Drones close Gatwick airport

When making a post, please ensure it complies with this site's Main Rules at all times.
  • Tens of thousands of passengers have been disrupted by drones flying over one of the UK's busiest airports.

    Gatwick's runway has been shut since Wednesday night, as devices have been repeatedly flying over the airfield.

    Sussex Police said it was not terror-related but a "deliberate act" of disruption, using "industrial specification" drones.

    I'm sure we've talked about drones before in this thread: Will Robots & AI take over?, but there is no doubt that we are now entering the age of robots for good and in this case, for ill.

    Various experts have been warning for years about the dangers that drones might pose to sensitive sights like airports, parliament etc, so why has no preparation been made against this threat?

    On this occasion, this is not terrorist related, but next time the drones could be carrying a bomb, gas or even a nerve agent. We know who likes that particular substance...

    The news mentioned that various countries already have measures in place to prevent drone attacks. One novel example is the Dutch who have trained birds of prey to take them down, but I'm sure that a laser would do the job just fine.

    I wonder how long it'll be before we have a anti drone, drone??

  • ​who do you think is behind the attack 3

    1. eco-warriors (1) 33%
    2. pranksters (1) 33%
    3. other (please comment) (1) 33%
    4. terrorists (0) 0%
    5. angry locals (0) 0%
    6. accident (0) 0%
    7. out of control AI (0) 0%

    who is sick enough to ruin Christmas like this :cursing:

  • Drones broadcast on certain frequencies , why couldn't they jam them ?, if contact is lost they will "fly home" , the battery life on most drones is a max of 30-45 mins due to the weight of batteries , somebody must of been near to replace them on a regular basis.

  • Couldn't they have just shot them down, I know it seems a bit drastic but it would have prevented the incident going on so long.

    Uh , sue for you , PTSD of seeing a drone shot down and the billions to one odds of being hit by shrapnel or wreckage , that is why they did nothing.

  • Drones broadcast on certain frequencies , why couldn't they jam them ?

    Speculation in my red top is that the electronics in the drone has been modified to use 4G and so is difficut to differenciate from normal mobile traffic. Apparently it is an industrial size unit, they normally have GPS geofencing to prevent them flying within 1km of airports. This must also have been disabled or reprogrammed so we're talking about someone with a depth of technical knowledge that is not readilly available to Jo Public.

    These drones can also fly autonomously by navigation on GPS waypoints so there may not even be transmissions that could attempt to be blocked.

  • It's the whining and moaning by the general public that makes me laugh because they stopped all flights in and out of the airport, what would they rather they do carry on as normal and risk an accident with a plane hitting one of the drones. :rolleyes:

  • Drones broadcast on certain frequencies , why couldn't they jam them ?, if contact is lost they will "fly home" , the battery life on most drones is a max of 30-45 mins due to the weight of batteries , somebody must of been near to replace them on a regular basis.

    This Israeli Dome system was brought in yesterday, that should do exactly that:

    Among the technology spotted at Gatwick today was a 'Drone Dome'.

    The system, costing £15.8m, uses radar and frequency jammers to find and overload a drone.

    But instead of causing the aircraft to crash, the tech allows it to perform a ‘soft landing’ – meaning it can be retrieved undamaged.

    Uh , sue for you , PTSD of seeing a drone shot down and the billions to one odds of being hit by shrapnel or wreckage , that is why they did nothing.

    How a stray bullet fired high into the air over runways could hurt someone is beyond me.

    It's the whining and moaning by the general public that makes me laugh because they stopped all flights in and out of the airport, what would they rather they do carry on as normal and risk an accident with a plane hitting one of the drones. :rolleyes:

    The airport bosses would get blasted either way. Better to not have planes crashing, as they would give people something to moan at.

  • Gatwick drones: Two arrested over flight disruption

    A man and a woman have been arrested in connection with a string of drone sightings which brought Gatwick Airport to a standstill.

    Sussex Police said the pair were arrested in the area at about 22:00 GMT on Friday.

    Flights were grounded for more than a day affecting around 140,000 passengers after drones were seen near the runway.

    If these people are the culprits they should tie them to one of their drones and give them a little trip over the sea or something. :)Utter tossers.

  • Gatwick drones: Two arrested over flight disruption

    If these people are the culprits they should tie them to one of their drones and give them a little trip over the sea or something. :)Utter tossers.

    hearing reports that they were wrongly accused and the real culprits are still at large

  • It seems the people arrested are indeed innocent of this , shame they have been vilified by the media , I hope they sue them . Added to the fact the police now seem to be saying it might not of been a drone ? and it all seems to be going really , really well!

  • Heathrow airport drone investigated by police and military

    The military is helping police after sightings of a drone temporarily halted flights at Heathrow airport on Tuesday.

    Scotland Yard said a "full criminal investigation" had been launched into the incident - and that officers were among those to see the drone.

    Departures from the west London airport were suspended for about an hour.

    Now any nut job out there knows how to cause massive disruption to everyone and still likely get away with it.

    Welcome to the age of the drones!

  • just ban drones

    But any half competent engineer or modelmaker can buy the parts quite legitemately and build one from scratch. Fully customised it wouldn't need to be using standard control systems or frequencies.

    Banning things never works anyway.

  • I’m a model maker I build from scratch and RTR, building any system that will get past military grade disruption jammers would be impossible because they just block the transmission, but has the potential to block all transmissions including aircraft.

    They are using new tech to look for new tech, switch to old tech and it would be like a dab radio looking for a MW channel, it’s just not there.

    Personally I would be looking at the company’s who deal in drone signal blocking as a potential suspect, they have been trying to sell it to airports for years, nothing like an act of parliament to make the technology compulsory.

Participate now!

Don’t have an account yet? Register yourself now and be a part of our community!