Gatwick, drones

“This could have been dealt with very quickly”

I don’t think so, or they would have. Its pretty clear they just do not have the equipment available to deal with such a situation, not even some kind of tracker drone to lock on and follow the problem one.

Unless they were discouraged by some unknown statement or factor from tackling the drone, this situation is horrifying, given drones have been openly developing for years now and that companies like Amazon are working to develop package delivery services with them (to carry significant weights).

Personally, I would say they have restarted flights because of one of the following:
– someone informed the authorities the ‘event’ had finished
– they have located someone controlling the drone but do not want to inform the public
– or most likely, someone paid up a ransom but they hope to catch the perpetrator later.

Midnighthour, you may well be right, but I suspect it’s more a case of ‘how long are we going to allow our infrastructure to be paralysed by a threat that’s still going to be there, even if we find the current perpetrators’.
The problem hasn’t been solved, any more sightings will ensure that the airport shuts again, until……well, until we get really fed up with it again.
I really wouldn’t want to be the person making these decisions.

Of course, it could have been carried out just as effectively with no drones at all, simply some people willing to say they’d seen one.

I was going to volunteer my services to fly one of our drones and follow it. See where it lands. Not hard.

Why some search and rescue bods haven’t done this is beyond me. We practice following our drones all the time.

However I’m on the way up to Glasgow to film various rock bands so will be the other end.

This could have been dealt with very quickly and effective

Fancy telling us how, or are you keeping it on a need to know basis?

Why some search and rescue bods haven’t done this is beyond me. We practice following our drones all the time.

Because its a big old area to cover and therefore you would need a ton of drones and have one in the right place and fully charged.
Its not like it was just doing laps of the place continuously but appearing and disappearing.

My guess would be they feel confident the person flying it will be weighing up the fun of continuing vs chances of being caught which will be increasing as the cops get more resources and toys to play with.

Because its a big old area to cover and therefore you would need a ton of drones and have one in the right place and fully charged.

Not sure you do. It’s on the ground most of the time. I’m pretty sure there are enough people about the airport and surrounding roads to indicate which way the drone leaves after each individual flight. [1] (Even down to people with Binos on the ground in the Control Tower.) So once it’s left the area positioning a drone or two to trace it on it’s next entry would be easy. [2]

If they didn’t get a drone to follow it it’s more like because they did have a suitable drone handy.

Or even more likely than that, after an initial flight or two there was no drone and most of the day was spent chasing nothing. It’s an argument from silence, but seems most plausible to me.

[1] Which might not be the same way each time, of course.
[2] Unless someone’s collecting it an launching from somewhere else every flight, which STW has already (probably rightly) discounted.

Well, this has all been very exciting, and almost as disruptive as your average French air traffic controllers strike 😉

Least the targeting marketing is working !! Never seen so many ads for drones 🙂

everyone saying ‘it’s easy’ seems to assume it’s a single drone under operator control. Have they read any of this thread or the other coverage?

to recap:

1) Multiple drones
2) prepositioned on roofs of buildings, tops of lorries, in the middle of fields
3) pre-programmed flightpaths
4) timers/SMS to trigger them to take off

No operators, no ‘follow back to base’.

send up a drone every 90 minutes and you’ve shut an international airport down for for 36 hours and it’s cost you a grand.

I’m pretty sure there are enough people about the airport and surrounding roads to indicate which way the drone leaves after each individual flight

They will now hence why I suspect they reckon its finished since they would be throwing more and more people and resources at it. Its typical farmland round there though with lots of hedges so you could have it pop up and then drop down out of sight and follow the hedgeline to change its location.
Personally if it was me I would have set up several locations base locations to have its entry and exit points randomised as much as possible.

If they didn’t get a drone to follow it it’s more like because they did have a suitable drone handy.

Amongst other things they had a helicopter but, unsurprisingly, apparently when that was hanging around the drone didnt come out to play or, at night, was to hard to follow.

Never seen so many ads for drones

Easyjet were advertising drones on their boarding cards.

Depends outofbreath, you can have the right gear and have enough manpower, but if the situational awareness, ability to act quickly on intelligence and training isn’t there it may as well all be useless.

This is a 25 minute flight time for a custom, non geo-fenced, drone to get to Gatwick, hover over the runway for 5 minutes or so and then fly off to another location and land in a field within the red and blue circles and be picked up.

It’s a massive area.

Good thread here:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Du6vkOOU0AIauqY.jpg:large

“This could have been dealt with very quickly and effective, but as with everything too much red tape/ risk assement etc. ”

lol

It’s a massive area.

That’s a good illustration of the problem. As pointed out above, all you have to do is fly the drone quickly across the airport two or three times a day, using different departure and arrival points. Once it has been spotted, everything grinds to a halt, and the perpetrators can drive to a new location and sit and wait for a few hours before repeating the exercise. Minimum effort, maximum disruption, very difficult to track or attack the drone if it is only popping in from random directions for minutes a few times a day.
I think the organised and sustained nature of the incident shows specific intent and it is unlikely to be a clown who opened their Christmas present early and is just doing it for “giggles”. I think any casual miscreant would have realised they were in massive trouble pretty quickly and stopped a long time ago.

As pointed out above, all you have to do is fly the drone quickly across the airport two or three times a day, using different departure and arrival points. Once it has been spotted, everything grinds to a halt, and the perpetrators can drive to a new location and sit and wait for a few hours before repeating the exercise.

But this wasn’t two or three times. We’re told it was multiple times over the whole day. And yet nobody got a decent photograph (in spite of gazillions of Plane spotters who loiter around Gatwick), and these guys manage to launch and recover a drone over and over again in daylight on a weekday from different points without anyone seeing them in the most over populated corner of the country. Even after the massive publicity.

I’d favour the ‘disposable drone’ scenario, except none have been found.

I’m still thinking one or two incursions early in the day leading to rumours and false sightings maintaining the panic. The original perps stopped as soon as they realized the fuss they caused.

It’s an argument from silence and could be wrong, but on balance it seems most likely to me.

There is a video on the BBC site that appears to show something in the air. Not the most conclusive video though.

#tookthemlongenough

#shouldhavegotthwarmy/navy/rafinvolvedsooner

#whensthenextdroneincident?

Shoot it down! Shoot it down! 😀

Having read a bit more about it, it does sound like the authorities’ hands are tied; more so by their own general incompetence and headless chicken routine.

So what they need to do, right, is get 6 Chinooks flying in at high altitude with a big net, then gradually lower it over the 25-mile radius and see what’s underneath it. It worked for the BFG, apparently.

why wasnt there a sniper in the right place at the right time, why didnt the guy up in scotland fly his drone down to gatwick and follow the offending drone, who didnt replace the toilet roll when it ran out???

Stuff like this is good for showing up the credibility of the usual reactionary nutcases.
“Should have been dealt with sooner” while providing either no suggestion or a stupid one helps to identify the people you don’t want in charge of anything.

Love Amber Rudd’s barking dogs statement. You can see about halfway through her brain catches up and goes “hang on, that doesn’t sound right”, but she’s too far in and just has to power on through…

Surely that barking dog comment was more in relation to prisons and was more about alerting guards to the drone’s presence as against making the drone run away frightened though?

I’m no fan of the conservatives, but [The comment I saw doing the rounds on facebook] appears to be taken out of context.

If the way the UK and US conduct air strikes and drone warfare in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan is legal, ethical and effective, shouldn’t we be addressing the problem at Gatwick in the same way?

Gatwick yesterday

If the way the UK and US conduct air strikes and drone warfare in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan is legal, ethical and effective, shouldn’t we be addressing the problem at Gatwick in the same way?

🙂
Unfortunately people in Surrey vote, and also write in to the Daily Mail…

However, is Sussex where Gatwick is….

LGW shutdown again

#GatwickAirport
BREAKING: All inbound flights are currently in a hold pattern and are not currently landing at #Gatwick.

The last outbound flight was over 20 minutes ago.

More as we get it.

Images: @flightradar24 pic.twitter.com/Sug34dmAmE

— London 999 Feed (@999London) December 21, 2018

Bloody hell…

Looks like EasyJet have already started diverting some of their Gatwick arrivals to Luton, at least there’s a few heading in that direction.

pic.twitter.com/GGdI2njXlx

— Chris Addison (@mrchrisaddison) December 21, 2018

Just watched the first plane take off on the resumed flights on Flightradar24

But this wasn’t two or three times. We’re told it was multiple times over the whole day.

I’m still thinking one or two incursions early in the day…

However, is Sussex where Gatwick is….

Good spot! 😀

I do wonder if it happened in any other country would there have been as much incompetence.

Ah yes the voice of reason is back 😉 worked out what they should be doing there yet?

Yes mike you are to supply tea and biscuits to the committee. Then when they catch the person you are to be their appointed pa.

Mikewsmith the fourms own guy that you take to work just to make him feel like their doing something important.

Yeah, let’s go back to the dark ages , travel everywhere by the power of the wind or our legs and die of starvation.

Don’t be ridiculous, we fly way too much. Are you saying that destroying the world and ourselves with climate change is a price worth paying so we can fly to Spain 4 times a year?

A number of the cancelled flights were cheap DAY trips to see Santa in Lapland. Of course, due to rising global temperatures there’s no snow at all there at the moment.

We need protecting from ourselves, things like day trips to Lapland are an environmental abomination.

So still no good plan then? Just another Internet old man shouting at the sky.