Drones shut down Gatwick Airport in London during Christmas Travel

Gatwick has been shut down for a bit while drones have been spotted flying directly above the airport. Air traffic has been rerouted to other airports like Heathrow for a bit.

Watching these stories, it's incredibly easy to cause massive chaos with a simple $300 drone just by flying it near one of the world's busiest airports. I could get 5 drone buddies and launch a drone, one at a time, from a few miles away from SLC Airport, and fly over the airport for a few minutes. Then I cruise back and land, and get somebody else to launch theirs. Soon the reports of drones at the airport will SHUT IT DOWN, the whole airport would shut down. The 2nd drone comes back to land, and the 3rd goes out. By this time, the first battery is recharging, and we've got spare fresh batteries.

We could shut down a major airport for an entire day, and they wouldn't know where they were coming from. You'd think to just follow the drone but it could lead you on a wild goose chase. It could fly over towards the mountain as you're driving, following it, then it takes a sharp left over the ridge, you've lost the trail, then the pilot drives to a new launch point.

It's easy enough to do, it's just a matter of time before a few anarchists get together and come up with a plan, especially after seeing the chaos it created in London.

I truly hope that if it ever does happen, and the whole airport is shut down for 24 hours, that they make a bold stand and say they're going to land and launch the airplanes again. The plastic drone, if in a 1/1000th chance it actually strikes an aircraft, will bounce off of it like a happy meal toy hitting a semi truck.

We've seen the footage of a drone striking an airplane doing damage to the wing, but that was a precision setup in a lab, the drone was on a rail sliding 200MPH into the specific weakest point of the aircraft. If you think that is bad, google "bird damage airplane", and then guess how many more birds there are in the sky than drones: https://www.google.com/search?q=bird...hrome&ie=UTF-8

I hope this somehow starts to convince fire crews not to wrap it up and ground the operation because a drone "may have been spotted" in the area, but to go full charge and keep those homes from burning.

Drones will not stop, they will not go away. Shutting down an airport is what they want to happen, and it's the wrong move. It's already illegal to fly 5 miles within the airport, it can't get any more illegal. Next up, making it illegal to murder somebody with a gun.

Anyways, here's some of the chaos today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqO-na-eRCc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4w5x4_m_F0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymss0adGTIA

A good summary:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-46623754

"The shutdown started just after 21:00 on Wednesday, when two drones were spotted flying "over the perimeter fence and into where the runway operates from".The runway briefly reopened at 03:01 on Thursday but was closed again about 45 minutes later amid "a further sighting of drones".
The airport said at about 12:00 a drone had been spotted "in the last hour"."

"More than 20 police units from two forces are searching for the perpetrator, who could face up to five years in jail.
Supt Justin Burtenshaw, head of armed policing for Sussex and Surrey, described attempts to catch whoever was controlling the drones as "painstaking" because it was "a difficult and challenging thing to locate them".
"Each time we believe we get close to the operator, the drone disappears; when we look to reopen the airfield, the drone reappears," he said."

Protip for law enforcement: Follow the drones in a helicopter, NOT a car. :roll: Doesn't take a rocket scientist...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rockgremlin

Protip for law enforcement: Follow the drones in a helicopter, NOT a car. :roll: Doesn't take a rocket scientist...

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Protip... How about following the drone with a drone?

Hunter Killer drones.

I've never understood why they could never come up with a functional cover for those jet intakes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rockgremlin

Protip for law enforcement: Follow the drones in a helicopter, NOT a car. :roll: Doesn't take a rocket scientist...

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That's the logical choice, but they are so damned afraid of drones, they are scared the drone will take out the helicopter. Can you imagine the plastic toy turning on the helicopter and making it crash?

That is actually, truly what they think would happen. So they won't track it in a helicopter. I mean hey, if a drone can take out an entire squad of aerial fire crew, what chance does a police helicopter have?

Is that first video from the Onion? Hilarious...

They should just shoot them down with a drone gun of some type. If they are that worried about it. Freaking insanity shutting down a major airport.

Are there any videos of a drone taking down a plane? What’s the likelihood. Is it like Star Wars...stay on target, stay on target.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnP5iDKwuwk&feature=youtu.be

The Military now has a solution to drones. Drone above an airport or fire, blast it. Jail the owner.. make his butt bleed for a bit while his cell mates make him a play-thing.

DJI is starting to work with the FAA with a device that can identify any of their drones flying, but it's a device and not everybody has it. So if there's a drone, they request the device that could take days to get there.

There are ways to interrupt the transmission signal between the drone and controller, but that won't land the drone, it will only send the drone back to the launch point if the signal is lost. Then once the drone gets out of range from that interruption, it will regain the signal and regain control again.

Aside from launching nets and strings, maybe packs of balloons, there is no good way to take down a drone. Shooting it can go through some massive red tape if you want to shoot within city limits or at the airport. Shotguns are the best solution instead of rifles that would have a stray bullet kill a child.

Maybe a shot gun of sorts with rubber bullets.

I’m sure drone guns are currently on the drawing board.

Or maybe another drone can take out the rogue one.