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Combating Drones

iBallesty

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From "The Economist"

Combating drones
A new dogfight
The technology available to deal with rogue drones is getting better

For something weighing only a few kilograms and costing less than $2,000, even for a sophisticated model, a small consumer drone can cause an awful lot of havoc. On January 22nd flights in and out of Newark airport, near New York, were suspended temporarily after reports of a drone being aloft nearby. On January 8th Heathrow, London’s biggest airport, also shut briefly because of a drone sighting. And in the busy run-up to Christmas London’s second airport, Gatwick, was closed for more than 36 hours after drones were spotted flying near its runway. EasyJet, the biggest operator at Gatwick, said this week that the grounding of flights had cost it £15m ($19m).

Airport incursions are not the only danger posed by drones. A growing number of close drone encounters are being reported by airline pilots. On December 12th a Boeing 737 belonging to Aeromexico managed to land safely at Tijuana after its nose was badly damaged in a collision with what may have been a drone. Elsewhere, drones are being used to smuggle goods across borders, drugs into prisons, to attack military bases with explosives and in assassination attempts, like that which took place last August on Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela.

The authorities are increasingly concerned. Christopher Wray, the director of America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, said recently that the threat to his country from attacks by rogue drones “is steadily escalating”. There are no easy answers to the problem, although it helps to define the nature of the threat. Irresponsible drone pilots might be kept in check by better education, tough penalties and more manufacturers installing features such as “geofencing” in drones’ mapping software, to prevent them straying into restricted areas. But terrorists and their like will not take any notice of rules and regulations, and will hack software restrictions or build their own drones from readily available components to try to defeat countermeasures. To combat rogue drones will therefore require better technology.

The most extensive review of counter-drone products, by Arthur Holland Michel, co-director of the Centre for the Study of the Drone at Bard College, New York, and his colleagues, is now a year old, having been published in February 2018. Even then, though, at least 235 such devices and systems were on sale or in active development. The most popular methods of drone detection were radar, locating the radio frequencies used by drones, and watching out for them with cameras. But other approaches, including infrared sensors and acoustic devices that can recognise the sounds produced by a drone’s electric motors, were also employed. The most frequently used countermeasure was radio-jamming. Because of a lack of industry standards, the report concluded, there was wide variation in the effectiveness and reliability of the technologies.

Some anti-drone systems are based on military hardware, and may be more suitable for use on a battlefield than in civvy street. Firing missiles, bullets or high-energy lasers to bring down a drone in the vicinity of a commercial airport is dangerous. Besides the risk of hitting unintended objects, or even people (a rifle bullet can still be travelling at lethal velocity several kilometres from where it was fired), there is also the possibility that a target drone may not be knocked out completely, and may thus spin out of control to crash somewhere that causes serious damage or injury. Nor are small drones easy to hit. One that was flown into Israeli airspace from Syria in 2016 survived two attacks using Patriot missiles, as well as rockets fired from a fighter jet.

Measure for countermeasure
Airport operators also need to be careful about electronic countermeasures, warns Iain Gray, director of aerospace at Cranfield University, in Britain. Signal-jamming can block the link between a drone and its operator, or overwhelm a gps-based navigation system. But unless such jamming is carried out carefully it might also damage an airport’s sensitive radio and navigation equipment, and the instruments on aircraft, says Dr Gray. If every plane at an airport had to be checked to ensure it was safe to fly after electronic countermeasures were deployed, that would cause extensive delays in resuming operations.

Anti-drone technology is, nevertheless, improving. This week Indra, a big Spanish technology company, said it had completed extensive testing in “dangerous” places of an anti-drone system called arms. Once the system’s sensitive radar has picked up a drone, arms uses infrared cameras to confirm and identify the type of drone. Electronic-warfare sensors then sweep the radio spectrum to determine what signals the drone is using. This permits arms to attempt a “soft kill”—a carefully targeted form of jamming. Indra claims that the system is precise enough to disable either a single drone or a swarm of them, by modulating the level of response, without affecting other electronic equipment on an airfield. Like other approaches, it can also use various “spoofing” techniques, which involve generating bogus signals that can be used to try to seize control of a drone.

Such counter-drone systems can be made portable, permitting them to be used at special events. And they will become increasingly sophisticated. QinetiQ, a British defence firm that makes a counter-drone system called Obsidian, has found ways to use signals to disrupt the electronic circuits within a drone, allowing it to disable a drone’s camera or turn off its electric motors. Obsidian can also analyse a drone’s flight characteristics and the loading of its electric motors. That helps determine how heavily laden it is, and thus whether it might be carrying explosives.

Both Indra and QinetiQ use an advanced form of radar that operates in three dimensions. Such 3d radars will be particularly valuable at airports, says Dr Gray. Existing airport radars are bad at picking up small things like drones. Even if they do spot them, they struggle to distinguish them from birds. Conventional 2d radar scans an area using a narrow rotating beam and detects objects when the signal is bounced back, providing range and direction. Height can be determined by a second radar. A 3d radar combines all three measurements, sometimes by using a fixed array that floods an area continuously with a signal. The returning signals are processed to create a three-dimensional model of the entire airspace surrounding an airport.

Another firm making an anti-drone system that uses 3d radar is Aveillant, based in Cambridge, Britain. Aveillant says Gamekeeper, as it dubs its equipment, can detect and classify a small drone up to 5km away. As drones can be difficult to spot by eye, even when they are only a few hundred metres away, 3d radars of this sort would allow airports to detect drone incursions more quickly and be more confident about when it is safe to resume flights.

There are plenty of other ideas for dealing with drones. These include launching defence drones to capture villainous craft by entrapping them in a net; hand-held bazooka-like guns that fire nets propelled by a blast of compressed air; and portable radio-jamming equipment, similarly shoulder-mounted and hand-aimed. In the Netherlands, the police have even tried using trained eagles to attack and bring down small drones, although the idea was eventually dropped. All these methods, though, share a flaw. They usually require operators to be at hand and fairly close to an intruding drone.

That is also true of what might seem the most obvious and simplest way to deal with a drone: a shotgun. Some folk nevertheless think this could be worth a go. Snake River Shooting Products, a firm in Idaho, sells cartridges it says are specially designed to knock a small drone out of the sky. But as the firm scrupulously reminds its customers, they need to use their common sense and obey all laws. One of which is that in America a drone is considered to be an aircraft, and people are not, as a rule, supposed to shoot at aircraft.
 
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From "The Economist"

Combating drones
A new dogfight
The technology available to deal with rogue drones is getting better

For something weighing only a few kilograms and costing less than $2,000, even for a sophisticated model, a small consumer drone can cause an awful lot of havoc. On January 22nd flights in and out of Newark airport, near New York, were suspended temporarily after reports of a drone being aloft nearby. On January 8th Heathrow, London’s biggest airport, also shut briefly because of a drone sighting. And in the busy run-up to Christmas London’s second airport, Gatwick, was closed for more than 36 hours after drones were spotted flying near its runway. EasyJet, the biggest operator at Gatwick, said this week that the grounding of flights had cost it £15m ($19m).

Airport incursions are not the only danger posed by drones. A growing number of close drone encounters are being reported by airline pilots. On December 12th a Boeing 737 belonging to Aeromexico managed to land safely at Tijuana after its nose was badly damaged in a collision with what may have been a drone. Elsewhere, drones are being used to smuggle goods across borders, drugs into prisons, to attack military bases with explosives and in assassination attempts, like that which took place last August on Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela.

The authorities are increasingly concerned. Christopher Wray, the director of America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, said recently that the threat to his country from attacks by rogue drones “is steadily escalating”. There are no easy answers to the problem, although it helps to define the nature of the threat. Irresponsible drone pilots might be kept in check by better education, tough penalties and more manufacturers installing features such as “geofencing” in drones’ mapping software, to prevent them straying into restricted areas. But terrorists and their like will not take any notice of rules and regulations, and will hack software restrictions or build their own drones from readily available components to try to defeat countermeasures. To combat rogue drones will therefore require better technology.

The most extensive review of counter-drone products, by Arthur Holland Michel, co-director of the Centre for the Study of the Drone at Bard College, New York, and his colleagues, is now a year old, having been published in February 2018. Even then, though, at least 235 such devices and systems were on sale or in active development. The most popular methods of drone detection were radar, locating the radio frequencies used by drones, and watching out for them with cameras. But other approaches, including infrared sensors and acoustic devices that can recognise the sounds produced by a drone’s electric motors, were also employed. The most frequently used countermeasure was radio-jamming. Because of a lack of industry standards, the report concluded, there was wide variation in the effectiveness and reliability of the technologies.

Some anti-drone systems are based on military hardware, and may be more suitable for use on a battlefield than in civvy street. Firing missiles, bullets or high-energy lasers to bring down a drone in the vicinity of a commercial airport is dangerous. Besides the risk of hitting unintended objects, or even people (a rifle bullet can still be travelling at lethal velocity several kilometres from where it was fired), there is also the possibility that a target drone may not be knocked out completely, and may thus spin out of control to crash somewhere that causes serious damage or injury. Nor are small drones easy to hit. One that was flown into Israeli airspace from Syria in 2016 survived two attacks using Patriot missiles, as well as rockets fired from a fighter jet.

Measure for countermeasure
Airport operators also need to be careful about electronic countermeasures, warns Iain Gray, director of aerospace at Cranfield University, in Britain. Signal-jamming can block the link between a drone and its operator, or overwhelm a gps-based navigation system. But unless such jamming is carried out carefully it might also damage an airport’s sensitive radio and navigation equipment, and the instruments on aircraft, says Dr Gray. If every plane at an airport had to be checked to ensure it was safe to fly after electronic countermeasures were deployed, that would cause extensive delays in resuming operations.

Anti-drone technology is, nevertheless, improving. This week Indra, a big Spanish technology company, said it had completed extensive testing in “dangerous” places of an anti-drone system called arms. Once the system’s sensitive radar has picked up a drone, arms uses infrared cameras to confirm and identify the type of drone. Electronic-warfare sensors then sweep the radio spectrum to determine what signals the drone is using. This permits arms to attempt a “soft kill”—a carefully targeted form of jamming. Indra claims that the system is precise enough to disable either a single drone or a swarm of them, by modulating the level of response, without affecting other electronic equipment on an airfield. Like other approaches, it can also use various “spoofing” techniques, which involve generating bogus signals that can be used to try to seize control of a drone.

Such counter-drone systems can be made portable, permitting them to be used at special events. And they will become increasingly sophisticated. QinetiQ, a British defence firm that makes a counter-drone system called Obsidian, has found ways to use signals to disrupt the electronic circuits within a drone, allowing it to disable a drone’s camera or turn off its electric motors. Obsidian can also analyse a drone’s flight characteristics and the loading of its electric motors. That helps determine how heavily laden it is, and thus whether it might be carrying explosives.

Both Indra and QinetiQ use an advanced form of radar that operates in three dimensions. Such 3d radars will be particularly valuable at airports, says Dr Gray. Existing airport radars are bad at picking up small things like drones. Even if they do spot them, they struggle to distinguish them from birds. Conventional 2d radar scans an area using a narrow rotating beam and detects objects when the signal is bounced back, providing range and direction. Height can be determined by a second radar. A 3d radar combines all three measurements, sometimes by using a fixed array that floods an area continuously with a signal. The returning signals are processed to create a three-dimensional model of the entire airspace surrounding an airport.

Another firm making an anti-drone system that uses 3d radar is Aveillant, based in Cambridge, Britain. Aveillant says Gamekeeper, as it dubs its equipment, can detect and classify a small drone up to 5km away. As drones can be difficult to spot by eye, even when they are only a few hundred metres away, 3d radars of this sort would allow airports to detect drone incursions more quickly and be more confident about when it is safe to resume flights.

There are plenty of other ideas for dealing with drones. These include launching defence drones to capture villainous craft by entrapping them in a net; hand-held bazooka-like guns that fire nets propelled by a blast of compressed air; and portable radio-jamming equipment, similarly shoulder-mounted and hand-aimed. In the Netherlands, the police have even tried using trained eagles to attack and bring down small drones, although the idea was eventually dropped. All these methods, though, share a flaw. They usually require operators to be at hand and fairly close to an intruding drone.

That is also true of what might seem the most obvious and simplest way to deal with a drone: a shotgun. Some folk nevertheless think this could be worth a go. Snake River Shooting Products, a firm in Idaho, sells cartridges it says are specially designed to knock a small drone out of the sky. But as the firm scrupulously reminds its customers, they need to use their common sense and obey all laws. One of which is that in America a drone is considered to be an aircraft, and people are not, as a rule, supposed to shoot at aircraft.

The airport drone events mentioned in the Economist article resulted in delays for safety.

Can't imagine why a terrorist group would target commercial airlines. Targeting 150 to 300 people aboard an airliner is too small a target, when much larger crowd gatherings would instill true terror.

Otherwise, if real, the idiots flying these drones either, don't know you can't fly there, need attention for themselves, or need attention for a political agenda though no such agenda has been promoted; publicly.

I once worked for a beef producer. At that time, the US Executive Office Administration wanted to radiate beef, but the public was opposed. A group of consumers mishandled a case of hamburger patties while camping. Fortunately, no one died, and those who got ill recovered. However, the president used that as an opportunity to promote radiated beef. In the course of three weeks, the media took out a $4B/year community conscience company. We had CNN camped out in our front yard. In this then small town, that was a big deal. The story behind the story is truly, unbelievable (oxymoron?), but very real to us.

The media was manipulated to form public opinion.

If a terrorist group wanted to weaponize drones, they would follow the military lead. We will then have a real problem on our hands, and these counter measures will be required. When that happens, I will ground my flights; indefinitely.

I suspect the passenger train industry is behind all of this.
 
Although drones are perhaps, an ideal way to make an econimic protest statement - I think we are far from seeing drones used widely for terrorist attacks [outside of war zones!] to kill people - simply because there are much simpler and less expensive ways ... It just seems a lot of fuss for a budding terrorist to get schooled up on Drones, and modifying them to fly NFZ's - compared to leaving a bag (able to take 10x the payload) on a train or bus, or hiring a van and driving up the side-walk! It does however, only take one!
Based on current regulations, IF he wanted to do such a thing - it would be a whole lot simpler for our budding terrorist to join an aeromodelling club and get RC model flying experience. Doing that, they could fly almost anywhere - no questions asked!
 
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From "The Economist"

Combating drones
A new dogfight
The technology available to deal with rogue drones is getting better
....(abbreviated)
The authorities are increasingly concerned. Christopher Wray, the director of America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, said recently that the threat to his country from attacks by rogue drones “is steadily escalating”. There are no easy answers to the problem, .

It appears to me that drones are the new threat to humanity. Clearly drones in the hand of fools and/or malevolent actors are a threat.

However, so are automobiles, boats, aircraft, alcohol, drugs, firearms, (_____) and etc. All of these instrumentalities of mayhem predate drones. None of such instrumentalities have been controlled/managed in such a manner to reduce the carnage caused thereby in any meaningful way. (Automobile safety possibly excepted...)

I am no fan of DJI but one must give credit where credit is due. DJI has made great efforts to ensure that its products are used in conformance with applicable law...even to the aggravation of many of its customers.

As a result of DJI efforts, about 70% of drones are inhibited from violating protected airspace.

We need to look at the carnage caused by the intoxicated operation of motor vehicles of all types, the carnage caused by substance abuse, the carnage caused by the improper use of firearms. Compare those numbers to the carnage caused by drones. It appears to me that we are looking in the wrong place.

Certainly the unlawful operation of drones has the possibility of causing a loss of life especially if it leads to the destruction of a large aircraft. It appears that a collision between a large aircraft and a consumer drone that would cause the destruction of such larger aircraft is unlikely.

I think that the enforcement of existing regulations and the codification of the controls already employed by DJI would go far to mitigate the anticipated threats.

Finally, it appears to me that the real interest served by these concerns is that of the purveyors of anti drone equipment.
 
The stat's regarding deaths due to firearms in the USA each year are pretty grim - However, I've just seen a report quoting FBI stat's that say knives killed 4x more people than rifles in the USA in 2016 [ According To The FBI, Knives Kill Far More People Than Rifles In America – It’s Not Even Close] . There are a lot of those knives that are classed as 'Kitchen knives'.
Here in the UK, there are a significant number of 'kitchen knife' related homicides each year - to the extent that there is a campaign to remove the points on them [BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The point of knives ] ... However, do we see anybody seriously putting up kitchen knife defences everywhere? Of course not ... So what is actually going on here?? Is this just the result of a sustained campaign by anti-drone companies to sell their product??
 
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Can't imagine why a terrorist group would target commercial airlines. Targeting 150 to 300 people aboard an airliner is too small a target, when much larger crowd gatherings would instill true terror.

Think about how many people use air travel compared to how many people partake in even the largest gatherings, it's less about how many people are present at the actual event and more about how many you can make scared of ever doing it again

I suspect the passenger train industry is behind all of this.

I suspect you aren't being serious here, at least I hope not
 
Think about how many people use air travel compared to how many people partake in even the largest gatherings, it's less about how many people are present at the actual event and more about how many you can make scared of ever doing it again



I suspect you aren't being serious here, at least I hope not
True
Yes...just being humorous
 
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From "The Economist"

The authorities are increasingly concerned. Christopher Wray, the director of America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, said recently that the threat to his country from attacks by rogue drones “is steadily escalating”.

Everything is a threat to the rogue state we used to call the good ol’ USA, but that was a very long time ago…most of you youngsters won’t even know what that means, more’s the pity.
 
We have all been witnessing the drone "mass hysteria" , which shut down 2 major airports in recent weeks. There is still reason to be sceptical that drones were actually involved, though I'm not trying to reopen that rabbit hole. Wouldn't it be great if airports could assure the public (and themselves) that there are protections against rogue drones. Then maybe attention will turn to fears of weaponized ebola or kids on skateboards with sagging jeans. And we can return to enjoying our hobby and continue complaining about the idiots we humans naturally are.
 
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We have all been witnessing the drone "mass hysteria" , which shut down 2 major airports in recent weeks. There is still reason to be sceptical that drones were actually involved, though I'm not trying to reopen that rabbit hole. Wouldn't it be great if airports could assure the public (and themselves) that there are protections against rogue drones. Then maybe attention will turn to fears of weaponized ebola or kids on skateboards with sagging jeans. And we can return to enjoying our hobby and continue complaining about the idiots we humans naturally are.

The police and regulators are the only hysterical parties, but then we've been laughing at them for years.

Now this is a verry long shot but the best thing they could do is to come out and say something to this effect:

"The vast majority of UAV pilots (drones are UAVs that kill) are responsible citizens and we do not want to see their legitimate right to enjoy their hobby curtailed.

We will do whatever it takes to first of all determine exactly what happened and if UAVs were actually involved, and continue our investigation to find the perpetrators. Lastly, we clearly recognize legitimate pilots have no interest in flying in or around airports, therefor these vital areas will be further protected to eliminate this from occurring again."

Of course these would be 'real people,' not the corporate drones we see in those shiny uniforms with all the toys.
 
As the Super-bowl runs today, a report yesterday on FOX said that numbers of drones had been spotted and some had been confiscated. Charges pending said the report.
 
Norwegian Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace has has signed a contract with Germany to deliver a Counter Unmanned Aerial System (C-UAS) based on the
PROTECTOR Remote Weapon Station, value 27,4 million dollars.


40mm programmable ammunition.
 
Norwegian Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace has has signed a contract with Germany to deliver a Counter Unmanned Aerial System (C-UAS) based on the
PROTECTOR Remote Weapon Station, value 27,4 million dollars.


40mm programmable ammunition.

Air-burst ammunition, not going to be setting those up at ball games ;)
Plenty of armed forces use though.
That Nammo Ammo, armed forces in the middle east conflicts had similar, rifle that fires the projectile a metre past a block wall, then explodes with shrapnel taking out the enemy.

Bigger, Kongsberg again . . . 1:13 and 1:47

 
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