I can only assume that they haven't brought these down because they are prioritising tracking and finding whoever is controlling them.

I'm sure they could bring them down with a portable flack cannon (much less risk of a shell landing beyond the airfield).

These must be industrial drones with extra-long duration, probably flying a programmed flight plan so they don't need to be controlled continuously (which would make it easy to find the controller.

Neil

Whats wrong with a twelve bore ?

Roy

I seem to remember that in ME a few months ago, someone, Geoff Theasby?, suggested a design for an EMI projector to deal with these things.......

Amazing how much trouble can be caused by the ill-disposed. This incident could be anything between stupid boys and terrorism.

Not sure what the best way to bring them down is; could be too high for small-arms and too small for anti-aircraft weaponry. (Hard to hit and track). The success of an electronic counter-measure would depend on how sophisticated the control is. The radio link of a toyshop drone would be easy enough to block, but an autonomous drone programmed to fly circuits would be harder to deal with. Not that difficult to make either.

Dave

The Police obviously are not yet equipped or trained to deal with the problem. Perhaps the Army have considered ways to bring them down in sensitive areas like an Airport?

They won't want to bring them down if they might lead them to the operators.

Yes a shortgun from a copter will be the easiest way, if they can intercept one.

Neil

Helicopter and a butterfly net?

Or send up another drone to crash into it? Mutally assured destruction.

Edited By Hopper on 20/12/2018 12:18:05

These stupid people will make our leaders take even more powers that will further inconvenience legitimate and careful hobby flyers.

Do you think it's 'highly likely' that it's the Russians

Martin.

Nah - we can blame it on Brexit as usual!

Edited By V8Eng on 20/12/2018 12:44:23

Spotty school kid with nothing to do in the Xmas hols.

Prevention would have been better.

**LINK**

Looks like our airports aren't ready for new technology - drones. Mind you, I could imagine some local resident taking noise pollution into his/her own hands and stopping aircraft movements for a couple of hundred quid. I wonder if military sites are any better protected and if so why has Gatwick left it so late ?

Might be a good way to defend from attacking aircraft - just fill the sky with hundreds of cheap, autonomous drones, so that it's just too dangerous to take-off or fly in that region.

Martin.

Whoever it is has shown that it is possible to get away with it. Where to next? Westminster, with a load of Salisbury juice?

Mike

There are electronic counter measures that can shoot these drones down. I work at Pinewood Studios and we get the occasional journalist flying his drone over the studio trying to get photos of the latest Star Wars movie or similar. The drones are "shot" down since they're flying over private property and strangely enough, seem to completely disappear without a trace.

General Jumbo?

What would one of those be then? (and we'll excuse the fact it is flak, not flack   )

Edited By David Standing 1 on 20/12/2018 16:38:12

Authorities around the globe have realised how disruptive drones can be when used maliciously, we seem to be exhibiting our usual preparedness for the inevetible, our second most important airport, a world travel hub, has no defence against any intrusive drones and is therefore incapacitated. We need to be able to plan effectively, we can’t carry on running our essential services on a shoestring, someone needs to get a grip on things and forward plan. Our power generation system would appear to be in a similar fragile state, a really cold winter could see the lights going out as we are critically near the maximum generation capacity, even with imported energy via subsea cables from the continent. The underlying problem appears to be money, profits dominate everything, investment gets delayed until something drastic happens, ie. drone protection systems. Accountants appear to have far more influence than they should, I previously worked in engineering and financial greed ruined the company that I worked for and it has long since been swallowed up by asset stripping corporations. It is entirely possible that this drone incident has a sinister promoter, we can only speculate.

Dave W

Makes a nice distraction from the Brexit pantomime.