Gatwick airport closed by drone attack

[TenEightyOne]

It's pretty much impossible to predict where it's going to be, since there is no fixed ascent slope.

The V1 position (imo the perfect place to detonate in that kind of attack) is on the centerline at about 6,000 feet from the hold. Just watch a few similar types taking off to "calibrate" and it wouldn't be hard to pick a position. I take your point that hitting one in the air is a little harder but it's not that hard as the climb-out paths and waypoints are publicly available and, it would seem from YobTub, already used by drone camera operators to illegally film aircraft. Still, imo it would be easiest (very easy) to attack one during the most critical part of its take-off roll.

It's pretty much impossible to predict where it's going to be, since there is no fixed ascent slope.

Depending on the time and runway there is, particularly in a densely-populated area like Gatwick.

 

[zzz_pt]

Spoiler: Just saw this meme on reddit

 

[Touring Mars]

Top centre is a photo of one of the drones spotted above Gatwick...

 

[MatskiMonk]

As technology races forwards I'm convinced that punishment for abusing it should become more draconian. I see the army are involved now, looks like they're trying to shoot it down. Would be good if an army sniper made a positive shot on the drone pilots skull. That'd be just about the right level of draconian.

 

[Liquid]

Britain spends billions on defence and defence contracts and can't handle a kids toy hovering around an airport.

I know HSE and CAA rules and all that but really? Twelve hours? The entire airport shut down?

Makes me wonder how a more serious threat would be managed; the country would be in bits.

 

[Touring Mars]

Twelve hours?

It's been 24 hours already, and no flights in or out of Gatwick until at least 6 am tomorrow - that will mean a minimum of 33 hours disruption.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Britain spends billions on defence and defence contracts and can't handle a kids toy hovering around an airport.

I know HSE and CAA rules and all that but really? Twelve hours? The entire airport shut down?

Makes me wonder how a more serious threat would be managed; the country would be in bits.

When factoring risk into the design of our infrastructure we need to take far more things into account now.

 

[TenEightyOne]

As technology races forwards I'm convinced that punishment for abusing it should become more draconian. I see the army are involved now, looks like they're trying to shoot it down. Would be good if an army sniper made a positive shot on the drone pilots skull. That'd be just about the right level of draconian.

Armed police had already made the decision last night when faced with the opportunity to take a shot... it's where the bullet comes down that's the problem. I thought today they might have tried a rubber bullet or shotgun, something like that.

Top centre is a photo of one of the drones spotted above Gatwick...

Flying with the nav lights on suggests that disruption is indeed the aim, it's very easy to deactivate those. Of course, if this was a bomb attempt it would be a 24H old bomb story now.

Britain spends billions on defence and defence contracts and can't handle a kids toy hovering around an airport.

It looks industrial, some of those things can lift 20kg cameras. I've used one - incredibly simple to fly, now I just need to find £1000 for the commercial accreditation

I share your surprise that more thought hasn't been given to stopping them though, and I'm astonished that central airports didn't have equipment ready.

EDIT: Drone .vs. engine simulation on YouTube. Better into the engine than the cockpit or a tailplane.

 

[PzR Slim]

I'm really surprised there doesn't appear to be a better plan in place to deal with this.

 

[Carbon_6]

I'm really surprised there doesn't appear to be a better plan in place to deal with this.

Most likely because, despite the wider awareness of drones and their uses, such a scenario has never been fully accepted as a possibility, let alone explored in detail to come up with an effective solution/deterrent.

 

[Touring Mars]

I'm really surprised there doesn't appear to be a better plan in place to deal with this.

The problem is that we don't know exactly what 'this' is at the moment - the fact that they seem unable or unwilling to take a simple drone out of the air strongly suggests that there is something going on that isn't being made public... it could be anything. That said, it could well be that plans to deal with this kind of incident are poor or even non-existent, but it is possible (if not more likely) that there could be an element (e.g. threats of more disruption to other airports) that are staying the hand of the authorities at this time... but who knows.

 

[Danoff]

I think they ought to check very carefully the flight itineraries and identify any mothers-in-law that were supposed to visit for Christmas because... I'm not saying that it's a good plan to keep your relatives away for the holidays but... I wish I'd thought of it.

 

[MatskiMonk]

The problem is that we don't know exactly what 'this' is at the moment - the fact that they seem unable or unwilling to take a simple drone out of the air strongly suggests that there is something going on that isn't being made public... it could be anything. That said, it could well be that plans to deal with this kind of incident are poor or even non-existent, but it is possible (if not more likely) that there could be an element (e.g. threats of more disruption to other airports) that are staying the hand of the authorities at this time... but who knows.

I think I know what you're getting at...




.. an Airport under attack at Christmas... !?




... this situation needs MOAR John McClane

 

[PzR Slim]

Need to get those dudes from The Drone Racing League involved to take these suckers out!

Reckon we are going to see plenty of copy cat cases in the coming months. I agree with what others have said, the amount of disruption such a simple thing has caused means that new, draconian laws will need to come into being to dissuade others from trying this.

Can you imagine the disruption this would cause if a determined group of people targeted all of the major airports in a country.

 

[daan]

Bring in the eagles.

 

[Johnnypenso]

If the airport is closed anyway, wouldn't it make sense to have a few drone experts hanging around and just fly a drone into the other drone? Let it crash, hopefully get some fingerprints or DNA etc? Or better yet, hover over the drone and follow it back to it's point of origin?

 

[MatskiMonk]

Bring in the eagles.

View attachment 787720

Take it easy, I mean, I know there's been a lot of Wasted time, but One of these nights the drone pilots will get their comeuppance. At least it would prevent a lot of Heartache tonight. Maybe the eagles are The Last resort, maybe the airport has gotten Desperado...

 

[TenEightyOne]

Take it easy, I mean, I know there's been a lot of Wasted time, but One of these nights the drone pilots will get their comeuppance. At least it would prevent a lot of Heartache tonight. Maybe the eagles are The Last resort, maybe the airport has gotten Desperado...

Any particular reason you missed out "Please Come Home For Christmas"?

 

[MatskiMonk]

Any particular reason you missed out "Please Come Home For Christmas"?

Yes,

I live life in the fast lane and I simply don't have time for it.

 

[eran0004]

The V1 position (imo the perfect place to detonate in that kind of attack) is on the centerline at about 6,000 feet from the hold. Just watch a few similar types taking off to "calibrate" and it wouldn't be hard to pick a position. I take your point that hitting one in the air is a little harder but it's not that hard as the climb-out paths and waypoints are publicly available and, it would seem from YobTub, already used by drone camera operators to illegally film aircraft. Still, imo it would be easiest (very easy) to attack one during the most critical part of its take-off roll.

Sure, if you land the drone on the runway it should be pretty easy to hit an aircraft. If you can make sure nobody spots the drone first.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Sure, if you land the drone on the runway it should be pretty easy to hit an aircraft. If you can make sure nobody spots the drone first.

I'm probably not getting my point across. Imagine a wide tarmac road in front of you with a clearly-marked centreline. You have to hover your drone there. You have the length of time it takes from hearing the aircraft at the far end of the runway spin up to it reaching your intended position on the runway. That's about 50s. It's not a difficult task to perform and most children could pick up the skills in an hour or so.

In that time you fly your drone from your covert position (or the back of your pickup or wherever) to hovering over the centreline. Detonating a small explosive in front of, alongside or in contact with an aircraft doing over 100mph on its takeoff run is likely to have a terrible effect.

Runway arrival to rotation takes 7:35 to 8:25 in this video of a 737 departing Gatwick. Look how close the buildings are.... 50 seconds is plenty of time to put your drone in position. If you got your drone down unseen into ground level close to the runway between take-offs you can vastly minimise that 50s. With practice you'd make the distance quickly enough to do catastrophic damage whether the pilots see the drone or not. You're saying it would be very hard to get a drone into the right position at the right time - it really wouldn't. Planes all take off from the same runways at the same time (cos wind) and all follow the same routines on the runway (cos aerodynamics). If you aim for the V1 point of the takeoff then you guarantee the aircraft (by definition) can not stop on the runway and is committed to a take-off whatever happens.

All in all I find that method an obvious way to present a grave threat to aircraft and that's why I'm astonished that the response seems to have been so lacking. @Touring Mars suggests that there may be more afoot than we know and I suspect he's right.

 

[MatskiMonk]

It's like dropping bricks off a motorway bridge. You're unlikely to be able to hit a target spot on, but the act alone should result in limb removal, at the least.

 

[TenEightyOne]

It's like dropping bricks off a motorway bridge. You're unlikely to be able to hit a target spot on, but the act alone should result in limb removal, at the least.

It's like being able to position your brick at windscreen height at your leisure, and there's about as much chance of the oncoming driver seeing it. Especially if you do it at night with an unlit brick. For more pizazz use an exploding brick with a wireless detonator.

 

[Danoff]

It's like dropping bricks off a motorway bridge. You're unlikely to be able to hit a target spot on, but the act alone should result in limb removal, at the least.

Or like hovering drones in front of cars on a freeway from a motorway bridge. Which is probably next.

 

[Dennisch]

Attack of the Drones.


When will The Empire strike back?

 

[Touring Mars]

I wouldn't be surprised if there has been some claim or warning (legitimate or otherwise) that the drone or drones are loaded with something nasty like radioactive material (whether they really are or not) which may be preventing the authorities from a straightforward removal. The likelihood of something like that actually being true is minimal, but they may not want to take any chances given that blowing something up in mid-air could risk contaminating a wide area - including the country's second largest airport. This is possibly a case where even the threat of something like a dirty bomb can cause huge disruption, even if it turns out to be a fake threat.

 

[PeterJB]

Is there not a way of tracing where the transmitter is?

 

[Famine]

It's like being able to position your brick at windscreen height at your leisure

So a rope that stops three feet from the floor, with the brick thrown off the far side of the bridge.


I once hit a probably coincidental* fist-sized lump of aggregate at "70mph" in my MX-3. Surprisingly it did almost no detectable damage to the windscreen, but boy did it set my ears ringing for 20 minutes.

*The next day three kids were arrested for chucking rocks off bridges at cars on the other dual carriageway out of the town

 

[TenEightyOne]

So a rope that stops three feet from the floor, with the brick thrown off the far side of the bridge.

The spirit of British engineering isn't dead!

Is there not a way of tracing where the transmitter is?

In theory, yes. If you know the wavelength and you can get two or more receivers close enough to the source then you can triangulate the source's location.

That gets difficult if you're dealing with a device that's been deliberately modified to use a non-standard band or a different form of comms (like a mobile modem for example). Then there's the complication of being in a very "noisy" radio area, if it's a radio signal you're looking for then you can spend a lot of time looking for the right one. The next problem is that a drone doesn't need real-time comms in the way an RC aircraft does - the drone knows its height and location and can be pre-programmed to follow a route. The operators may not have any communication with the drone at all and may be picking it up from an observed location after each flight.

However, the mobile masts nearby don't seem to have "developed a temporary fault" so it's probably unlikely that they suspect mobile-based comms are being used or that they suspect portable explosives are a risk.

 

[ryzno]

I knew these drones for civilian use wouldn't be a good idea...
But hey I'm a dumb red neck.
I still wouldn't mind my crazy idea of an umbrella drone. Been raining lately...