The animal rights people will have an opinion about training the eagle to get a face full of propellor.

Even if you succeed in jamming (and it can be done), the drone won't just fall out of the sky, it can continue on autopilot to complete its mission or return to its take off point depending on how you programme it. The applications to programme it can be found on smart phones tablets etc and are relatively easy to use.

They were my thoughts as well. If the propellers keeping the drones up are externally mounted then the animal will probably be wounded, especially as most birds attack from above don't they?

Messing with the GPS signal around the area you need to protect is probably the most effective cheapest way of of defending an area ( no good near airports though )

Make more seance for a wide blanket ban near any airfield without prior permission. ( 10 mile min )

I dont thing jamming them is feasible, and like the other poster said, most would just carry on to target. You have to mess with the GPS. and its not hard to do, i think Iran did this to nick that USA drone a few years ago.

I don't think you have any idea how big a deal it is to mess with GPS. Technically easy, but huge consequences.

So many things rely on it that it would never be authorised.
Shotguns would be a less contentious option than GPS jamming.

UK legal restrictions on kite flying.
 

The Law
Objective
Kite fliers must comply with any requirements of the law applicable to where they are flying.
Guidance
The European Communities Act 1972, Civil Aviation Act 1982 and the Airports Act 1986 allow the Civil Aviation Authority (working with the Ministry of Defence) to issue the Air Navigation Order, a Statutory Instrument, the latest of which is dated 2005. Combined with other Regulations, CAP 393 (with amendments to January 2008) sets out the law and rules that kite fliers are required to comply with.
The key points are:
• You must not fly a kite more than 30 metres (100’) above ground level within 5 kilometres (3 miles) of an airfield unless the CAA has given you specific authority to do so. You should avoid take off and landing flight paths.
• You must not fly a kite more than 60 metres (200’) above the ground at any other time unless permission has been obtained from the CAA and the certificate of such authority is available on site.
• You must obtain permission from the CAA before dropping objects such as teddy bears, sweets etc.
• You must avoid low flying aircraft such as police or rescue helicopters, microlight aircraft, hang-gliders and para-gliders.
You should also be aware of local byelaws which may restrict kite flying or related activities. These might say you must not fly a kite as to create a public nuisance which might include noise.

You cant possibly mess with gps around even a small percentage of potential targets and that won't work against drones flown manually anyway.The use of birds also assumes you know where and when the attack will occur in time to get a bird in place. Why do we assume that a terrorist use of a drone will be "sophisticated" rather than a crude manually flown attack? We don't expect them to use driverless cars to deliver car bombs.

Maybe they haven't yet, but there is no reason not to. The hardware to do it is available very cheaply. At the moment we automatically assume that terrorists will be religious fanatics not afraid of dying, but what about criminals wanting to do a major robbery who want to nobble police helicopters on the ground beforehand?

All new GPS chips also receive and process GLONAS, so you now have two systems to defeat.

Still easy to do.
Jamming is easy.
Spoofing is trickier, especially with two systems....

And illegal and dangerous too. Also pointless for drones as they will just default to some other mode, possibly with loss of control causing even more danger.

Drones like laser pens and other items have appeared quickly, before the lumbering government had a chance to regulate. I suspect that licences, registration and mandatory geofences will be imposed in most nations, and that takes care of careless public. It leaves a small minority left to chase.

Tourist is spot on here.

Its still easily doable, and you can confine the GPS spoofing to a small area if needed. You could possibly even target drones with a jamming signal/spoof signal with directional aerials,

problems
1. Hand flying a drone, without GPS, using iether video googles or eye site and aiming at a target is extremely hard, ( multiple variables get in the way )
2. Weight/power of rc drones/planes has some serious limitations

probably good ideas to implement

1. Licences for any airfraim/motor combination that can fly more than 100 meters from the user ( like a CBT for the air )
2. Blanket bans around airfields for 10 miles without permission from control tower
3. battery capacity/power to weight limits ( there is already weight limits, these need to be combined with power limits )

Number 3 and 2, would stop all accidental occurrences,

i made/built a full gps/waypoint Rc plane with autopilot and trimmings ( telemetry and video ) between 2006-2009 , before you could buy them on the hobby market.

Drone near-misses prompt calls for plane strike research
 

From the BBC website today

Drone near-misses prompt calls for plane strike research - BBC News


Pilots are calling for research into what would happen if a drone hit an airliner, after 23 near-misses around UK airports in six months last year.
Reports from the UK Airprox Board reveal the incidents happened between 11 April and 4 October 2015.
In one incident a drone passed within 25m (82ft) of a Boeing 777 near London Heathrow Airport.
Pilots union Balpa wants the government and safety regulator to back research into how serious a strike could be.
The incident at Heathrow was one of 12 that were given an "A" rating by the independent board, meaning there was "a serious risk of collision". It is the most serious risk rating out of five.
Other incidents given the most serious rating include a drone coming within 20m (66ft) of a Embraer 170 jet on its approach to London City Airport above the Houses of Parliament on 13 September.

Much more in the actual article

I was listening to Smooth Radio in the UK today. The report said that BALPA, are asking for urgent safety measures to be introduced due to an increase in aircraft having near misses with.......wait for it......trains. Trains, drones, yeah more or less the same thing.

I read in China there are trains capable of reaching 16,627 ft MSL altitude. Be very afraid! :}

:)

IN real terms it would be interesting to see the test of a 1kg plastic drone being hit by an aircraft travelling at 300knots weighing hundreds of tons.

Air miss with drone near Paris CDG 19FEB
 

From BEA today:


During the approach in downwind leg for runway 26L at an altitude of 5500 ft and a descent rate of about 1000 ft per minute, with a speed of 220 kt and heading east, the first officer ( FP) sees a drone in its 11 oclock. He disengaged the autopilot and makes a flexible resource while informing the captain of the presence of the drone. The captain saw the drone and estimates he spends about five meters below the left wing of the aircraft. The crew informed the ATC of the presence of the drone. The crew re-engages the autopilot and continues the approach.

No more information given.

The aircraft involved is the F-GKXT A320.


https://www.bea.aero/les-enquetes/le...en-approche-1/

It was a commercial flight between BCN and CDG.
From FR24 : ATOT/ALDT 0928/1108Z
AFR157J/AF1149

This could be an answer to the problem. SkyWall

A typical hobby drone is not at all easy to see at 100metres distance even if you know where it's supposed to be, and one capable of lifting 1kg of camera and telemetry isn't much easier mainly because it dispenses with pretty bodywork and is just a bare frame. 220kt is 113metres/sec. To identify the object and take the actions reported means astonishing reaction times.

I have a half share in one of each, and we are working on getting our licences to fly them commercially. Ground school and exams done, ops manual and flying tests (full test for each of us with each of the aircraft) to go.


a'

The criticism that I would make is the time taken to 'de-box' the weapon - it should be in a rack on the rear wall of the cab (or even mounted 'outside').

Idiot flies recreational drone to 10,000 ft in Holland
 

This is in Dutch, so you might need Google translate to read it.

On a Dutch drone site, the posting says it all.


http://www.dronewatch.nl/2016/03/03/idioot-brengt-hobbydrone-tot-hoogte-van-34-km/

A news for nerds site says drones no problem for aircraft
 

This, posted on a site called Slashdot. I'd welcome a commercial pilot to pop over there and set the record straight. Slashdot is popular with tech savvy nerds. Who love drones. I was shocked to see posters being casual about a 777 sucking a drone into an engine.

http://m.slashdot.org/story/308149


Anonymous Coward an hour ago


Pilots have had to deal with in-air objects for decades. As both a pilot and a passenger I have avoided high performance weather balloon experiments, one time in particular was a reminder to pay attention as someone's looking-like 20+ lb payload was literally at our wing height, and 20 ft away.
Part of your job as pilot in command is to fly in and share the airspace.
Are there going to be flight/drone collisions? Yes, eventually. But planes, helicopters and balloons don't own the sky just because they were there first. A TCAS IV chipset might make a nice addition, but restricting a million plus drones to ensure a few thousand planes, that are already on the lookout, are safe? That's just stupid.

That's precisely the kind of thing that gives everyone who has any sense of safety nightmares!

Where I fly model planes, the new rules in place mean I have to call the local tower to get permission (after logging the request on the national "airshare" web site).

I recently asked a busy controller if it was a PITA to be constantly called by model plane flyers - her response was that it was better to be slightly inconvenienced and know what is flying where, rather than not know what is flying anywhere...

Unfortunately there are to many idiots around flying this copters/drones nowadays.

There are plenty of videos in the net proofing how high they can fly(and then crash back to earth because the battery ran empty on the way down), so it is very easy that they can endanger any aircraft.

I do commercial drone flying(certified by the authority) since 5 years now(sidejob to my real flying), but the regulations just keep growing and it makes it impossible(my opinion) for any certified operator to stay legal and still make money. Then are all the others that just do it black, sell the service for 50% of the price(easy if you put all in the pocket and do not need to pay anything to the aviation/tax authority).

I will pull out of this business this year because it is simply to dangerous and to annoying(most of the time the police swings by when we fly, so we have to do the "dance" everytime, show the license, get our id checked, blablabla, just because some guys do not know how to behave). Years ago people asked about drones, liked to look at it, nowadays the call the police if the see one flying in the city. Thanks to modern media and some reckless "pilots".

This things should have never been sold over the counter without any kind of registration(in some countries even bicycles are registered, why not drones?) so you could track people.

Well, DJI and Co are flooding the market with this things, I guess on some stage they will be just forbidden as it happened already in some countries. In the wrong hands this things are very dangerous.

Eagles trained to take out drones
 

Forgive me if this is a repost.


Eagles trained to take down drones - BBC News

Eagles trained to take down drones - BBC News

Cheaper than F15's. More stealthy too.

SkyWall 100: An anti-drone bazooka
 

Made by UK company OpenWorks, the bazooka will "help the police control the skies."


http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-conten..._4-980x653.jpg

SkyWall 100: An anti-drone bazooka | Ars Technica

So skywall can get to **gasp** 300ft! and of course what happens to the net when it _doesn't_ catch the 'drone' on a windy day? So the airport puts out how many people to do this to cover 100 meters (that is slant range).

People thinking this is a good idea have never had to secure an airport. A modern airport boundary is from 8 to 20 miles long. So how many people with these 'skywalls' would you need? They would be hard put to protect a single house let alone an airport.

I attended a multirotor event in Germany over the weekend. General consensus amongst distributors is that sales have peaked and are now showing steep downward trend.

Those that wanted a drone have bought one. Many of those are now either broken or sitting in the back of a cupboard...

Sales will continue, but one wonders if the peak of interest has passed...

they're getting closer.....
 

LH A380 vs drone at LAX:

Lufthansa jet and drone nearly collide near LAX - LA Times

What bothers me is that some weight can be attached to the drone, so what if it was explosive ........ ???? for example:
Jane Jones, Work at professional drone manufacturer MMCUAV
1.4k Views
Many drones can only carry 3-10kg, while we MMC has designed one type drone which can carry 25KG weight.
Below is the details of it:
http://mmcuav.en.alibaba.com/product...p_Sprayer.html
I wonder who can purchase and use this one?

Aerial photography amongst other uses. The issue is, that with this kind of payload, these drones only have a very short endurance, typically a few minutes. The link says 60 mins, but unless these guys have made the breakthrough of the century in battery technology, that's BS, unless empty (and I doubt even that). Btw, there are much bigger ones out there, used for aerial cinematography. However, these are flown by pros, normally in a controlled environment (e.g. film set). The problem are the plonkers who fly at 5k ft in the approach to LAX :ugh:

A variation on the theme?
 

Drone smashes through office window, hits man | IOL

Drone smashes through office window, hits man

Good footage. Surprised having sound on a DJI Phantom as pretty sure the standard is just video as all you can hear is the props. Still made the video more interesting.

You should be able to track the take off point from the data on the SD card to find the pilot or at least his preferred take off point ready for when he gets his next one up in the air.

Looks like they found the pilot and he's going to be having words with the SA CAA

Drone crashes through window and hits man on the head | Metro News

Some Finnish farmers have developed one to carry a chainsaw.:ooh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Viwwetf0gU

Nice to see that it was brought down by a balloon, justice!

Drone incident - Near CDG at 2,300 metres
 

A drone flying at an altitude of more than 2,000 metres came close to an Aer Lingus plane as it approached Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport yesterday, airport sources said this morning.

The incident comes after a British Airways plane nearing London's Heathrow Airport on Sunday is believed to have hit a drone before it landed safely.

In yesterday’s incident, the Aer Lingus pilot saw the drone pass about 150m from the right wing of the Airbus A320 plane, one of the sources said.

After landing, the pilot informed air traffic police about the incident, which happened as the plane was flying at 2,300 metres and was around 50km from the airport on its journey from Dublin.

It is not known how many passengers were on the plane.

In February, the pilot of an Air France Airbus A320 was forced to make an emergency manoeuvre to avoid a drone.

The drone passed five metres under the plane's left wing as it was at 1,600m altitude on its approach to Charles de Gaulle.

Shop-bought micro-drones are not allowed to fly above 150m altitude in France, although some can reach several thousand metres.


Drone reportedly flew close to Aer Lingus plane - RTÉ News

7500 FT? Doesn't sound like a typical shop purchased drone... most of them would have run out of battery before getting that height..