
Gatwick Airport: Drones ground flights - happy-go-lucky
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-46623754
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adamiscool8
I genuinely don't understand how it can be a 24+ hour operation just to take
out a drone.

Don't jets regularly get scrambled in response to less disruptive intrusions?
Doesn't the battery die at some point? Can't they follow it to where it lands
and take it out of commission? Couldn't someone have woven a giant net by now?

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matthewmacleod
As I understand it, the drone(s) have been vanishing then reappearing at
various points throughout the day.

While it seems quite easy to deal with the issue at first glance, I can see
why this would be difficult to deal with. A drone strike at takeoff could be
pretty catastrophic, so there is rightly an attitude of erring on the side of
safety; flights are unlikely to resume until the authorities are fairly
certain the drone is gone. But they are pretty small, so it doesn’t seem like
it would be terribly easy to track them. The operator may be using multiple
drones, and could potentially be quite far away from Gatwick - I’m no drone
expert, but I understand 6-7km range with a 30min flight time is feasible.
That’s quite a wide area to search.

Honestly I’m surprised that we haven’t seen this happen before now; it seems
like such an easy attack. I would guess that we might even see a rash of
copycat attacks.

~~~
adamiscool8
I totally understand why they'd have to err towards caution on the initial
appearance, but the drones aren't teleporting away when they vanish. The
combined power of the authorities can't follow a drone for 30 minutes and
capture it? Something just seems off.

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alasdair_
A few autonomous gps-guided drones are all that is needed. No one would need
to come back to get them. $200 could shut down an airport for hours

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jnellis
Someone posted a topdown photo of Gatwick from about 3000ft on reddit this
morning. I was wondering how they got that picture.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/a7za4i/this_photo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/a7za4i/this_photo_i_took_of_gatwick_this_morning/)

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Gaelan
I think that's a stock photo (jokingly implying that they were responsible)

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solarkraft
I see now. My first thought was that they're responsible, but from the text
the photo appears to be a PR photo and the post tounge-in-cheek.

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sgroppino
Affecting 100K passengers... how come this is not top 10 in HN?

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gandalfian
It's the main national news in the UK. Whether it is developing into mass
hysteria or an agitant is really using industrial sized drones to cause chaos
is impossible to know. As one of the main hubs in and out of europe a lot of
people are getting very worried for holiday gatherings.

~~~
jackpeterfletch
By the end of friday 250,000 people will have been displaced.

I dont know how you really deal with that!

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opwieurposiu
Half the time these "Drones" are just birds or plastic bags.

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/04/drone...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/04/drone-that-hit-british-airways-jet-was-likely-a-plastic-
bag/)

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pjc50
Conspiracy theory: a lot of people have pointed out that no pictures of the
alleged drone are circulating.

This comes at the end of a week in which the government is moving towards no-
deal Brexit.

Is this some kind of test of the emergency response?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Unlikely. My "conspiracy" theory would be that there's been an active terror
threat, that they're handling but don't want to go pubic with.

The UK government must have anti-drone measures, surely?

It also seems possible that opposing forces could organise this to flush out
details of drone responses, you can't exactly hide your countermeasures when
they're in the open at Gatwick.

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codeduck
I wonder how long it will be before airports need to run point-defence lasers
to interdict things like this.

~~~
solarkraft
Automated interceptor-drones must be a thing by now. I know for certain
there's a german company specializing in drone-defense, but I think their
competency lies mostly with detection/jamming.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
They're going to have a full order book!

