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White House Drone Incident Exposes Key Security Gap
HughPickens.com writes The Washington Post reports that the intrusion by a recreational drone onto the White House lawn has exposed a security gap at the compound that the Secret Service has spent years studying but has so far been unable to fix. Commercial technology is available that can use a combination of sensitive radar and acoustic trackers to detect small drones, though coming up with an effective way to stop them has been more elusive. "To do something about the problem, you have to find it, you have to track it, you have to identify it and you have to decide what to do with it," says Frederick F. Roggero. "But especially in an urban environment, it would be tough to detect and tough to defeat kinetically without shooting it down and causing collateral damage." Most recreational drones, like the one that crashed Monday, weigh only a few pounds and lack the power to do much harm. Larger models that can carry payloads of up to 30 pounds are available on the market and are expected to become more common. The FAA imposes strict safety regulations on drones flown by government agencies or anyone who operates them for commercial purposes. In contrast, hardly any rules apply to people who fly drones as a hobby, other than FAA guidelines that advise them to keep the aircraft below 400 feet and five miles from an airport. "With the discovery of an unauthorized drone on the White House lawn, the eagle has crash-landed in Washington," says Senator Charles Schumer. "There is no stronger sign that clear FAA guidelines for drones are needed."
Because nobody with bad intentions defies FAA guidelines.
The Secret Serpents need X millions of dollars to provide a 100% effective defense against a $50 toy. Because terrorists!
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
I suspect you could also use an unregulated trebuchet to launch something over a fence, or perhaps an unauthorized weather balloon with a payload to drop something on your neighbor's lawn from altitude. Or a slingshot (although those might be illegal within city limits). The notion of a serious "security gap" is farcical because any reasonably intelligent person could come up with a number of clever ways to outwit fences and exclusion zones.
All innocent accidents do.. I just get so tired of the over reacting...
keep your drone offa my lawn!
I'm sure they can figure out a way to shoot a net with weighted ends that could probably knock one of these out of the air, and not cause any or too much damage if it misses.
The only solution would be to erect a hemispherical forcefield over the Whitehouse grounds to keep everything out. So now all they have to do is turn science fiction into science fact, as has been done with many other things which a few decades ago would have only existed in science fiction but are now reality.
Insider job - the government has been looking for any excuse to ban hobby multi-rotors and RC in general. Even with all these idiot dads with drones, who is dumb enough to be out at 3 AM flying above the Whitehouse?
Seriously, regulate the entire country because somebody's toy landed on the lawn at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave ?
Who wants these regulations?
I think flying drones in Washington, District of Columbia is illegal. Also, I believe that the White House is five miles from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Too bad I can't find the actual law. I hope the Federal Aviation Administration and D.C. police fine the operator of the drone helicopter.
It could easily carry 3 or 4 nail files and we know how dangerous they are.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Seriously, if they used bird shot they'd have a ~50yd range that would easily take down most drones, and any shot that didn't hit the drone would just bounce off whatever it eventually landed on. (assuming the used size 4 or smaller)
TFS says that they don't have a good way to stop a small drone or remote-control plane.
Therefore, we should make it illegal to fly a hobby toy _______. (Fill in the blank with your favorite regulation).
I guess they didn't notice that the bad guys don't CARE whether or not it's illegal to use this toy in the city / at night / near Washington / without permission / whatever. The vexing thing about terrorists is that they don't follow the rules, so hanging the rules doesn't effect them - it only effects us.
High-pressure, wide-spread water canons should take out low-flying drones pretty quickly. The only advanced tech bit would be the targeting system.
I've been preaching this for years. Safety regulation is hard and burdensome. The pollyanish "drones are the solution to everything" will be crushed by responsible safety regulations. Fly by wire aircraft are designed to exacting standards, which include, among other things, triple string redundant flight control computers and dual redundant flight controls. No commercially operated drone should ever fly without meeting the same safety requirements and demonstrating an effective level of safety meeting the standards for manned aviation.
Seems like it would be easy(given a military budget anyway) to take one out once you detect it. Lasers should be safe in an urban environment given a tracking system that is robust enough. If you still wanted to use a projectile, you could go with something like dry ice and just send a projectile sized appropriately for the distance you need to shoot. If you miss, it melts before it causes too much collateral damage. Hell, even a 'net gun' or something like it could take out a modern drone.
If the smart folks in the US military industrial complex can't figure this out then I'm more worried about that than any terrorist conspiracy. I'm sure they can, however, they just need a few billion thrown at them first.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
What would drone regulations do? Make it so someone going to break the law is going to break more laws? That's pointless. No, we demand a real solution to this "problem"! Build a large dome over the White House! Seal it off from the rest of the world! That's the only way to be truly sure that no toys will end up on the lawn ever again.
Give me a Senator, or ANY elected official for that matter, that can tell the difference between a RC quad-copter and a Drone, and I'll check to see if hell is freezing over!
Per NYT articles, The agency said the employee was flying the object near the White House around 3 a.m. for recreational purposes when he lost control of it.
So which is it? A Drone, or an RC quad-copter? No mention of remote camera broadcast to controller position.
But drones are a different problem entirely. In fact, if you think about it for two seconds, you'll realize it's a problem unique in our entire history.
Drones, unlike rocks, can be controlled and monitored with quite a bit of precision, and at a distance that allows almost complete anonymity. Surely you can see the real dangers to high-visibility and high-risk targets like the occupants of the White House that a drone offers and a rock doesn't.
Now how do prevent those dangers -- keep the entire block in a faraday cage?
Use the Laser Mosquito Killer but tune it for quadcopters. http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/02/12/176220/directed-energy-weapon-downs-mosquitos
(AC b/c I'm at work)
Ve haf not yet a system zu Look in ze Minds of all ze Peasants...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It's a toy helicopter. We don't need the FAA to do anything about this - but nannies never let a good "crisis" go to waste...
Do you have ESP?
People throw stuff over the fence of the White House all the time. Detecting the drone (or trebuchet payload) is easy with radar (even if you have to distinguish it from birds) that is available off the shelf today.
The White House is already prohibited airspace. It's already illegal to fly over/near it.
It's also illegal to fly my drone in your backyard, without your permission.
(the altitude where this stops is subject to dispute...)
No new rules are needed, at least because of this.
Trivial new safety precautions are needed at the WH.
Some new FAA rules are needed to clarify *who* is responsible when flying, and what their responsibilities are.
Things like mandatory labeling of the UAV with the owner's name and contact info (and dpr@silkroad.net kind of aliases won't work).
And a clearly carved out "hobby/toy" exemption (which sort of exists already, but is more of a "we won't hassle you if you do this" understanding). 400 ft AGL, visible range all the time, unpopulated area. But you also need to allow folks to fly at the beach or a park.
Most recreational drones, like the one that crashed Monday, weigh only a few pounds and lack the power to do much harm.
So is about every bird in existence that flies (okay, most of them are under a pound, but there are a few larger ones.). What are you going to do? Shoot all birds down that cross the fence around the White House?
"Fix it? It has been disintegrated, by definition it cannot be fixed!" - Gru in Despicable Me.
Would be the first bunch decrying the Government for incompetence for not doing something about such an utterly foreseeable problem, should someone actually fly a drone with an IED into the white house.
Though in fairness. It's not like the secret Service couldn't be issued with a bunch of rubber bullets for anti-drone purposes.
You would figure a semi autonomous navigating air vehicle is sufficiently distinguishable from a rc toy.
A web gun that's the ticket.
. . . with frickin' lasers on their heads.
Not to go all Dr. Evil on the subject, but the Navy *does* have some recently-deployed point defense laser technology designed to shoot down incoming cruise missiles. These tiny drones aren't manned and they're violating what might be the most restricted airspace in the country outside of Groom Lake; there's nothing legally preventing them from being shot down by said laser. That's a far better course than trying to do it ballistically or with something like a Stinger missile, both of which would have a hard time hitting something small and have issues with what happens to the round if it misses (i.e. falls on a civilian).
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What we need is a swarm of 50 drones programmed to attack anything flying in the white house vicinity. No bullets, just kamikaze ram attacks.
At the very least it will keep us amused.
Car radars/ranging devices OEM prices have dropped to two figures. Maybe sensitive buidings will need to ring themselves with these. Plus software to discriminate against birds and wind derbis.
Look scary drone! No defense possible! Must be banned!
This issue is at the core of a lot of misunderstandings about security in general I see. People expect to be able to solve security problems by creating a framework of rules. Sometimes they're societal rules (aka laws), sometimes they're software like writing a client that can only access a server in a particular way, and assuming no one can access your server in a way not supported by your client (hint: other people can write code, too).
Writing rules won't keep people intent on harm from flying drones at things they want to damage. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out how to keep those drones from doing damage EVEN WHEN they aren't following the rules.
A Phalanx-style interceptor with beanbags would probably work, and be comically appropriate for a threat posed by glorified toy helicopters.
A small recreational drone could carry a deadly biological payload and even include a spray-dispersal of it.
It can also be used merely to scare people. Imagine if you were at a street festival and a drone sprayed a harmless slightly-oily or -sticky substance over everyone below. The local first responders would be tied up for hours until the substance was proven harmless.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It wouldn't take a huge drone to bring in a big enough bomb to do major damage. Heck, you could probably put a rifle on some of the bigger ones.
It'd be really hard to shoot down a mostly-plastic drone coming in at high speed doing evasive maneuvers.
"With the discovery of an unauthorized drone on the White House lawn, the eagle has crash-landed in Washington," says Senator Charles Schumer. "There is no stronger sign that clear FAA guidelines for drones are needed."
Umm, Chuck, quick heads up: "Don't fly over the White House" is already a rule. And you can tell the operator knew, because he or she didn't ask for it back. You are a despicable opportunist.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The word "drone" itself conjures up all sorts of fear in the general public, so of course they're going to milk this situation for all it's worth.
Let's be realistic though... You could probably drive a small radio controlled car up to the front entrance of the White House too, with some payload like a bomb on it -- and that's been possible for long before the toy drones/helicopters were available on the mass market.
There's probably not anything you can or should do about this stuff beyond the systems they've got in place. (A bunch of human beings paid to try to protect the president and the grounds.) New FAA restrictions? That will mean nothing to someone bent on mis-using a drone to cause destruction at the White House!
Mount a claymore to the underside of a drone, fly it in at high speed doing evasive maneuvers, trigger it over the biggest group of people that it sees.
Could be fully autonomous, and it'd be really hard to shoot down when you're worried about where the bullets end up when they fall back down to earth. I suspect a mostly-plastic drone would be hard to see on radar.
A few pounds of the right stuff can cause quite the bang. It's how you use it not how big it is.
Just use a water cannon to shoot the things down. The government already consider them safe to use on crowds. It would be very effective against drones. I can't be the only person who thought of this.
I thought of point defence laser too, but it's got problems. You'd have to be awfully careful about where it was pointing when it fired, otherwise you'd run the risk of blinding civilians in any buildings within line-of-sight.
Realistically you'd probably be better off with a number of lasers mounted around the perimeter so that they shooting more-or-less upwards. Less chance of collateral damage that way.
If you don't think this was done by the FBI to trigger drone regulations, you're naive.
Unless you're shooting steeply upwards, a miss might blind someone. Heck, if it's bright enough even the backscatter from hitting the drone might cause eye damage.
Seriously, why was the person flying the drone at 3AM?
The only reason I can think of is it was someone who had a motive to embarrass the security.
White House couldn't wait for an actual citizen to generate outrage by flying a consumer drone onto the premises.
WH generated outrage on purpose using a govt employee to fly the drone.
Cue calls for more drone regulation!
FTA: "Senator Charles Schumer. "There is no stronger sign that clear FAA guidelines for drones are needed.""
Sounds like they needed these guidelines, so created a situation which would be a strong sign.
PROBLEM - REACTION - SOLUTION
"Never let a crisis go to waste" ==> "Create crises".
A shotgun firing light shot (like #9, commonly used for skeet) can powder a clay target but quickly loses energy.
Where I used to shoot clay targets they had a duck tower, basically a target thrower mounted on tower of 25' or so. You'd shoot the targets from various stations around the tower. The idea was to simulate shooting flying ducks, so everyone shoots up at a steep angle.
Back out front of the clubhouse you would occasionally hear pellets hitting the metal roof of the building and once in a while feel one hit you. It felt like someone had tossed a small pebble in the air, almost not noticeable. The max shot they allowed was #7.5 target loads which is what we used on games with the most distant targets like the duck tower. #9 was better for skeet because of the short ranges and larger shot pattern.
I know people who have been hunting pheasant (relatively more powerful loads, like #4 shot) and been downrange of other hunters and hit by shot loads fired into the air. I forget what the distances where, but they described it as feeling like a light rain.
> they can now stop you from launching/operating in the public location before you fly the drone into the private/secure location.
They didn't even SEE this guy operating it outside the White House fence, and he wasn't hiding. The terrorist would be hiding in his van, controlling the drone from there. Exactly how can they stop what they can't see?
How is it possible I am the first, and only person to think of this obvious solution? What is DARPA for after all anyway?
Maybe the President ordered something off of Amazon?
So the drones "like the one that crashed Monday, weigh only a few pounds and lack the power to do much harm."
That predisposes that you know what the mass limits are for all dangerous things to be carried. Exactly what is the minimum mass of biological agent and aerosolizing device that can expose an area upwind of the target such that natural air currents will cause multiple exposures?
Also what is the upper limit of small drones that you can stop, per second, at the fence with 100% effectiveness.
You can plan to stop larger intrusions but, stopping small drones and their miniature payloads is not the solution. The thing to do is look at where a small drone can get in and what it can carry and put in place automated defences that deal with the result, before people get hurt. Say, automated bulletproof, airtight windows and a guy in a hazmat suit with a spray bottle of bleach.
'nuff said.
Government always wants more power to regulate. Government will do anything to get that power.
"Thermite Drone"
You're welcome.
God forbid that some poor kid ever accidentally knock a softball over the White House fence. He'd never escape Gitmo.
A claymore mine is significantly heavy. A small autonomous drone is incapable of achieving the lift necessary to carry one. A drone large enough to carry one would be military grade hardware anyway. Military grade drones can be spotted quite easily.
The scenario you have painted here is a farce.
The typical payload of a domestic RC plane (the usual device to be refit as a domestic drone) is around 2 ounces. The extended battery and the flight control system take up the vast bulk of this. Hobby "Drones" can't carry much more than a ball point pen around.
According to Wikipedia, a Claymore weights 3.5 pounds. The "Mexican Meth Drone" that crashed in a Tijuana parking lot recently was carrying 6 pounds of drugs, and pictures of it don't scream "military grade hardware". Granted they got greedy and overloaded it, but sounds like 3.5 pounds would have been no problem.
What does make sense is a radar/acoustic/lidar "fence", with some sort of point-defence laser/maser/EMP/etc system to disable drones that enter restricted airspace around sensitive areas.
On of the issues will be minimizing collateral damage--debris raining down on people, backscatter from the radiation pulse, missed shots hitting innocent people/equipment, etc.
Nowhere did I call for banning drones, I just pointed out that they're a real issue, not some invented thing.
Personally I think the solution for drones would be a sensor net combined with some kind of EM weapon (laser/maser/EMP/etc.) to shoot down the drone before it gets to the intended target.
Apparently there is a company doing booming business selling drone detection systems to movie stars and other famous people. Gives them enough warning to cover up or go inside.
So anyone with money can get drone detection already. Drone destruction might be another story...though I wouldn't be surprised if that comes eventually too.
The NY Times' article on this said a "government employee" (no name, no affiliation) had come forward to claim the drone and said he was flying it recreationally and that the Secret Service had interviewed him and said that all evidence indicated this was the case.
This seems odd -- who flies a drone recreationally in the vicinity of the White House at 3:30 AM? Or anywhere in DC for that matter. And a government employee? If you were a government employee, wouldn't you generally choose to avoid flying your drone around ten zillion government buildings
Why was he identified as a "government employee"? How likely is that the Secret Service is going to just accept a "oops, my bad" explanation?
Something about this seems off.
The most powerful IED that could be transported by a recreational drone would be one carrying a model rocket engine. These contain PETN solid fuel, which is a high explosive. With clever design, this solid fuel engine could be used to make a small explosion. The problem? This would be at most enough to damage a few windows, and maybe maim somebody at point blank range.
What's "recreational" in this context?
The M18A1Claymore mine weighs under 4lbs and fires roughly seven hundred steel pellets like a shotgun. The proposed Amazon Prime Air drones could carry a bit over 5 lbs, so could easily mount a Claymore.
the solution is for the President to be made less important, not restricting technology.
like a real attacker would care if their drone carrying a bomb would be illigal to fly.. let alone the stolen RDX payload. new laws will just punish the good people and the ciminals will do what they do.
Anyone who has ever watched a master trap or skeet shooter murder clay birds with a shotgun knows the answer to this problem, at least in the shortrun..... the WH grounds are already patrolled by armed secret service agents with radios. Train them to shoot skeet, and direct them to targets over the grounds via their radios.
There has been a lot of talk and posturing about controlling drones but not enough to take action on.
buy a drone at wal-mart, toss it on the White House lawn, then raise a fuss over how it got there and what can be done. NOW you have enough to take action on.
I'm surprised no ones suggested building a dome over the White House yet.
We need to land a paper airplane on the lawn asap to show the absurdity of this.
Biden is a government employee.
I'm guessing that after trains he fell in love with drones.
Unrelated to your weird high school post...... --------------This seems like a BAD idea to advertise as an issue they currently have.
Assuming you can detect and track the gadget,
water cannons don't cause harm to downstream bystanders.
The folks in LasVegas might could help with something fun and effective.
The FAA could actually do a proper rulemaking using the existing laws and make folks follow AMA rules.
Then hold the AMA accountable for flights into restricted airspace.
AMA rules should require the owner's contact info on the little friend.
That is what Congress said to do.
For the target audience it will work way better than the FAA trying to do it Washington style.
It is just not letting the FAA be in control to the degree that they have become accustomed.
If anything good comes from this, it will be to get what should be a simple rulemaking unstuck.
For real fun, wait until the drones start coming in stealth models. Imagine how destabilizing it will be when nobody knows, for sure, if there’s an assassin drone, or when the big boys get upset, a nuclear-enabled stealth drone overhead. Imagine how the White House would react if they though a stealthed drone was over DC. Imagine Moscow reacting to even a non-nuclear stealthed drone falling onto Red Square.
Yeah, shooting shotguns at 10-30 degrees above horizontal in the city with no backstop sounds like a *great* idea.
Let's hope the neighborhood boys don't start up a game of baseball in a nearby sandlot! Someone hits a home run that lands in Mr. Obama's yard ain't never gettin' it back! Or worse yet, they all get rounded up and arrested for not following FAA regulations!
Award some defense contractor some umpteen million dollar contract over the next 20 years to develop and prototype a small-scale autonomous anti-aircraft battery with precision yield warheads specifically sufficient to shoot down small drones. Then legislate the hell out of them to keep them from ever seeing civilian use along with riders nixing some other thing you don't like right now.
Ah, collateral damage:
Where the miltary and aerospace industries don't care (hey it's in a warzone, in the desert--who cares if it crashes--it should). Hence why cost and capability of these vendors will not work (too expensive, does address these issues).
And where the commerical side has the slightest clue (just sell those Phantoms). Hence why features & convenience overshadow safety and consistency (your results will vary) for a business.
This industry is only going to make it if standards are created--it worked for the Internet (e.g. TCP/IP)...
If that's the case, then you and that guy are an asshole. I've heard those things and they often sound like a pissed off weedeater. We're trying to sleep goddamit! You're right up there with the old bastard who religiously mows his lawn 3 times per week at 0400, complete with trimming, and leaf blowing. Fuck you, fuck that guy, and fuck that old retired bastard. I gotta go to work!
Well, it's too goddamned cold to be out washing your Trans Am in daisy dukes in the middle of January!
A garden water sprinkler, the type that goes left-right, right-left, etc. Inexpensive and can destabilize a drone. Or a snow maker that puts ice on the wings.
Since they can detect them they should be easy to take out.
Large poppers. The party favors that shoot streamers out. Just scale them up a tad with a little more umph. Maybe a computerized air tube that aims and launches popper closer before it goes off. That should get the quadcopters fairly quick and good chance of taking out RC planes. Cheap , easy , and safe if you don't stand on top of the launcher tube :O
Combined with a water cannon as suggested it seems reasonable without getting too military.
Poppers in the yard and some water cannons setup closer to house and fairly vertical.
I've never seen a drone that could survive an impact from a high velocity frozen banana.
They are radio controlled multi-rotor "copters", not damn predator drones!
short range, doppler signature from rotors is very different than doppler signature from bird wings.
Rocket propelled net. Shoot a rocket rocket at the drone that contains a net. Instead of deploying a parachute, deploy a net. Once the net falls on the drone the props will stop spinning and the drone will fall out of the sky. I will have my system perfected by the time Amazon is making deliveries with drones
Royally screws any quadracopter.
And it's fun!
This assumes you can get a good doppler signature on the rotors at all. I'm not an expert on radar/stealth construction, but I know a fair bit about it. A rotor made of radar-transparent (or absorbent) material would make it rather hard to detect, at least until it was well within range to do damage.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Right after 9/11 they imposed an ADIZ, then changed the name to Special Flight Rules Area. For 10 miles around DCA, there's no flight for almost all but a very special few. Between that and about 20 miles, you can go there if you ask - Mother May I (Follow rules). Of course this only applies to GA aircraft - something not used in a terrorist act anywhere in the world. The aircraft that were - big commercial jets continue like before.
Even so, we're not "at war" anymore. So no excuse. They should eliminate it.