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Secret Service Testing Drones, and How to Disrupt Them
schwit1 writes with this news from the Associated Press: Mysterious, middle-of-the-night drone flights by the U.S. Secret Service during the next several weeks over parts of Washington — usually off-limits as a strict no-fly zone — are part of secret government testing intended to find ways to interfere with rogue drones or knock them out of the sky, The Associated Press has learned.
A U.S. official briefed on the plans said the Secret Service was testing drones for law enforcement or protection efforts and to look for ways, such as signal jamming, to thwart threats from civilian drones. The drones were being flown between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to publicly discuss the plans. The Secret Service has said details were classified. ... The challenge for the Secret Service is quickly detecting a rogue drone flying near the White House or the president's location, then within moments either hacking it to seize control over its flight or jamming its signal to send it off course or make it crash.
A U.S. official briefed on the plans said the Secret Service was testing drones for law enforcement or protection efforts and to look for ways, such as signal jamming, to thwart threats from civilian drones. The drones were being flown between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to publicly discuss the plans. The Secret Service has said details were classified. ... The challenge for the Secret Service is quickly detecting a rogue drone flying near the White House or the president's location, then within moments either hacking it to seize control over its flight or jamming its signal to send it off course or make it crash.
and flying around...what is your wish, master?
They just need to get their hands on a few ZF-1s.
#DeleteChrome
A friend of mine built a "device" for an event, which was basically a directed microwave cyclotron. He shot it at a staged PC across the room and it crashed. I assume something similar could be done here. The other question, is WHY are they testing it in a populated area with air-space restrictions? You'd think they would do some experimentation in a area where they could protect their classified operation better.
There are two ways they could do this, as far as I can tell:
1. disrupt the onboard electronics to kill the power
2. spoof GPS so the thing goes somewhere totally different
You could do #1 as well by having nets spring up/out - basically have a physical barrier. The question is how would you deploy anything fast enough to catch an incoming drone? Even an energy weapon needs time to find, track, and fire.
#2 is easier, because most drones today use GPS. Just have the white house have a GPS signal that overloads anything the drone has. In fact, they could fuzz DC out of GPS, which would be the safest option.
#2 will cause drones to use an inertial system, which would then be hit with #1.
Really, they need a perimeter of cameras to track any fast moving objects from 1 mile out right down to the white house. That would probably give them enough time to figure out the vectors so they could actually do #1.
The real trick is figuring out a way to find the operator. Knocking a drone out of the sky seems fairly straightforward (trained attack crows, natch) but, except in the case of imminent attack, locating the person flying the drone seems like it would be much more useful for law enforcement.
My solution is sharks, with freaking lasers!
A bigger drone trailing a Kevlar ribbon.
Next.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I know some how America needs to protect itself so the average citizen feels secure enough to live their own lives. However you don't want the government who we put in charge to protect us, to evaluate new risks, and how to deal with them.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Seriously.
After that drunk crashed his hobby-class UAV on the White House lawn, the hue and cry from the SS and the TLA's went up as predicted.
"We must have $xM and uncontrolled executive powers to combat the clear and present existential threat posed by $40 toys!"
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
A few well placed tesla coils should do the job
Ms Abby Sciuto at NCIS they have done that loads of times.
to thwart threats from government drones. Care to compare results?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... secretly tossing rookie agents across the White House fence to test for breach detection systems.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
We've all seen the "I support the 2nd" photo op. Just send Obama out there with his over-under to take it down. Either that or Biden's wife.
Being able to 100% protect the President
this will never happen and is reflected in the structure of our government. Special air planes and multi million dollar car-shaped tanks are perfect expressions of how neurotic and misguided our approach to government security is. Being a government official means you represent the people. it means you take that risk every day that it could be the last day you come to work. Being indoors makes the white house staff pretty safe from the kinds of drones our SS are worried about, the president included, as he is just staff with a special title. there are numerous ways to shoot a drone out of the sky, or render it functionless, but it starts a needless arms race between drone hobbyists and some classified faction of the government that is unaccountably mysterious.
the ultimate solution to americas psychosis of security is to take a step back and try to work with or call a truce between the people hell bent on killing americans and government workers. "They cant be reasoned with" is a dishonest statement in most cases meant to whitewash public opinion. Did anyone know one of Osama Bin Ladens requests was for america to ease up on our blank-cheque support of the Palestinian apartheid? Sounds cost effective and reasonable but instead we embarked on an 80 trillion dollar campaign of senseless bloodshed that alienated us reason and plunged countless lives into misery. It also formed ISIS. So maybe this time we ease up and let people fly hobby drones.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I added a few tens of yards to my old Popeil Pocket Fisherman along with a 1-ounce sinker. I am fairly accurate with the PPF, and I can regularly knock out those small helicopter RC/drones from maybe 30 feet away, and can do as good as 60 feet. And that is with them hovering, not really moving. My kids have a bunch from ages ago and we have destroyed 3 this way, and knocked many out of the sky. Again, you have have to be fairly close. I really like it because you can reel it in and nobody ever knows what happened. And, you can always stop by the the stream on the way home and catch a tasty bass for dinner.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Americans are probably the only people in the world who would actually welcome an armed invasion so we could swap the first person shooter video games with some real excitement and family fun. And the Palestinian apartheid is the result of the male ego driven Arab psychosis brought to fruition by getting the snot kicked out of them by Israel back in 1948.It was the equivalent of the Bahamas successfully holding off the entire us Military and then successfully counter invading the US to claim ownership of the entire eastern sea board. Embarrassing doesn't even come close to describing the situation. Since then the further humiliations suffered in 67 and 73 they have had to settle on beating their women to make them feel like men. They could have stopped the threats, bombings, hijackings, kidnapping, and murderous behavior and claimed peace long ago but they have refused and whining for a do over will gain them nothing. Gullible morons born after 1990 with no knowledge what so ever of the true history of the "Palestinian" movement are the last hope of winning a war they have steadfastly refused to end for close to 70 years, Their incessant use of violence, irrational hatred, and generational hate teaching has created the breeding ground for ISIS. Their warped call of male dominance and self righteous indignation has created a tidal wave of virgin males with inferiority complexes and women with daddy issues to leave their well to do lives and venture to the land of the crazies and intellectually challenged. I say lets offer free airfare and bon voyage parties and once critical mass is reached and the caliphate is up and running just drop in a few tactical nukes and solve the problem on the cheap. We have already paid for the nukes and delivery systems so the cost is already taken care of. It would also serve as a welcome reminder that toleration and endless mayhem does have limits.
-Jeremy Clarkson
Nah.
We would welcome it because it's probably the only way we'll ever be able to replace our current form of representation ( Eg Government ) with something that might actually reflect what the people want instead of the corrupt parasite it has become.
I disagree.
Yes, there will always be some chance of a successful attack, but I think it is wise to expend effort to make attacks very difficult. I don't want my president's decisions to be guided by fears for his personal safety. Similarly, I don't want people to avoid becoming president for that reason. Otherwise, those who would threaten the president's safety influence policy. It is hard to conceive of a worse way to make policy, and I am glad that John Wilkes Booth and those who followed him have not had (so far as we know) much influence on policy before their assassinations.
I'm all for taking a step back and reducing policies that make people want to kill Americans. But I don't want that policy decision to be made under threat.
Figuring out anti-drone measures sounds very reasonable to me since the recent advances in drone technology are also applicable to making flying bombs.
If you can detect an incoming drone.
Move folks away from windows and let it come.
Or maybe do something kenetic if you are sure not to cause any off campus consequences.
Jambing, even with a directional antenna seems to have unintended consequences and will eventually not work.
It leads to a game of escalation eventually with fully autonomous drones without receivers.
Quiet detection without public disclosure of if you detected it or not seems the most likely to succeed..
The perimeter defense systems for overseas bases seems a likely detection tool.
You'd lose - you can't even when away from home when you pay lip service about civilian causalities and most of you chicken hawks would collaborate for a cheese burger.
It's a trivial matter to replace the camera with a handgun.
If they see little Timmy waving a metallic pinwheel and blast it out of his hand (and maybe him too) the men in black come out, confiscate the remains of pinwheel in the name of national security, give him a towel, and go back to wherever it is they lurk. Startling, but no real harm done. This system might also be hard on pigeons, but that could be considered a benefit.
It's not perfect, the system would have trouble picking very low flying objects out from background clutter, but it's a start.
EMP device to shut down electronic components.
Robot rebellion: crushed before it could begin.