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Over 110,000 Passengers on 760 Flights Disrupted by Drones Flying Over One of the UK's Busiest Airports (bbc.com)
Gatwick's runway has been shut since Wednesday night, when two devices were seen flying over the perimeter fence. The airport said at about 12:00 GMT on Thursday a drone had been spotted "in the last hour" and the runway would not open "until it was safe to do so". From a report: About 110,000 passengers on 760 flights were due to fly on Thursday. Disruption could last "several days". Those due to travel have been told to check the status of their flight, while Easyjet told its passengers not to go to Gatwick if their flights have been cancelled. Sussex Police said it was not terror-related but a "deliberate act" of disruption, describing the drones as of "industrial specification". The shutdown started just after 21:00 GMT on Wednesday, when two drones were spotted flying "over the perimeter fence and into where the runway operates from". The runway briefly reopened at 03:01 but was closed again about 45 minutes later amid "a further sighting of drones".
How to disrupt air traffic control with minimal risk to themselves. Granted it's not as deadly as bombs and shootings. But terrorists can use this en masse remotely and in large numbers to effectively shut down air travel
nanny state want to ban them agenda 51!
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cayenne8
So the lack of a rational response caused mid level managers of an international airport to overreact and fuck up travelers' schedules. They know of the existence of drones and the possibility of interference, so why aren't they prepared? It's not like the airlines don't have the money - it'd be a trivial investment.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/anti-drone-technologies/
Anti drone tech exists. Now that drones are as much a reality as birds on the runway, they should be prepared. There's no excuse, other than complacency. It's too bad those 110,000 people won't be able to hold the airlines accountable in any meaningful way.
Nobody gets injured, but you shut down the airport for fear of people being injured. If you use autonomous pre-programed GPS based drones, there isn't even necessarily a radio signal to trace back to the person who launched the drone, potentially from several miles away.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Sounds like someone trying to force the regulators hand. What better way to prompt regulation than fucking with the second largest airport in the UK at one of the busiest times of the year.
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..and shoot em (the people controlling the drones doing this(
Fuck those retards
If they can shoot down rockets and mortars - they can take care of drones.
Yes they could be shot down with rifles but the public wouldn't like the stray bullets
Slashdot drones on about another boring topic.
You're missing two very crucial things. 1) Nothing in British law, nor in any western laws I'm aware of, allow civil entities to engage in radioelectronic combat, and their radiotelephony laws blatantly prohibit such attacks. 2) None of the hard kill approaches are legal, nor are they ethical over populated areas. 3) a fucking net over the airport? You're retarded.
The real answer is to publicly hang the assholes who did this (unless they have brown skin, then deny it happened)
So what radio frequency is used by the drone controllers? It would be simple to build a jamming transmitter that could disable the link between the pirate pilots and their drones. I know nothing about drones but I would bet that someone with a few smarts could easily put together a rather sophisticated jamming transmitter with the necessary modulations that could ground the drones after taking over control of them. It might also be fun to build a directed EMP "weapon" that could be used to take them down when visually sighted. I suppose drones are too small to show up on radar, even the higher frequency radars. Too bad. But the whole problem should be fertile ground for a small group of imaginative engineers and electronics technologists. What about it, guys and girls??
I wonder if they make such a fuss when they see a flock of birds "flying over the perimeter fence". Because those ACTUALLY take down aircraft on a regular basis (though mostly smaller aircraft). Get the security off their butts and find the drones/owners (most drones can only fly for 10-20 minutes on a charge), if push comes to shove hand out shotguns with bird-shot.
This offers British Airways another chance to make its customer service even worse.
Where are the control hijackers and the control triangulators and the GPS jammers and the laser weapons and the trained falcons and the dudes with shotguns loaded with birdshot!?!? How can this laughable shitshow go on for over 12 hours!?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This tiny company is disrupting an entire industry!
DDOS even works for this.
Drone
Denial
Of
Service
Instead of using metallic bullets, use rock salt. Or something that expands and is soft enough to not harm anyone when they fall.
The routine use of drones was initiated by the US government in the 1960s and 1970s. It was partly motivated by the realisation that the USSR could shoot down any aircraft - even a U-2 - and partly for reasons of cost and efficiency. Originally seen as ideal for reconnaissance and spying, they were soon modified to carry weapons.
For decades the US government was almost alone in its ability to deploy drones anywhere in the world, and thus to gain information - and optionally kill people and destroy buildings and vehicles - without the need for human presence.
Eventually other nations began to follow suit, as the cost of drone construction plummeted and the technical prerequisites became common knowledge.
And today we are beginning to see the ramifications develop. Apparently the UK government and the airport authorities never gave a moment's thought to the possibility that drones might be used systematically to interfere with airline operations - or even to shut down whole airports, much as a Web site is shut down by a denial of service attack.
It is interesting to think about what will come next. For a start, the nations that have traditionally felt immune to attack must think again. If drones can close down Gatwick Airport without any overt hostile acts, why should they not drop bombs on government offices or strafe roads and railways? Maybe even individuals with uneasy consciences may begin to feel happier under cover.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
You drone 'enthusiasts' had a chance, way back in the beginning, to police your own, and prevent shit like this from happening in the first place, but NO, you couldn't be bothered, threw hissy-fits over the mere mention of regulation, refused to make it clear to everyone who bought a goddamned drone that there would be severe consequences for not being responsible. So now we have fucktards flying their goddamned toys into all sorts of places they don't belong, and, worse, criminals obtaining them and doing stupid disruptive shit like this. Enjoy your 'hobby' being outlawed and drones being taken off the market, idiots. You won't be responsible and pro-active before? We'll do it for you, now, and you can shove your protests against it up your fat asses, YOU EARNED THIS. At best drones will be for professional use only -- and that's how it'll have to be. Tough shit for you.
I get that drones are tiny, but I'd be curious to know if tech exists so that airports don't have to rely on people "observing" drones.
I'm presuming that the US military has ways to detect or trigger perimeter alarms on seeing drones. And tracing back to the point where the drone was launched. For truly suicide bombers, the trace back probably isn't useful, tho.
...do they shut down the whole airport for hours over that as well?
I'm surprised that they delay flights for 6 hours and more because of two drones. I understand that they delay flights, but I'd expect them to take out those drones as soon as possible. If they can't do that, that's rather a big vulnerability.
I know the Dutch police has worked on using trained eagles to take out drones (by far the most bad-ass solution to the problem). I've also heard of using some sort of jammer or directed electromagnetic pulse to disrupt drone. But even a well-aimed bullet should solve the problem.
Also, weren't drones supposed to be limited through software so that they can only fly where they're allowed to?
Here in the U.S., it's getting harder and harder to enjoy flying a drone as a hobby, thanks to the combination of paranoia over drones and the legitimate problem of people flying them in places they obviously shouldn't be flying (around airports, for example!).
It's gotten so you can't even legally use one, period, if you live in Washington DC. They've marked off the entire area as restricted airspace for them.
And as a DJI Mavic Pro owner myself, one of my first thoughts was, "Well, surely I can take one of these to any park, at least. That's where everyone went to fly kites back when I was a kid. Lots of open space and often some good scenery worth capturing on video during a flight." But no! So many of the State and National parks are starting to ban drone usage too!
Even when our local community had their annual Veteran's Day Parade, I wanted to use my drone to capture an overhead view of all the floats and vehicles going down our main street. But I had second thoughts, because there was local chatter about a drone flying overhead possibly making war veterans in the parade nervous.
If my dad was still alive to see this, I'm sure he'd be really agitated about all the regulations. He grew up building gasoline powered model airplanes and later, got his pilot's license ... and would NEVER go along with all of these restrictions on private individuals flying drones for fun.
... everything would have continued to be safe?
And in actual reality, things were just as safe as normal the whole time, just some fear-mongers and people that what to inflate their own perceived importance saw an opportunity.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Does the airport have the authority to shoot down any drones that are endangering planes taking off or landing? Nobody minds them shooting birds with shotguns...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
What better way to prompt regulation...
There already are regulations making this highly illegal. If/when the operator is caught s/he will be going away for a long time. What this has highlighted is the need for suitable defences. The police apparently cannot shoot the drone down because they are worried about stray bullets. What is needed is some means to efficient means to disable a drone that is operating illegally. You can have all the regulations you want but there will always be some idiot willing to break them.
Sounds like drone legislation being fast tracked.
"I was able to stop the Airport alone with my skills" probably gives the person a false sense of empowerment.
In what way is that false? The effect is very real, and probably a lot more than was imagined when the people sent in the drones (though honestly I think it more likely the drones were jus there to take video for fun).
Now that people know how easy it is to shut down an airport... well hang on folks, we are in for one rocky ride as the nutters seize on this as a way to use airports for political messaging.
In the end they are just going to have to learn to keep airports running despite "sightings of drones".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I wouldn't say the drones worth flying, today, are exactly cheap. Yes, they're smart enough to make takeoff and landing a "no brainer". Way easier than the R/C stuff of the past.
But you're still usually putting out around a $1000 investment by the time you buy your drone accessories and the drone itself. The real cheap stuff out there doesn't even have enough battery life to be relevant. Those are just toys to fly around your house for 5 minutes at a time, basically.
Considering the risk of your $600-1200 investment just suddenly dropping into a body of water, never to be recovered again, or crashing into trees and being destroyed, or ?? I think that, alone, should be a sobering enough thought so people exercise a little bit of sense in where and how they fly them....
It seems like the exceptions get all the media attention, because "it's not news until somebody gets hurt or angry". But a whole lot of drones have been sold, relative to the very random, occasional story of somebody really causing problems with one. I really think this is a case of a small minority of bad actors ruining things for 99% of the owners/users.
I think it's quite possible that Russians are experimenting with what they can get away with. They have a past history of doing so, consider their attack of Baltic and Ukrainian infrastructure. The UK is an obvious target as they're one of the two countries in Europe with an actual military (the other is France), and in case of war, it's useful to have the ability to shut down civilian services such as websites, financial infrastructure, water supplies, power plants and energy distribution. The Russians did all these and more elsewhere, it's another logical (in their twisted, counterproductive logic) thing to do.
While it might not be Russians, and it's conceivable that it's an elaborate prank by some bored UK folks, it's still best to treat it as an act of warfare, or preparation thereof, before ruling out this possibility. Even then, it's good to treat it as if the Russians (the current main troublemaker) as even if it's not them this time round, they may engage in such activities if they wish to do so.
what is an "infliencd" ? I get "mattrt" through context.
The real "pussy" here is a turbine engine that can't handle a strike from a carbon fiber drone.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Is it possible this is a government sponsored diversionary tactic?
For all the other people saying 'oh it is probably some idiot.' This seems like a perfect time for them to be pushing FUD, which this qualifies as, in order to help deflect attention, or tighten their regulations as 'Britain is under attack!' while not actually having to stage any sort of serious or violent offenses.
I wonder how much it would cost to program a bunch of drones to go off every X minutes and fly at the airport. You could set up a lot and just go a way for a while.
Might possibly scratch the paint.
A really big drone (not consumer) might take out an engine. But even taking out both engines should not crash the plane if the pilots can competently glide back.
Now, a Canada goose with an incompetent pilot is a different matter. But they do not shut down airports for many hours every time a sparrow is seen flying near by.
This is almost certainly hyped up nonsense. A complete overreaction from incompetent bureaucrats.
But you're still usually putting out around a $1000 investment by the time you buy your drone accessories and the drone itself. The real cheap stuff out there doesn't even have enough battery life to be relevant. Those are just toys to fly around your house for 5 minutes at a time, basically.
Either way it's a lot less time and effort and money than how it used to be. I also think you're making the mistake of assuming compentence in these people. You can buy a drone for a few hundred quid with enough range to fly over an airport.
It might not be a great experience and you might be liable to lose it, but remember we're not talking about competent people making sensible choices here.
I really think this is a case of a small minority of bad actors ruining things for 99% of the owners/users.
It usually is.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The BBC article said the army doesn't want to shoot at it for fear of stray shots into populated areas. It seems the military would have developed some better ways to deal with drones by now than shooting with bullets, such as chain shot that used to be used to take out rigging, or some kind of AA burst that would be relatively haarmlessvaw if it falls straight down, etc. Instead they're talking about trying to hunt down the operator as the only viable option.
I noticed you keep harping on the fact I wanted to "fly my drone over a parade with a crowd of people", as though such a thing is terrible behavior.
In reality, our town only has a total population of about 6,000 and it's far from the WHOLE town that shows up at these parades. Additionally, there is usually someone flying a drone at these events to capture them on video so people can enjoy viewing it later on Facebook. (Our city has its own Facebook group.)
It has never posed a problem, and most people in town know exactly who the drone operator is, because he's pretty much the only one here (besides me) who owns a decent quality drone you could use reliably for videography purposes.
If I flew mine at such an event, it would just be because I knew the other guy was out of town, sick, or otherwise unable to make it to video record it for us.
If you look at the small size and weight of a Mavic Pro or similar drone, they're not going to do any harm even if if they crash land into a crowd and hit someone on the head. And that's a total worst case scenario that really shouldn't happen anyway. (If these lose radio connectivity, they default to hovering in place, as opposed to continuing to follow any previous flight directions that might cause it to head into obstacles.) It's also not like I'd fly it right over everybody so it could fall straight down onto them. It's easily possible to fly along side the road, where a crash would just land it in someone's unoccupied back yard or an empty lot.
"I noticed you keep harping on the fact I wanted to "fly my drone over a parade with a crowd of people", as though such a thing is terrible behavior."
There have already been a few cases of drones crashing into crowds at such events; causing minor injuries (including at least one that needed stitches.)
Its just a matter of time before it hits a senior causing a fall and a broken hip or worse, or it hits someone in the face causing a broken nose, broken teeth, scarring etc.
"In reality, our town only has a total population of about 6,000 and it's far from the WHOLE town that shows up at these parades. Additionally, there is usually someone flying a drone at these events to capture them on video"
There's a difference between someone operating in some professional and official capacity, adhering to strict guidelines, and a bunch of rando parade goers just showing up with their drones. You made it sound like the latter should be ok.
"so people can enjoy viewing it later on Facebook. (Our city has its own Facebook group.)"
Gross.
"And that's a total worst case scenario that really shouldn't happen anyway."
But they do happen. Anything from a bird attack to a battery/electrical system failure could cause the thing to fall like a stone.
Yeah.... ok. I still stick by my original opinion here, on this one.
If everyone is going to go all "ban crazy" because they have a fear of the very slight chance of a drone falling from the sky and landing on their head in some manner? I think we, as a society, need to re-evaluate our priorities and concerns!
It's probably just as likely someone will get injured by a parade vehicle that accidentally hits someone, or a person who falls off of a moving float.
And it's rather insulting to pretend that "professionals" are somehow immune to the small risks of drones causing problems in public settings. But sure, keep on kidding yourself that "adhering to strict guidelines" will prevent any battery or electrical failures in their drones, or prevent any bird attacks on them.
I figure if I fly a drone and the thing does malfunction and hits somebody? That's just one of those risks taken in the name of actually getting outdoors in public and doing things. It used to be, most people saw it that same way. (EG. If a drone hits ME and injures me in some freak accident, I would probably chalk it up to bad luck and go treat my injury. MAYBE I'd pursue asking the drone operator if they'd be willing to pay part of my medical expenses, if it came to that.) I guess these days, you risk some idiot trying to get lawyers involved, thinking he or she is owed your home, car, and all your belongings if said drone touches their body? I'm sure not going to support restricting activities just because of those people.....