Idiots with drones have shut down the UK’s second largest airport

[justtopost]

They have created hundreds of millions in damage with a few thousand in drones, and have yet to be caught. While you may be angry with them, the facts hardly paint the suspects as 'idiots' just yet. Embarassing a first world nations military ability to find and disable a drone and its operator with a remote control heli is almost halarious if it wasn't indicitive of a gastly level of incompetince in drone warfare. Its hardly new.

[abrookewood]

My thoughts exactly. For a very small amount of money, they have inflicted huge costs in terms of money and time. I'd expect these situations to continue to crop up ... easy to carry out; cheap; very hard to defend against and effective at gaining media attention.

[xupybd]

Shouldn’t it be possible to track the radio control back to the source?

[b_tterc_p]

So what’s the best way to take these things out if we’re not comfortable firing bullets (reasonable). I would think other drones casting wide nets might work?

[theoh]

I'm guessing the problem is that making the drone fall out of the sky is not safe either, in the general case. So either a bird that will grab a drone and return to the handler, or some kind of way of scooping up the drone in a net held by multiple drones seem like the best options. It's an asymmetric situation.

[slededit]

Rubber bullets would almost certainly work. They are apparently safe enough to fire into live crowds of protestors, so should be fine here.

[vbuwivbiu]

t-cell drones

[fons]

I recall some airport was using trained hawks to hunt down drones. I wonder what happened with that approach.

[ljf]

Since this is a '£5k' drone, I wonder if it is too big for the hawks?

[astannard]

I was thinking a kind of chaff, long wires coated in a thin film of plastic to slow their decent, fire a load of these into the air around the drone and it will come down by tieing up its propellers. I also considered rubber bullets would work too.

[DBYCZ]

I wonder if an air vortex cannon could be built powerful enough to take one of these down

[thisgoodlife]

I thought by now all airports should have some kind of anti drone weapon to handle cases like this.

[rkagerer]

Something like DroneShield? Anyone know whether those things are effective or just a gimmick?

[rkagerer]

Polly wanna drone? https://youtu.be/kAYVyj6vf3Y