Originally Posted by
pr00ne
The threat was also vastly different, a hijacked wide body airliner bearing down on Central London is going to call for a very different risk and collateral damage scenario than a drone hovering over an airport.
Especially as the airport wasn't actually in operation at the time. With only the drone in the air, and no reason to believe it is armed in any way, the public are effectively in zero danger. So now your risk/reward calculation has to offset any risk associated with downing the drone against the economic/convenience benefit of re-opening the airport. That means you need to have a pretty high level of confidence that no-one's going to get hurt before you start taking pot shots and risk dropping a dead drone onto the local orphanage.