Drones stop flights at Gatwick.

I'm sure they already can, just as I'm sure counter-measures are already in place. Which is what makes this whole thing seem very shady indeed to me.

I don’t know why they didn’t just shoot the fucker down. Whoever it was wants kicking from here to hell and back. I think it was some stupid teenager, personally.

A couple of the lads at work have drones which have been brought in on various occasions. Both of them have a built in function that prevents them from entering the airspace of (very) nearby John Lennon airport. Not sure if this is a function of the drone itself or a virtual no fly zone surrounding the airport, but we tested the function and flew one towards the airport, only to have it stop and return automatically.

Surely it can't be that difficult to have a signal jammer surrounding the airport that simply causes the rogue drones to either return to sender or suffer a total shutdown and a plummet to the ground?

There was talk of directed magnetic pulse weapons a while ago.

I hear what your saying but let's get real; look at how many miles of perimeter fence you're talking about patrolling with men mounted on the back of pick-ups, blasting away at any small, fast moving, object in the sky. It's not a realistic solution. You'd also have to be doing that while the airport was in operation as these drones disappear when flights stop and re-appear intermittently.

Most commercial drones have geofencing software built into them to prevent them entering restricted airspace but this can be disabled by a competent hacker. 

Ten years minimum for the culprits. 

That's what I would have thought, at the very least... if not, some large, strong nets draped down from the police helicopter or ground-launched to trap and disable the offending drone.

You'd have though with all the missile technology available that there would have been something developed for the security forces that could be fired at, and destroy, an offending drone especially as the ones at Gatwick are reported to have been "substantial" rather than just Christmas-plaything-sized.

And if, many years ago, we supposedly had the technology to find people watching their TVs without a licence from the road outside, surely we should be able to detect where the signals to control the drones were coming from?

As bob said, geofencing can be switched off by hack of the software, so that does allow drones to be flown into airspace on purpose. 

As I see it a lot of the potential countermeasures have side effects or issues. But is an emergency, stuff needs to be tried and tested to see what can work. 

Bazookas that shoot nets are nice but you need to get within 100m of the drone. 
Shotguns might work but you'd need to be about 30-50m away and I don't think that stray shot on the runway would do jet engines much good.
All sorts of high velocity firearm are going to be too dangerous to use - yes a last defence gatling gun like on naval craft would work, but that would be rather devastating for the people downrange. 
The military do have electronic counter measures, but the article I read said that they would also result in loss of radio transmission and everything gets jammed - control towers and peoples' mobiles to name just two things. 
And things that disable wifi comms back to the controller would of course also disable all the local wifi and fuck up computer networks. 

So short term, you can jam and disable the drones, but whilst you did that, I think the airport would come to a halt anyway. 

The one technology that has been talked about that sounds useful is high power lasers that can disable the drone. If they could be arrange as a perimeter defence then that would be useful.  

I also wondered if a modern version of chain-shot (which was basically two small cannon balls connected by a chain or hinged piece of metal) as was used to bring down rigging on naval sailing ships might be worth exploring. 

Of course, if the kit in the links above does work (is it laser based or ECM based it does not really say..) then the real question is why the f have UK airports not got access to it already? They are privately owned, so it is up to the operator to have the equipment, but I expect that they expect the police to provide it as part of security. 

I expect the SAS will now take up hidden residence outside the perimeter of UK airports and hope to catch any perpetrators directly. 

They're back!

I wouldn't be at all surprised; this is the sort of thing (OK, maybe not to this extent) governments do to hide/obfuscate some sort of dastardly act/deal/event they don't think we need to know about. 

For example, has anyone seen Betty in the last day or two? 

Two arrest's last night apparently. Waterboarding?

I think that would be a very fitting means of determining the public's views on the level of punishment required.

Do you really mean that? I'm hoping it's just hyperbole.

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