is typically - and bizarrely - seen as undesirable). But here, a "warhead" that consists of something akin to the recent anti-porch-pirate "glitter bomb" might well be workable, but instead of glitter it spits out strings, fibers, lightweight metal chains... perhaps even globs of fast-curing urethane foam.

This seems like the sort of thing that various Internet Scienticians could cobble together. Guidance controlled via a few smartphone cameras... if the things can track faces, they can track a dot in the sky.
 
GTX said:
There are a number of systems out there designed for exactly this sort of situation such as https://www.droneshield.com

Although effective, the problem with those guns is the concerns with co-laterals disruption and the large release of the HPMW devices in the civilian/para-military sphere. Such fallout can then be potentially much higher than the solution it provides.
Tactically also, you'll need LoS when any bad guys will apply relevant tactics to turn your defense ineffective.

OrionBlamBlam said:
This seems like the sort of thing that various Internet Scienticians could cobble together.
This was exactly the position adopted (with success) by the rapid reaction technology office (RRTO).
 
Having spoken to the guys in question, there is more to their offering than the 'guns'. As I said, the type of scenario witnessed here is exactly the type of thing they are aiming for.
 
Absolutely. This is why I said it's a shame that Gatwick did not invest in any form of protective solution.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Maybe. One *possible* issue *might* be that the Stinger is moving so fast, trying to hit a tiny target. A slower SAM *might* be better.

Low-contrast targets like drones will tend to increase miss distance.

But on the cheap-and-cheerful side, maybe something like NAWCWD Spike (~ $5000) with a one-shot, proximity fuzed HPM warhead.

These guys are claiming disruption within a 5 cubic meter volume.

https://www.navysbir.com/06_1/161.htm
 
Or...this:

7) Vortex Ring Guns, i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_ring_gun
8 ) "Ice guns" or some other form of projectile that remains a useful projectile on the way up but dissolves into harmlessness on the way down... the cheaper, the better
9) LRAD? Would nuking the drone with concentrated sound from a few hundred feet away do useful damage?
10) Water cannon
11) Flamethrowers, baby!

c58f467963993cb927a46b255234da92bbac597819e62c7bd8e2804edf343fdc.jpg
 
Two people have been arrested. It'll be interesting to see what their motive(s) turn out to be. Hopefully, this won't lead to a knee-jerk reaction against law-abiding UAS operators and model flyers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-46657505
 
Went like this I hear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RUoEog2M1Q

Chris
 
TomcatViP said:
GTX said:
There are a number of systems out there designed for exactly this sort of situation such as https://www.droneshield.com
Although effective, the problem with those guns is the concerns with co-laterals disruption and the large release of the HPMW devices in the civilian/para-military sphere. Such fallout can then be potentially much higher than the solution it provides.
Tactically also, you'll need LoS when any bad guys will apply relevant tactics to turn your defense ineffective.
As mentioned in my earlier reply too it's not hard to have drones like these fly completely autonomously. If you were willing to lose the drone (or were very optimistic about its chances of it dead reckoning back to a location you can retrieve it from, without law enforcement spotting you), you could even specifically opt to not have any RF receivers and use a physical toggle switch to activate an auto mission. Again, in those conditions, your only real counter then is for the kinetic or directed energy interception, or waiting it out and hoping that the bad guy doesn't have any more on the way.

To be clear, I'm not against soft defeat systems like that; for every sophisticated attack there'll be a thousand+ idiots flying consumer drones where they shouldn't (which jammers / hijackers will deal with just fine), but I do think federal police, etc need to be correctly armed to deal with that 0.1% that know what they're doing.

Orionblamblam said:
7) Vortex Ring Guns, i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_ring_gun
8 ) "Ice guns" or some other form of projectile that remains a useful projectile on the way up but dissolves into harmlessness on the way down... the cheaper, the better
9) LRAD? Would nuking the drone with concentrated sound from a few hundred feet away do useful damage?
10) Water cannon
11) Flamethrowers, baby!

Don't forget MASERs / HPMs too.
 
Dragon029 said:
Again, in those conditions, your only real counter then is for the kinetic or directed energy interception, or waiting it out and hoping that the bad guy doesn't have any more on the way.

Of course. My point (and my approach to the competition) was Low kinetics kill.


regarding the events at Gatwick:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/two-arrests-gatwick-airport-drone-scare-delayed-flights-n951161 said:
The names of the suspects have not been released, but on Saturday police confirmed a 47-year-old man and 54-year-old woman were arrested in the town of Crawley, less than five miles south of the airport. They remain in custody, police said.
Those for sure will be on the naughty list this year.


...
And this as an happy ending(?):
Gatwick disruption: Chernobyl children land in time for Christmas

:)
 
The arrested couple may not be the culprits; this article has the names of those arrested, but the particularly relevant parts of the article are:

“The times this thing was flying in the daylight – when [Suspect 1] was at work."

[Suspect 1's Ex Partner], 40, and her dad run [Business] in Crowborough, where [Suspect 1] works.
She said: “He was with me at work the whole time the drones were up. [Suspect 1] comes to my house every morning – I’ve got a child with him. The morning of this going on, he was sitting in my front room having a cup of tea with me – and the rest of the day he was working.

[Suspect 2's Ex Partner] said: “She hates toy aircraft. There’s no way on Earth she would be involved and she will be absolutely devastated and heartbroken.”

Of course, the above information hasn't officially been verified, so for now we wait.
 
As suspected:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-46665615

A man and woman arrested in connection with drone sightings that grounded flights at Gatwick Airport have been released without charge.
 
Interesting bits (from link above):
- "Det Ch Supt Jason Tingley told Sky News officers had found a damaged drone near the airport. He said they would be working with the "forensic opportunities that the drone presents"."
- "It is believed that the Israeli-developed Drone Dome system, which can jam communications between the drone and its operator, was used"
 
And now...

Gatwick Airport drone may never have existed: British police.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/gatwick-airport-drone-may-never-have-existed-british-police-20181224-p50o17.html
 
The police initially seemed to be sceptical as there was no video/photo evidence, just eyewitness sightings which could have been anything.
Then they found the downed drone which forensics are now examining and they are keeping an open mind if this was the drone or perhaps another one unconnected with the closure.

I don't think its anything more than the police keeping an open mind and being sceptical until the facts are known.

I was amused how the papers, in their frantic efforts to find any news other than Brexit, all leapt on the story on Friday with frontpage headlines profiling "lone wolf maniacs" and potential ecology PhD student criminals.
The whole event however does raise serious questions about identifying, tracking and disabling drones and the implications that has for future use. We read a lot about Amazon drones and personal VTOL etc., but in reality unless there is heavy regulation I can't see these plans will ever come to fruition.

The EU recently passed legislation to fit all cars with road sign speed detectors to warn drivers who exceed the speed limit but no physical limiter at this stage (such technology has been talked about for several years using GPS signals mapped to speed limit areas). Perhaps the answer is inbuilt GPS trackers for all drones that are programmed to avoid restricted airspace limits?
 
There's a lot of consumer drones that already have those kinds of protections in place. Trying to apply those sorts of regulations to custom-built drones would be foolish though; it'd cause issues for legitimate users and do nothing to prevent malicious operators from just altering code, or writing it from scratch (there's plenty of step-by-step guides on how to write your own autopilot code from scratch online).

Another thing to consider too is that you'd have to draw a line somewhere; if nothing is exempt, then making a paper airplane would be illegal. If something like a 250g+ weight limit applied, then you could potentially have an issue of people building / buying <250g drones and flying a bunch of them onto ramps, likely causing a grounding if not causing an accident when ingested by an engine, etc.

We read a lot about Amazon drones and personal VTOL etc., but in reality unless there is heavy regulation I can't see these plans will ever come to fruition.

Here in Australia there's been some decent progress made; in our nation's capital there's a Google-owned drone food delivery service operating in one of the suburbs, with drones operating autonomously beyond visual line of sight. We also don't require drones be registered, or drone operators be registered unless they're flying for commercial purposes and potentially want to seek exemptions to flying outside of standard operating conditions. Drones that are <2kg are exempt from any licensing requirements, <250g drones are exempt from almost all rules.
 
Airplane said:
Unlike bullets, lasers don't fall and they dissipate in the atmosphere.

A laser powerful enough to damage even cheap plastic from a hundred meters away is a substantial device. Compared to an adequate slugthrower which could fit in a briefcase.

And if a drone operator was enough of a jokester, he'd cover the drone not just in reflective material of some kind, but a retro-reflector like on a road sign. This would send some fraction of the laser beam back at the sender. Doubtless it would be far too attenuated to do much physical damage, but it might set his hair on fire.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Airplane said:
Unlike bullets, lasers don't fall and they dissipate in the atmosphere.

A laser powerful enough to damage even cheap plastic from a hundred meters away is a substantial device. Compared to an adequate slugthrower which could fit in a briefcase.

And if a drone operator was enough of a jokester, he'd cover the drone not just in reflective material of some kind, but a retro-reflector like on a road sign. This would send some fraction of the laser beam back at the sender. Doubtless it would be far too attenuated to do much physical damage, but it might set his hair on fire.

I've seen lasers burn through mirrors in lab settings. Polished aluminum? Like paper. You need to brush up on optical physics. Polishing and spinnining missiles wouldn't have stopped SDI... But yeah, lets fire bullets and kill innocent people in cars and what not.
 
Airplane said:
I've seen lasers burn through mirrors in lab settings.

What was the power output?
How much did the laser weigh?
How much did the power supply weigh?
How many dozens of meters from the target was the laser?
How much did the tracking "turret" weigh, and how fast could it track a moving target?
How well did the lab laser handle being rained on or bounced around in the back of a truck or mishandled by Airman Corkey?

If you think I'm advocating firing bullets at these drones, you clearly haven't read further up in the thread. if you think meaningfully powerful laser weapons are readily available at a price that competes against a hunting rifle, I'd like to see the catalog you're buying these lasers from

Here's a simple test. How different is taking down a drone to taking down a duck? If you agree that they are *roughly* equivalent, where does a duck hunter go to get a laser that he can replace his shotgun with?
 
If the drones are unchecked it has the potential to shut down the entire air travel business. I am starting to have nightmares about it. Is my phobia unrealistic? Maybe I'm exaggerating but how serious is this going to get. If I set foot on an airliner to travel I would want any drones grounded for miles around. The penalties should be harsh against those knuckleheads who want to fly drones around an airport.

Having a laser battle or emp pulses or missile command going on against drone swarms while you're flight is departing makes for a harrowing experience. So green lasers, birds, hijackers, shoulder mounted stinger missiles, and now drones to scare the hell out of you when you're sitting in coach waiting to take off on you're little vacation.
 
I'm happy for drones to stay due to their ability to bring more aviation services to the masses. Unfortunately however, the threat of drones as tools for malicious activity is here to stay, regardless of how anyone feels about them. Even if you outright banned all forms of unmanned aircraft from civilian usage, drones are so easy to create from scratch these days (using general robotics / education electronics) that you can't prevent anyone from making one any more than you can prevent someone from making a homemade firearms or explosives. You'd have to start having police raid homes whenever someone performs a Google search for propeller 3D printing CAD files, or put people under surveillance whenever they start talking about kalman filters, or start a national registry for anyone that buys an Arduino, Rasberry Pi, etc.
 
kcran567 said:
If the drones are unchecked it has the potential to shut down the entire air travel business. I am starting to have nightmares about it. Is my phobia unrealistic?

Currently, yes. Drones are too rare to pose a widespread threat. In ten, fifteen years, when an entire drone might be 3D printable in one go? Mmaybe

So green lasers, birds, hijackers, shoulder mounted stinger missiles, and now drones to scare the hell out of you when you're sitting in coach waiting to take off on you're little vacation.

Bah. Those are nothing to worry about. The fact that Harvey Weinstein is unemployed now and that the TSA has low standards for the job of junk juggler? That's something to ponder with dire concern.
 
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