
Drone Sighting Halts Departures at Heathrow Airport - donohoe
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/world/europe/heathrow-drone-sighting.html
======
pj_mukh
Just as in Gatwick before this, the police and the airport are not able to
produce even grainy footage of a drone that is supposedly "buzzing" the tower.

Gatwick reported "67 sightings", but couldn't confirm if some (all?) were
their own drones [1]. And now Parliament is tabling new powers for the police
[2]. Was there ever any evidence presented that there was ever a drone
present? Is there any evidence that this was actually a drone at Heathrow?

Are we sure this wasn't a plastic bag again [3]?

[1] [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/29/gatwick-drone-
si...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/29/gatwick-drone-sightings-
may-have-police-equipment-chief-constable/)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/08/police-
ha...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/08/police-handed-new-
anti-drone-powers-after-gatwick-disruption)

[3] [https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/22/11486256/drone-
collision-...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/22/11486256/drone-collision-uk-
plastic-bag)

P.S: I'm insinuating terrible preparedness to verify drone sightings leading
to wonky regulations, not a conspiratorial power grab

~~~
porphyrogene
Does Heathrow bear a resposibility to prove anything to you or any other
random person on the internet? You seem to be insinuating some conspiracy by
asking vague questions.

~~~
vorpalhex
Err, yes, yes they do if it's going to be used as justification to pass
sweeping new police powers.

~~~
joemi
Isn't the responsibility on the law makers who are using the issue at the
airport as justification, not the airport itself? Heathrow isn't somehow
trying to pass laws themselves are they? (Caveat: Maybe I just don't
understand how British law works?)

~~~
manicdee
The responsibility is on the airport to confirm sightings.

The responsibility on the police is to confirm sightings before arresting
people for flying drones over the airport (the police arrested a couple for
flying drones over Gatwick when there was no evidence of drones over Gatwick).

The lawmakers _should_ support their power grab with evidence but they are
more interested in grabbing power.

------
AWildC182
To those wondering why we can't just take down the drones, it's not as simple
as a jammer or a shotgun.

Jamming drones is a non starter for the most part. You can make a drone
operate on just about any frequency you want and with modern equipment
becoming more frequency agile, this will only get worse. A simple thought
experiment would be a drone using GSM for video and control. Can you just jam
all phones? Obviously not. Further, drones can fly without any command and
control if they're configured correctly, just using GPS for guidance. Can you
jam GPS at an airport where planes are breaking out of an overcast layer at
200ft AGL on a GPS approach? Nope.

Kinetic approaches: projectiles need to come back down. Even heavy bird shot
could damage the super thin skin on an airliner when falling back to earth.
Also, net guns and similar options are way shorter range than you think.

Birds of prey: stick your hand in a DJI rotor and report back. Now try an
industrial drone. Come back when they re-attach all your fingers.

Drones catching drones: you'll need continuous line of sight to be able to
chase the thing around. This also assumes it's a quad and not a 100mph+ fixed
wing drone. Might be feasible if you have an automated way of detecting and
following the drone (future mm band radar?).

Lasers: eye safety of the public and piloted aircraft.

~~~
mianos
Birdshot has such small energy when falling you hardly feel it. It is more
like rain. No way it would damage the skin of an aircraft.

~~~
noobiemcfoob
You overestimate the strength of aircraft exteriors. Even minor scratches
become important under full stress.

~~~
mianos
#7 or bird shot would not even scratch the paint if falling under gravity. It
is approximately 0.1 gram. If you ever see what it looks like in real life, it
is tiny and soft. The only reason it does damage is because the charge gets it
going at a fair speed (which is loses very quickly).

~~~
AWildC182
Since you seem to have experience here, what do you think the lightest shot
that would damage a midsize drone (ie DJI phantom) at a useful range would be?

------
bump-ladel
Once the idea of alien UFOs became widespread, the number of reported cases
rose. Once everybody has the idea that drones may be flying around airports,
will people start misidentifying and reporting other phenomena as drones
(causing chaos)?

~~~
tantalor
To be fair, "unconfirmed drone sighting" is an example of "unidentified flying
object".

------
pwaivers
As the article says, it is surprising how easy and cheap it is to shut down a
world-class airport and disrupt 100,000's of people. They haven't even caught
the last person.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
They made two arrests for Gatwick.

~~~
quasse
They arrested two people that they later admitted had nothing to do with the
event in question. [1]

What counterpoint are you making here?

[1] [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-
sussex-46709353](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-46709353)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
What counterpoint am I making? I thought that it was perfectly obvious - that
they had caught the previous person(s). I had not heard that they released
them - I kind of quit paying attention once they made the arrests.

~~~
morsch
Maybe this anecdote will convince you to pay attention in the future.

------
eponeponepon
I kind of struggle to understand how there isn't enough equipment and
electrical engineering expertise on site at a modern airport to pinpoint these
drones really quickly - especially at Heathrow.

Even a small drone surely makes a ton of radio noise just from its motors, no?

~~~
sschueller
It really would not take long for the airport to launch a drone to look for
the other one. Maybe a minute? They could have a experienced pilot on staff at
the tower. Costs a lot less than shutting down the airport for hours.

I would even say a skilled pilot with a trackable drone in communication with
the tower could safely fly to investiage without a shutdown of the airport.

~~~
setquk
Then they get lots of calls from other people saying they’ve seen it and it’s
actuslly the search and destroy drone...

~~~
DoctorOetker
But upstream the assumption was

>Even a small drone surely makes a ton of radio noise just from its motors,
no?

So once you have an effective and objective mechanism (this or other) for
detecting and tracking drones, you can disregard the peanut gallery.

------
venantius
When can I buy travel insurance that covers “drones at the airport”?

~~~
giarc
I think your comment is tongue in cheek, but I wonder if trip interruption
insurance would cover this?

~~~
fathead_glacier
Unfortunately no. According to the BBC [0] the Civil Aviation Authority
considers a drone interference accident as an extraordinary circumstance.
Therefore, the EU rules for compensation do not apply.

However, it makes me wonder if and when third party insurance companies will
start offering this as a service.

[0]
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46632302](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46632302)

------
mimixco
Airbus has had drone defense tech for years. They can drop any drone out of
the sky when it's miles from an airplane.

[http://fortune.com/2016/01/08/airbus-technology-disrupt-
dron...](http://fortune.com/2016/01/08/airbus-technology-disrupt-drones/)

The poster here who claimed drones operate on "any frequency" is incorrect.
Like any other radio device, radios in the drones and their controllers can
only operate on limited frequencies which are known in advance.

~~~
petre
There's also an Israeli company that sells a drone defense device. It's like a
portable gun and it grounds the drone safely. I'm not sure how safe it is to
use it near an ATC tower though.

Another Israeli company has an anti drone technology called Drone Dome that
was supposedly deployed by the army at Gatwick during the incident.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_Dome](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_Dome)

------
DoctorOetker
1) If we could accurately detect and track drones, we can disregard the
reports, or check with the detection system if there was a related near-
detection at the reported location/line-of-sight

2) While there will be lot's of electrical motors throughout the airport,
perhaps the airport and its infrastructure could be designed to support a 10
minute silence (causing delays etc).

3) Focussing on the electromotor driven propellers, the sound can be expected
to have twice the frequency of the magnetic field (both the permanent magnet,
and the applied electromagnet fields) since the propeller has 2 blades. It
should be possible to use this correlation to filter out electromotor noise
without blades. (So fan's will still contribute noise, but known fan noise,
and electromotor fan noise of authorized equipment could be filtered out, or
canceled)

4) A grid of microphones and magnetic field detectors would probably be
necessary.

5) The system should probably be combined with other technologies like LIDAR
etc

------
testplzignore
> The airport said it had spent several million pounds to purchase the
> equipment.

I feel like this is a problem some smart people could solve quickly if they
were asked, similar to the healthcare.gov situation. Ask some MIT students to
come up with a solution over a weekend and I bet they would deliver.

Knocking a slow moving object out of the sky is _literally_ not rocket
science.

~~~
isostatic
> Knocking a slow moving object out of the sky is literally not rocket
> science.

No, but it's not a matter of some yahoos with a gun shooting them:
[https://twitter.com/sommervilletv/status/1080724993238069249](https://twitter.com/sommervilletv/status/1080724993238069249)

~~~
darkpuma
Pistols and rifles, not birdshot? RPGs? What a complete joke. If you put these
morons in charge of hunting birds they'd probably conclude that shooting birds
doesn't work either. Try hunting birds with pistols and rifles and you'll have
the same result.

Meanwhile in Kentucky: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/judge-
rules-in-f...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/judge-rules-in-
favor-of-drone-slayer-dismisses-lawsuit-filed-by-pilot/)

Meanwhile in Virginia: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/65-year-
old-woma...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/65-year-old-woman-
takes-out-drone-over-her-virginia-property-with-one-shot/)

Meanwhile in Tennessee: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/man-
takes-drone-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/man-takes-drone-
out-for-a-sunset-flight-drone-gets-shot-down/)

And for the unaware, birdshot solves the _" what goes up must come down"_
problem; the shot is light enough that when it falls back down the air
resistance has slowed it to a harmless speed. In other words, the terminal
velocity is MUCH lower than the muzzle velocity. Getting hit by falling
birdshot doesn't bruise, let alone kill. If somebody were serious about
solving this problem, instead of just trying to justify impotent anti-drone
legislation _(that won 't stop bad actors from throwing together rc quads from
scratch)_ they'd ask gunsmiths to create for them a fully automatic shotgun
tuned to cycle with birdshot, with a large magazine capacity, and create radar
systems that can distinguish between birds and drones (probably with a human
in the loop.) Anti-drone micro-CIWS.

Other promising solutions include anti-drone falcons (potentially hazardous to
the bird, I've seen what those props can do to human fingers...) and hunter-
killer drones piloted by superior pilots. A good defense would be a defense in
depth, adopt as many of these systems as is economical. Considering the
economic harm that shutting down a major airport can cause, the budget should
be large.

~~~
glenneroo
I think you might be underestimating the problem. Airports are generally
spread across huge areas (square miles/km i.e. one or more football fields)
and birdshot from shotguns has an effective maximum range of about 250 meters
(according to various websites and charts), therefore you'd need a ton
(hundreds?) of these micro-CIWS devices scattered around the perimeter to have
any fighting chance. Also you want to make sure you don't hit any airplanes or
helicopters already in the air. I can imagine certification from various
government agencies in any country would take several years at best.

Furthermore, imagine you have your dream-drone-killer... how do you even find
them? Neither of these recent sightings were even verified to be drones, they
just received reports of sightings, therefore initially they would need to
deploy devices to find/verify them. Once spotted, it wouldn't be hard to send
a couple trained shooters with shotguns loaded with birdshot, assuming knowing
their location isn't already enough to find the pilots...

~~~
darkpuma
I had in mind birdshot CIWS mounted on top of a truck that could tear ass
around the airport. Even if you could only place one or two in a fixed
location, putting them next to tempting targets for invading drones looking to
taunt the airport, such as the control tower, would probably work pretty well.
Consider that the invading drone will only succeed in shutting down the
airport if somebody notices it; somebody trying to commit economic sabotage
will be making the presence of their drone known. If the invading drone goes
unnoticed, then it will fail to accomplish it's mission.

As for drones flying too high, that is a problem but one that could be
addressed (not solved) by using interceptor drones to spook or bait the
invading drone into flying lower. On a non-ballistic sidenote, you could also
have race quads configured to rapidly triangulate the origin control signal
and collect video evidence of the signal origin. Not fool-proof by any means,
but I wager that would be enough to catch all but the most clever/dedicated
attackers.

This all seems a bit silly, but if you throw enough money at it I think you
can make it work. The question is how much economic harm can a drone do by
shutting down an international airport and how much money are you willing to
spend to prevent this. My main point here is that the situation isn't nearly
as hopeless as a bunch of soldiers taking potshots at the drones with their
rifles (that's pretty much guaranteed to be not work and is exceptionally
dangerous.)

------
randyrand
Part of me wonders if this is a long term problem with solving - causing so
much annoyance with so little effort - or if this is just a fad. Time will
tell. One thing is for sure, it's very easy to cause a lot of harm. Much of
our society relies on assuming people are good. Sabotaging infrastructure is
as easy as loosening or cutting bolts on a bridge.

~~~
rdtsc
> Sabotaging infrastructure is as easy as loosening or cutting bolts on a
> bridge.

The issue there is that someone has to walk up a bridge with tools and start
loosening bolts. Drones are somewhat remote, in that they could hide in the
bushes some distance away. And most of all, I can see drone operators thinking
"it's fun" as they are not damaging or deliberately flying into planes. It's
wrong of course, but in their minds they don't see it equivalent to cutting
bolts on a bridge.

~~~
beezischillin
Thankfully a lot of more modern drones have no-fly maps implemented so you're
forced to download it and you can't mess around there. But for years it's been
pilot etiquette not to do dumb things to mess it up for everyone else, I guess
that's slowly ending, unfortunately.

I hope most countries will still try and be sensible about their drone laws.
Mine isn't: you're required to register your drone and tell them a month ahead
(!!!) where you're going to fly, even if it's in the dead middle of nowhere,
which is why people ignore all of it.

The other thing is that drones are exceedingly hard to regulate because the
barrier of entry to just building your own is becoming lower and lower.

Anyhow, enough of my rambling. It's really sad to see things take such a
negative turn for everyone involved (both drone pilots and regular people).

------
qwerty456127
Do they really have to be so paranoid about drones?

~~~
pnw_hazor
Yes. How else are they going to prevent plebes from lawfully owning them.

note: will be buying my drone today before the US FAA gets any brights ideas.

~~~
qwerty456127
Why not just build one yourself when you really feel you want? Won't it be
twice (or more) the fun? Isn't a previously bought one going to be equally
illegal after such a "bright idea"? Be careful and have fun anyway.

------
ohiovr
Someone needs to invent a drone interceptor that just flys into another drone
and ruins the props.

~~~
nwah1
Could land on someone. My understanding is that a lot of the anti-drone
defense systems being researched involve catching them with nets.

------
xabaras
Great way to DoS Airports...

------
pwaivers
Again?

~~~
rtkwe
Last time it was Gatwick south of London. Hopefully this shutdown doesn't get
extended because the government drones get mistaken for continued sightings of
the original drone (or copycats) like happened at Gatwick.

