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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.
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.
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 suspect they've already done all the controlled environment testing they can. As you know, deployment in the field is the ultimate test. Washington is saturated with RF noise, with legitimate transceivers operating on every possible frequency and at varying levels of power. Being able to play "spot the drone amidst the noisy backdrop" is hard enough. Being able to 100% protect the President is something they have to get right the first time, and every time. Responding harshly to too many false positives may also create a nuisance backlash, so they may just be tuning their rejection filters.
John
I had a roommate in college that did the exact same thing. We had a noisy neighbor who enjoyed playing garbage like Limp Bizkit (this was in the late 90's IIRC) on his stereo at full blast all day every day. My roommate finally got fed up with it and built a HREF gun out of an old microwave and some sheet-metal for a waveguide. It didn't destroy our neighbors stereo (to my knowledge) but it sure did make it buzz like crazy. I don't think he ever figured out that it was us interfering with his stereo, either.
I'll never forget the first time we turned it on, hearing KEEP ROLLIN ROLLIN ROLLIN *bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz* from next door. It was a glorious day.
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.
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
What happens if their EMP weapon accidently wipes the e-mail servers at the State Department?
No problem, the State Department e-mails are going through the Secretary's private server.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.