Drones over gatwick..

Screeeech

Screeeech

Screeeech

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So I’ve been wondering how long it would be until some cretin decided to do this, but it seems someone has been flying a drone around Gatwick airfield and all flights have been halted....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-46623754

I’d love to know exactly what’s going on inside the head of someone who decided to do something like this, but how can it be stopped?

How many of these incidents will happen, before the authorities go “nope” and make drones illegal, or heavily restrict/license them?

What’s the solution? Anti-drone systems? A ban? Harpy eagles?
 
arknor said:
they arent really any more dangerous than a bird, how many times do airports shut down if there are a flock of birds around?
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It’s a good question, jet engines are designed to ingest birds up to a certain point, but I’m not sure if they’ve ever been tested on drones. Most airports also have bird-scaring systems to keep the majority of birds away, especially large migratory birds like geese - something like a goose or a swan could take out an entire engine.
 
Bigpops said:
There's no evidence, yet, of any drones. Who flies their drone at night anyway?
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I dunno, I mean I imagine the folks at Gatwick have the required technology and expertise to make a call to redirect over 4000 passengers to other airports? I doubt they’d do it based on a hunch, although I imagine we’ll find out more in due course.
 
Charlie Bravo said:
Birds and mammals get ripped apart upon contact... I can't imagine a drone doing the same if struck and it's not just engines that are an issue.
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Yeah the thing that seems most dangerous, is the weight, metal parts and the lithium batteries, the blades are designed to survive against things like smaller birds and water/hail but drones...

Rroff said:
Stick a Phalanx installation or two around the airport... what could possibly go wrong.
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Yeah I wondered how long it would be before someone suggested that!
 
Ok... So my first thought was that it was probably just someone messing around which caused this, however it they’ve closed the runway all night and it’s still closed now, after the Drones came back, I also assume 2x drones means multiple people involved.

Considering this is the busiest few days of the year for Gatwick - I’m wondering what the motive is?

Just some clowns causing chaos for fun?
Some sort of protest? (Eg; Brexit?)
State sponsored disruption?
 
So according to the CEO of Gatwick, there's a drone flying around the airfield right now (0815) so whoever's doing it is not giving up and they obviously haven't caught them.

Obvious question - I wonder exactly how you stop it? I assume there are police cars and officers running all over the surrounding area trying to find the operator...
 
Nexus said:
I would agree that it just being "somebody messing around" has long gone out of the window now. If it was just a clueless/reckless operator, they might have foolishly done it one flight, but not multiple times over a course of many hours. Given the fact no planes are taking off and landing and it's the top news story, if you were level headed, you would now be realising the gravity of what you had done and certainly wouldn't be doing it still.
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Exactly - apparently there are also 20 police units hunting the operator right now, so I imagine there will be police officers whizzing around all over the place, so it's extremely unlikely to me - that someone just did this for a bit of a one off prank, or by accident (apparently most of these drones won't even take off, if they're within 1Km of an airport)

I suspect it might be some sort of political protest.

It will be interesting to see if they actually catch the operator - it's going to look very bad if they manage to escape uncaught!
 
David Flett said:
Apparently they’ve been on off all night so must have a fair few battery’s! SOMEONE must see the drone coming in to land there not inconspicuous! I had a dji phantom and that sounded like a swarm of bees when coming in to land.
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Yeah whoever's doing it, must keep having to land it - replace the battery and go again, earlier on. Somebody made the point earlier on that it might have been somebody in a car driving around, potentially making it far harder to track them down.

Will be interesting to see if they continue doing it throughout the day, or whether they wait until it gets dark before trying again.

Dolph said:
Odds on it being obnoxious, overly entitled environmentalists again...
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Yeah could well be, might be the same group that blocked all the bridges in London a few weeks back.
 
Nexus said:
To those commenting about the batteries. I’d refer people again to the interview from the CEO of Gatwick from earlier this morning which is up on the BBC somewhere. He said a drone had been continuing to return, never that there have been any hovering for hours.
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Exactly - if it appears over the airfield, only for 5 minutes - if the intentions of the operator are unknown, it's a huge risk - what if it's someone who actually wants to crash it into a plane? Unless you know the intentions of the operator, it seems like the only option is to shut down the airspace until the situation is clear..

Imagine what would happen, if they said "ah it's fine" and it went through the engines of an A380 right on takeoff potentially causing the most terrible disaster imaginable.
 
The guy from sky news reporting that there have been several sightings in the last 3 hours, if true - the people doing it are being seriously brazen.

They're talking about restarting flights at 4pm, however - with the way these people are behaving, it wouldn't surprise me if they go on until they're caught.

Imagine the red faces, if the drone operator(s) simply stop and disappear without trace and are never caught....
 
Secret_Window said:
So now I see the police have admitted defeat now and have called upon the Mod... Finally...
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It's going to be very interesting to see what they bring to bear on this problem, and crucially - if they catch the perpetrators, who by now must surely be thinking *oh ****....*

I'm wondering whether the military have advanced forms of radar, or systems that can track or even jam very small objects - that they could use to better detect and track a small drone, as opposed to airport systems designed for planes.
 
Police are referring to the drone as an "Industrial type" or has an "industrial specification"

What exactly do they mean by this? are these drones really big? are they not the typical consumer type ones?
 
I'm just gonna come out with it.

/tinfoil hat

Anyone think that Russia might be behind this? in terms of causing disruption in order to bring out our ability to mitigate these sorts of things into the open? They might be looking for something specific, or a certain type of technology they want us to deploy to test its effectiveness? (I know it seems far fetched... but... we know they like to mess around with things)

The reason I think this, is that as time goes on - the idea that it might be a protest is starting to waiver for me, as they probably would have claimed responsibility for it by now in some way or another...

I dunno, I'm just talking **** probably :D (but it's fun!)
 
If you look at what's happening now, the media interest is right at it's peak - and it's escalated to a very high level, if I were protesting and I wanted my message to be heard - now would be the time to say it, because I'd be getting the full force of the media to deliver that message, the fact they're staying quiet - to me seems unusual.

Also, the type of drones being described, (large, industrial) pretty much rules this out as a bunch of people just trying to cause a disturbance with some cheap rubbish they bought - whoever is doing it has obviously gone to a high degree of planning and expenditure, and it has to be said - they're doing a very good job so far..

I just get the feeling there's something bigger behind this, than a bunch of environmentalists or people wanting to cause a basic disturbance - why persist in this way to the point of getting the army called out?

I feel like I'm talking nonsense, but at the same time - I really do suspect there might be some bigger elements at play.

Also, if you remember the environmental protestors from a month or two back (who shut down all the bridges in London) they were fighting for airtime, fighting for interviews - doing everything they could to get their message out....
 
robfosters said:
Do we, at any point, start blaming the Russians?
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I already did further back :D

I initially thought it might just be a protest by environmentalists, but it doesn't fit the profile - each time they protest, they're screaming for airtime - making as much noise as possible, whoever is doing this is deathly quiet. However it seems too sophisticated and well planned to be just someone "making a bit of a mess" I have a hunch *something* bigger is behind it, whether it's Russia or someone else, trying to assess our mitigation technology for things like this.

Although, I'm more than willing to accept that it might just be someone causing chaos for fun, however - the "large industrial drones" which have been reported, make it difficult for me to believe this is just someone messing around because they're bored.
 
Christ, been out all day and just checked back to see it’s back in the last 20 mins or so.

Will be interesting to see if the army can figure out who or where it’s coming from,
 
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