SASless,

Absolutely none at all. I was referring to the geography of the areas concerned. You can do things over a barren unpopulated area that you cannot do just outside Crawley in Southern England.

ppr00neControlled yes, operated no. Dominating the operating area can not therefore be dismissed out of hand.

How they might dominate the area is not for us to speculate.

True, but I wonder what the ROE were for the Olympics. As the threat was probably assumed to be from much larger aircraft I guess detection time and decision time would have been greater. Also safe arcs were probably calculated.

In the case of LGW it would be possible to operate a safe arc system. True the area has high population density but it is not entirely built up. For obvious reasons drone operation was probably from less populated areas and sniper teams in elevated positions could fire down into safe areas.

Wader2,

ROE for the Olympics in London were, I would imagine, vastly different from those appertaining to a drone hovering over LGW. 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.

And I'm sure that the drone operator will be nowhere near the actual drone. Dropped off maybe days before, possibly numerous different drones, then all controlled from anywhere remotely. Drones get zapped, drop off another load and do it all over again. This is going to be VERY difficult to counter.

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.

Footage of a drone at Gatwick.



News articles at following links showing the footage.

https://metro.co.uk/2018/12/20/first...rport-8271026/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...TS-runway.html

Well, it seems the Israeli system was indeed used yesterday. The Mail Online is among news sources currently showing photos of it in action on an LGW roof.

I'd imagine the biggest concern isn't the dead drone, but overshooting rounds from high powered weapons (I don't imagine shotguns would be much of an option). Not quite Lebanese wedding style, but the good people of Sussex and Surrey may get upset if ballistic 7.62 or 0.5 started raining down on them!!

Back in WW2, there was a concept of a 'rammer fighter' proposed - maybe we need racing drones that kamikaze at the offending drone

Only if there was an EFFI that needed 'guarding'

Racing drone rammers were suggested on the scarefest thread in news and rumours. It might be the worst suggestion of all. Lithium Polymer batteries are not your friend, and the drones are all manoeuvring, and the fpv feed has latency, and the picture quality is terrible and so on...

Link to the Mail article showing the various components of the Rafael Drone Dome deployed at Gatwick.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...=1490&ito=1490

pr00ne, Seeding the area in advance, followed by remote operations would indeed create difficulties in neutralizing the ground operation. If drones were dispersed in advance there would be a risk of premature discovery. An earlier suggestion of active van deployment however would minimise that risk.

The video clip posted by TEEEJ should silence that some of the countermeasures proposed are wholly unrealistic. The height and speed would seem to rule out the blunderbus solutions. The speed and manoeuvre would present a difficult shot for a snipper.

I see some sources say a good drone can fly at 50 mph.

Sounds like a good high pheasant, but less edible

Ignoramus journo yet again and I'm surprised that nobody else here noticed that such a technique was not used.

Recent footage on Sky News shows that METIS Aerospace have also been deployed at Gatwick. METIS Aerospace SKYPERION Counter UAV Solution was tested this year at Southend Airport.



Skyperion - Counter UAV Solution - Metis Aerospace

Or in today's RAF perhaps some Lasses with Laddoo's.
Greengrocer's apostrophe notwithstanding.

The problem may be even greater than "Chaos. Disruption for 36 hours".

A singleton, every now and then, might well be destroyed or neutered, but the very fact of detection and neutralising would surely generate a knee-jerk grounding for a period. Then a backlog.
Repeat.
Motor off to Stansted.
Repeat.
Thereafter a telephone call with authentication and who needs a drone?

Looks like repeat number 1,or the telephone call.

And still no sign of the T word...

I wonder if 51sqn could have done anything?