Gatwick drones -what utter stupidity and selfishness

[Feanor]

Teleconferencing?

Practicable, audit of an oil refinery by VC?

Ooh, our Software Company was bought out by a rather traditional Ship Surveying and Classifying organisation, based in Fenchurch Street in London, which is trying hard to discard the stovepipe hats and tailcoats.

And in the maritime inspection business, that's *exactly* where we're going.
Remote inspection by drone.

"Super Surveyors". and more "Digital Disruption".

[bludger]

My former employer has already abandoned the abseilers on the platforms and moved to drones for inspection a while ago.

[alexb]

All this talk of the new laws they plan to bring in reminds me of the chap who said that the government might as well announce that they had announced a new spell for the good it would do.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Probably not connected, but 14 German airports on high alert today. Apparently a group of people was observed seeming to inspect the security systems at Stuttgart airport yesterday, one of them is "know in Germany as a dangerous Islamist" and two others previously recorded acting suspiciously at Paris CdG. ARD TV claims Moroccan intelligence informed their German counterparts that suspects had gone to Europe intent on a suicide on an airport in "the Franco-German sphere".

[Ham]

I was reading a short para in the Graun

Lady Sugg said: “We absolutely need to make sure that we introduce new laws to ensure that drones are used safely and responsibly. Earlier this year we brought in a law that makes it illegal to fly within a kilometre of an airport and above 400ft.

- that's just madness 

[aidan.f]

I wonder whether the army considered jamming GPS which the drones use for navigation.. er.. no Sh*t Batman! you cannot do that near an airport!
Local jamming is trivial, GPS is not just SAT NAV it is used for just about everything. Think of the ensuing disruption. I hope no one with devious intent is reading this.
http://www.chronos.co.uk/files/pdfs/cs-an/ThreatOfGPSJamming_V2.0_January2014.pdf

Power distribution networks, banking and financial
trading systems, broadcasting and industrialcontrol networks all use GPS timing, making them
equally vulnerable to unintentional or deliberate
interference

A small jammer (Figure 2) can disrupt the GPS
signal for a mile or more.12

[spesh]

"I hope no one with devious intent is reading this."

Don't you worry, the sort of people who'd be interested in causing chaos by messing with GPS already know what it's used for. 

[rogerzilla]

It doesn't jam ICBMs.  They thought of that and the missiles use gyroscopes in the atmosphere and optical star-sighting in space...no signal jamming possible.  So we can still blow up Russia.

[hatler]

There's a whole group of people out there into racing drones.

Surely all every airport needs is a bunch of these people permanently on call on a rotational basis. When a disruptive drones shows up, deploy drone racer and give him/her the job of drone kamikaze. Steer their racing drone (they can do over 70mph apparently) straight into the disruptive drone and bring it down.

Failsafe. Surely ?

[ElyDave]

My former employer has already abandoned the abseilers on the platforms and moved to drones for inspection a while ago.

I've seen that as well, and I think for inspection of pipes, structures etc, its great, particularly from the point of view of risk to the inspection crew. Allows quick identification of where detailed inspection is required.

However, I'm not doing an inspection, I'm auditing management systems, which needs me to both see what's happening on the ground, and talk to the folks who are doing it there and then.

Most internal meetings I do remotely, I don't think I've been into the office in the last six months.

[Jakob]

I don't understand how they justify shutting down the airport for that long. Drone(s) were spotted at 9pm and 3am. Why is the airport still closed?.

[Feanor]

I think tech disruption is possible, but it would lead to a tech arms race.

You could disrupt the RF frequencies used by the drones when under manual control.
But if they are autonomous, than you'd need to disrupt their GPS signal.
That can be done locally, and directionally if required, I think.  GPS signals are very weak.
It would not require the disruption of the entire GPS network and everything that depends on it as suggested in earlier posts.

[Beardy]

The problem is probably to do with not having caught anyone. The perpetrators have demonstrated a capability and an intent to disrupt the airfield operations. Until the security official tasked with the decision is happy to sign off on operations resuming, they won’t. And s/he is probably scared shitless at the potential litigation if anything should subsequently go wrong the s/he wants to know beyond resasonable doubt that there will be no further disruptions. The police et al have probably said that they won’t make such assertions until they’ve got someone helping them with enquires. 

[matthew]

Drones were reported again at 12pm and again since 9pm. Further a drone may take out an engine or the cockpit windscreen.

Personally if i was in a group that wanted to close the airport i would want 4 or 5 people each with a drone. Take off at 2km with a preprogrammed flight path into the controlled airspace and the out to another location. While it flies drive to the exit point pick up drone for fresh batteries and programme a new route. Travel to new launch point. If each person launches in sequence the you are only flying 2 or 3 times per day. As the launch and retrival locations are not repeated or linked the chances of the police finding you are low.

* dons foil hat* boom imigration is reduced as no planes arrive. *removes foil hat and extracts toungue from cheek*

[Jakob]

Nah, don't buy it. I think factions inside the CAA sees this as a chance to clamp down hard on drones and the longer this goes on, the easier it is. This is a gross over-reaction that will severely hurt the (legitimate) drone industry in the UK.

Also bear in mind that all the other well publicized incidents in the UK turned out to be not drones. (Last one was a plastic bag).

[Kim]

Never underestimate a plastic bag.

[Wowbagger]

It won't help their cause.

That depends on how you identify their cause.

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

This lass is absolutely right. When the stakes are that high (and they are), anything goes.

A longer version of her speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAmmUIEsN9A

Pissing off thousands of people at Christmas will get them less sympathy than someone with a "Free Rose West" collecting tin.

I think you've missed the point. Greta Thunberg represents millions of kids who are very aware of how we old buggers have freely trashed the planet. She's not after sympathy. She intends to get stuff done.

Which begs the question: how would the "civilised" west cope if tens of thousands of kids suddenly decided that they were going to bring the "adult" world to a halt simply by fucking up every airport, blocking every motorway etc.?

[DaveJ]

We are looking at the need for travel from the wrong perspective.  Just suppose that flying would kill everyone we know.  The bad news is that we don't know whether it will or not.  We do know that flying is currently thought to contribute around 2% of the CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere.  By the time the ice sheets start to move it will be many years to late to do anything about it.  There won't be many people left after a 66m sea level rise, especially not after the wars over the diminishing land area.  Civilisation as we know it would pretty much cease to exist.  We need to make lots of changes to the way we live if we intend to survive the next 100 years.  Flying being one of them.

 

[mark]

On a lighter note, here's an explanation:

https://newsthump.com/2018/12/20/drones-over-gatwick-found-to-be-new-ryanair-super-economy-flights/?utm_source=NewsThump+Daily+Briefing&utm_campaign=6b063164ef-RSS_EMAIL_DAILYBRIEFING2&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5c4292041a-6b063164ef-435988141

[Gattopardo]

I haven't seen any explanation of why the airport is still closed. Are the drones still flying around? In which case they must have amazing battery life or be very well organized with relays of the things. Also, given it's reported they've brought the army in, how come they haven't just vaporized them?

Presumably because they haven't caught anyone yet - there's too high a risk of them just coming back when they restart?

I was thinking along those lines but wondered if there was something else or if the drone/s were still flying. I guess now the principle is proved, it'll happen at various times at various airports by protesters eco and political as well as various other nefarious reasons. Also just for the lolz, until someone accidentally causes a plane crash.

I seriously question just how much damage a drone could do, to be honest.

I once watched a documentary about aircraft engines. There was someone whose job it was, and I really envied this person, to fire dead chickens into jet engines running at full bore. It was awesome. There was a brief red plume out the back of the engine, and it merrily carried on engineing.

Of course - it would be pretty easy to weaponise a drone; reduce some of its weight, and replace with explosives. Maybe. I dunno - I'm not a terrorist. But I would like the job of firing dead chickens into jet engines.

I have a few versions of real film, filmed at different camera speeds (maybe originals) of various things being sucked and thrown in to jet engines.  These were stolen from skips.

[Gattopardo]

Nah, don't buy it. I think factions inside the CAA sees this as a chance to clamp down hard on drones and the longer this goes on, the easier it is. This is a gross over-reaction that will severely hurt the (legitimate) drone industry in the UK.

Also bear in mind that all the other well publicized incidents in the UK turned out to be not drones. (Last one was a plastic bag).

I may agree with you.

[Kim]

Anyway, the question I'd like to know the answer to is "Why not Heathrow?"

If this is an oik-level thing, then it may simple be convenience, of course.  But otherwise?

Would it be more difficult to pull off such an attack on Heathrow for some reason?
Is there something about Gatwick they're specifically targeting?  (eg. a particular airline?)
If it's an experiment or attempt to trigger a CAA clampdown, why not somewhere smaller where the disruption would be lower and you might expect proportionally less trouble when caught?
Conversely, if resources allow, why not make things really interesting and attack multiple airports simultaneously?

[spesh]

Anyway, the question I'd like to know the answer to is "Why not Heathrow?"

Because Gatwick was the test run?

[Kim]

The other thought that occurs is that there's a less palatable need to shut down Gatwick airport, and drone flights are a plausible reason that avoids mass panic.  But that fails the Occam's razor test...

[Jaded]

A good airport to do stuff at is a fairly rural one with a long perimeter fence and easy road access.