
Gatwick Airport: Drone sightings cause delays - gadders
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-46623754
======
ralphhughes
I'm surprised this isn't higher on HN given the tech nature of the attack.
Gatwick is one of the busiest airports in the UK and having flights suspended
for 24 hours is major disruption.

A few quotes from the BBC's live incident page at
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-
sussex-46564814](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-sussex-46564814)

"An airline source has told the BBC that flights are currently cancelled until
at least 19:00 GMT"

"Police have made a formal request to the MoD for military assistance to deal
with the Gatwick incident. A defence source would not go into any detail of
what that support would entail."

"The Prime Minister's spokesman said a cross-Whitehall meeting of officials is
taking place in response to the drone incident.

The meeting of officials, but not ministers, is taking place in the Cabinet
Office and began at 15:00, the spokesman said.

Officials from the Department for Transport, Home Office, the police and the
Civil Contingencies Secretariat are among those involved in the meeting."

~~~
jeffwass
Agreed, I’m surprised at the HN relative silence because there are so many
other drone stories that warrant such HN attention.

In this case all flights from Gatwick (the next busiest London airport after
Heathrow) have been cancelled for nearly 24 hours.

That’s 110k passengers on 760 flights during one of the busiest travel periods
of the year!

~~~
vizzah
It is apparent by now, that the army's inability to stop those drones means
only one thing.. those are not drones. It is UFOs.

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SmellyGeekBoy
These big commercial drones have been easily available for, what, 5+ years?
And people have been talking about an attack like this for at least as long.
It's absolutely mind boggling that we don't have any way of dealing with this
other than sending police officers out on the street to see if they can spot a
dodgy-looking individual holding a drone controller. Flights have been
cancelled for 15 hours and counting now.

I hear some prisons have electronic defences against drones, why not one of
the busiest airports in the world?

~~~
vizzah
Does drone need back-to-home signal when flying on a pre-defined route? I
guess it only needs GPS and that is what might need to be jammed to stop it
from following the course.. but how you jam GPS in the sky? hmm..

I also wonder how many drones are actually there as one would only fly for,
how long, less than 1 hour? before battery is dead? If it returns to the base,
it shouldn't take 10 sherlock holmes to track it?

~~~
sgroppino
You can jam GPS, but then it'll probably mean planes can't fly, either...

~~~
subway
Planes already can't fly if the drone is in the air...

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rdl
If they can't shut this down in ~2 hours, MOD/IC signals services should be
fired. You can go for kinetic kills against the drone (shotgun if low,
something more expensive if it's larger/higher), but should be able to
find/fix/finish the transmitter fairly easily with equipment I'd hope
national-level police would have, but certainly could get from the military
(along with operators) in something of this severity.

Plus the full range of commercial anti-drone companies, some of which are
based in Europe (a couple in UK I think).

~~~
cstross
Per other news reports, kinetic kills were ruled out because of unacceptable
risk of bullets/shells hitting something they shouldn't — the whole of South-
East England is populated at a density that Americans would call suburbia.
(All of England is only one and a half times as large as Greater Los Angeles
County: lots of small towns, villages, and homes in the vicinity of Gatwick.)

I'm surprised they don't have specialist anti-drone transmitters, but as
Police spending in England and Wales has been cut by over 30% since 2010,
maybe it wasn't seen as a priority.

Tracking down the operators should be possible, but this looks like a well-
planned attempt to shut down the airport: whoever is behind it probably
planned to move around in order to evade the Airport Police.

~~~
deadbunny
> whoever is behind it probably planned to move around in order to evade the
> Airport Police.

If it were me and I wasn't using a preprogrammed route I'd just set up a
transceiver that either replays or relays controls. Hide it in a bush and be
on the other side of the country while everything is going off.

~~~
swarnie_
Welcome to MI5's watch list.

~~~
deadbunny
I hope they enjoy watching me commit atrocities in Rimworld.

~~~
rdl
Making hats is illegal in the UK?

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sol_invictus
The title feels like a big understatement. Huge damages done with an extremely
easily accessible attack surface and cheap means of conducting an attack.

Good times ahead for anti-drone technology manufacturers.

~~~
Tomminn
Attacking a railroad has been trivially easy for decades and yet so few people
do it. It's shocking how non-destructive 99.999% of humans are.

~~~
skummetmaelk
Don't give the 0.001% any ideas.

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angry_octet
Counter-drones? With nets? Shotguns? Polymer filament glue? Drones on CAP
around airports? (I'm thinking cyborg titanium falcons, à la the Rat-Things in
Snow Crash.)

Given the cost of delaying operations at a major airport for even an hour, it
can't be too long before some legislation promising violent penalties, and
allowing drone takedown.

(What happens at Ben Gurion International? They also had to shut down all
flight ops. [http://www.thedrive.com/aerial/17918/israels-ben-gurion-
airp...](http://www.thedrive.com/aerial/17918/israels-ben-gurion-airport-
grounds-all-flights-due-to-intrusive-drone) )

~~~
angry_octet
So far, up to 3 days of interruption, 650/720 flights cancelled.

Even assuming smaller planes with ~200 passengers, a modest cost per day of
$300 (nonrefundable hotel bookings, accom for stuck passengers, taxi fees,
etc):

200×650×900 = 117,000,000

And I think this is an underestimate, because those passengers still have to
fly eventually, possibly on other carriers. By the time it's done, could be
$500M.

I wonder if they have been asked to pay a ransom?

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peteretep
This drone operator has probably created good in the long run, as much as I
wouldn't want to be stuck in Gatwick right now. This is going to lead to
actual action being taken by the airport operators, one would think.

Almost worth a false-flag operation by MI5 given that (presumably) nobody is
going to get hurt this time, and it will almost certainly lead to better
defenses.

~~~
cjrp
MPs trying to pass a law requiring mandatory backdoors for police control of
drones in 3.. 2..

~~~
quickthrower2
Then crims won’t buy those drones. But they’ll appreciate the backdoors in
other people’s drones. But yes I can see such a law passing. Aussies can help
UK draft it.

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arethuza
I wonder how they reliably identify something as a drone and not some birds?

Edit: I wouldn't have thought you'd be able to hear a drone (airports being
somewhat noisy) and at night it must be pretty tricky to reliably identity one
and I haven't seen any pictures or videos?

~~~
kortilla
All birds file flight plans with the FAA after the Sully mishap.

~~~
Sharlin
That doesn’t help much at Gatwick though.

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tim333
You'd think someone could just hop in a Cessna 150 or similar and take the
drones out by bashing into them. I learnt to fly in one of those and it would
be great fun as long as someone else fixed the dents in the propeller. The
minimum speed is about 45mph so it wouldn't do the sort of damage you'd get
with a large jet hitting. I guess really you'd want to bash them with the
landing gear for minimum plane damage. Or even tow a net.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I'd be more inclined to go for something twin-engined, but I guess I must be
less of a thrill seeker than you ;)

~~~
tim333
Guess I was thinking of the cost. At a quick glance a C150 is about £99/hr and
a twin £350 which is quite a lot to take out a stupid drone. Though I see the
police seem to be mucking about in fancy helicopters at the moment.

~~~
tsukikage
Compared to the amount of cash being lost every hour that _all of Gatwick_
stays nonfunctional these don't seem like significant sums.

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yakshaving_jgt
Only thing that'll stop a bad guy with a drone is a good guy with a drone.

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3chelon
I can understand they're wary of flying any manned aircraft near them to take
them out, but I can't understand why they haven't yet deployed a fleet of
suicide drones to knock them out of the sky? Is there something we're all
missing here?

~~~
3chelon
Actually, thinking about this, I'd assumed the drones must be autonomous or
controlled via cellular networks, to make them harder to trace or jam.

But now I'm thinking they're being controlled via more standard remote
frequencies, and they're being left there while the authorities home in on
them. That's the only explanation I can come up with for not having taken them
out by now.

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mnw21cam
For an idea of some of the damage that can be caused to an aircraft hitting a
drone, this [0] was just a few days ago.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fts9u5ND24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fts9u5ND24)

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farmerinthecity
Maybe deploy a very fast drone that's purpose built to hunt down other drones.
It could 'lock' on to the target drone via some combination of image
recognition and operator input, and then deploy some kind of netting/arresting
functionality when within close range. Sounds like a fun project.

~~~
darkhorn
There should be at least 2 escort drones just in case the illegal drones
attacks back.

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bdz
I wonder if there will be drone hunter jobs in the future. Or are already?
Also how do you even shoot down a drone? Netguns? Laser? Frequency jamming?

~~~
ddalex
If I'd be asked to develop technology for this, I'd look at a building a
directional EMP gun.

Frequency jamming won't work if the drone is flying autonomously (waypoint
following is trivial). Netguns have limited range (how do you shoot something
up 200m in the air?). Laser is not powerful enough, or, it it is, it's very
dangerous to those in vicinity.

Directional EMP pulse that disables the electronics seems the best bet.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Or radar. Wouldn't a military-grade radar be able to essentially fry a drone
if focused at close range?

~~~
DerekRobot
At least in amateur radio, antennas too close can damage a radio if they're on
the same band. I've heard the F-18's radar can kill animals.

AFAIK, most drones use 2.4Ghz radios, or just pure wifi.

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randomsearch
How has this gone on for so long? AFAIK most drones can’t fly for long periods
without recharging/refuelling. Makes no sense.

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Chris2048
I'm imagining a "catch the pidgeon" / keystone cops scenario here.

