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Drones the new passive terrorism tool? 

Via the Oz: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/wo...02aa1986e3

Chaos as drones cause Gatwick Airport closure

JACQUELIN MAGNAY
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
@jacquelinmagnay

AN HOUR AGO DECEMBER 21, 2018
57 COMMENTS


Police believe the drone activity, involving at least two drones, is deliberate and are investigating if it is a co-ordinated attack. Picture: iStock

The British government has called in the military to destroy a drone that is being deliberately flown over Gatwick Airport’s runway in what has been called an act of sabotage.

Hundreds of thousands of passengers have been caught up in the unprecedented security and safety breach as Gatwick Airport remains closed.

The Ministry of Defence has confirmed it has sent specialist equipment to Gatwick to try and deal with the drone. Military experts are trying to jam the communications system being used to pilot the drone and could use a laser to try and dismantle it.

More than 18 hours after the drone was first spotted at 9pm Wednesday evening, Gatwick Airport remains closed. Every time the airport gears up to re-open, the drone reappears.

Gatwick chief executive Stewart Wingate says the drone activities are highly targeted and have been designed to close the airport and bring maximum disruption in the run up to Christmas

Nearly 800 flights have been diverted or cancelled from the airport, which is Britain’s second busiest, leaving distraught families trying to get home for Christmas.

Several plane loads of children heading for Lapland have been cancelled.


An information board announces flight disruption at Gatwick Airport. Picture: AFP.

”How do I tell my five year old she isn’t going to see Santa after all,’’ one upset mother said.

The Palmer family told BBC that they had planned a trip to Lapland trip as a surprise for their young children with three generations excited, but have now had to head back home.

Government officials and the police believe the chaos, which has impacted more than 110,000 people, was deliberate and the work of professionals. Previously inadvertent use of drones near British airports — where the unmanned aircraft is flown more than 100m high or within a kilometre of an airfield- is dealt with swiftly and there is little interruption.

However this drone appears to be highly sophisticated and experts have said it could be operated from several hundred kilometres away. Others say it could have been modified to allow it to fly for more than the usual 15 to 20 minutes of battery time.

Sussex police have sighted the drone several times during the day, including just minutes before the airport was due to be reopened at 3pm, but have been unable to get a clear safe shot.

More than 10,000 passengers have been stranded at the airport, unable to board their flights to Europe, America or Asia.

Easy Jet said it was cancelling all flights from Gatwick on Thursday and other airlines were expected to follow suit.

Other airports in Britain have had their night-time curfews lifted to try and ease some of the disruption.

Transport secretary Chris Grayling said: “It’s pretty clear that this is a fairly large drone, not the classic plastic garden drone. “This is a commercial sized drone that is clearly being operated deliberately in a way that when Gatwick tries to reopen the runway the drone reappears, so this is clearly a deliberate act.”

He warned the drone operators that there was a five year jail sentence awaiting and that “anyone who does this should expect to go to jail for many years’’.

He added that there was no suggestion that the action was a terrorist act.

’’It is clearly someone who wants to disrupt Gatwick Airport,’’ he said.


Passengers wait for news at the North Terminal with Gatwick remaining closed. Picture: AFP.

Drones shut down Gatwick Airport

Police were still hunting drones and their operators last night after the Christmas plans of thousands of families were thrown into chaos when Gatwick Airport was forced to close.

The drones had been seen flying near Britain’s second-busiest airport on Wednesday night and yesterday morning, in what some believe could be a deliberate and co-ordinated attack.

The operators face five years in jail, as drones are banned from being flown within a kilometre of the airport boundary. A drone could bring down an aircraft and cause massive loss of life if it is sucked into an engine.

More than 10,000 passengers already have been affected by the plane cancellations and the disruption is set to last for days, raising fears that many families will be unable to get to family Christmas gatherings.

The airport said there would be days of delays even when the airport was reopened, because planes and staff would not be where they were scheduled to be.

When the drones were first spotted on Wednesday night near the Gatwick runway, some passengers were left stranded on planes for up to seven hours. Nearby hotels were full and people slept on the Gatwick terminal floor.

Flights due to arrive in Gatwick were diverted throughout yesterday to other airports including Amsterdam, Paris and Bordeaux. Some flights have made it to Britain­, but landed at Cardiff, Liver­pool, Manchester, Stansted, Luton and Birmingham.

Gatwick chief operating officer Chris Woodroofe said 2000 flights had been grounded.

He said the vast majority of the 110,000 passengers due to pass through Gatwick on Thursday — one of the busiest travel days of the year — would experience disruption.

“We also have the helicopter up in the air but the police advice us that it would be dangerous to seek to shoot the drone down because of what may happen to the stray bullets,’’ he said.

The runway was ­initially closed about 9pm on Wednesday after two reported sightings of drones. It briefly ­reopened at 3am but closed again when the small remote-controlle­d aircraft were spotted above the airfield again.

“We are advising passengers scheduled to fly from Gatwick not to travel to the airport without checking the status of their flight with their airline this morning,’’ Gatwick said in a statement. “We apologise for the inconvenience, but the safety of all passengers and staff is our first priority.”

WITH THE TIMES

P7 – (butts in) - “K” has the right of it. Purdy rules – OK.

Update:

Airport drone attacks ‘inevitable’
DAVID SWAN

After Gatwick’s shutdown, Australian airports are being warned they need to prepar­e for a drone attack.


Australian airports need to prepar­e for the inevitable reality of a drone attack, according to the boss of ASX-listed drone defence company Department 13.

The warning comes after a drone caused chaos at Britain’s Gatwick Airport, with flights halted for more than 24 hours and disrupting the travel plans of more than 120,000 passengers.

Police have received more than 50 reports of a drone being flown near Gatwick’s airfield, with the airport closed for the foreseeable future as authorities pursue whoever is responsible.

Department 13 chief executive Jonathan Hunter told The Weekend Australian his company had approached Gatwick with an anti-drone solution more than 12 months ago, an offer the airport did not take up.

“In November last year, we approach­ed Gatwick with a propos­al for counter UAS (unmanne­d aerial system) and suppor­t. They didn’t procure systems … and this incident now is not the first time it has happened.

“This is the third or fourth time Gatwick has had a drone shut down the airport. This shouldn’t be a surprise to people who operate airports — this is a significant regular event now that people need to take seriously.”

Mr Hunter said while there was no 100 per cent foolproof way to prevent drone incidents, an anti-drone system was a must-have for every airport.

“A $500 drone in this case is going to cost Gatwick Airport and the UK government hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said. “This individual is not believed to be a hobbyist — this is an organised threat to shut down the commerc­e of an airport.

“This is a crystal ball into what can happen in Australia or anywhere. If you shut down air traffic, the impact is incredible. People need to take notice.”

He said his company’s anti-drone methods were software-based, meaning they did not jam an airport’s communication system­s, unlike technology from rival companies.

Mr Hunter said each time a company released a new drone, his company reverse-engineered the radio frequency, and added it to the library of drones its technol­ogy, MESMER, was then able to intercept. He said MESME­R could pick up multiple drones simultaneously without human intervention.

Earlier this year, Venezuelan authorities said two drones, laden with plastic explosives, were part of a failed assassination attempt on the country’s President Nicolas Maduro.

Other airports shut down by drones include Dubai in Sep­tember and Wellington last month.

“Drones are coming. They’re not going away,” Mr Hunter said. “There will be a drone economy, and we need to prepare ourselves for protection within that.”

Gatwick Airport was contacted for comment.

Meanwhile in Dunceunda land...

New regulations for drone activity
EMILY RITCHIE

Australia’s civil aviation authority will crack down on drone operators next month with a new suite of highly accurate surveillance technologies and tougher safety regulations to counter growing safety concerns about their use.

The crackdown was planned before London’s Gatwick Airport was forced to shut down for 36 hours last week when it was ­buzzed by drones. About 1000 flights were cancelled or diverted, and thousands of travellers left stranded over the busy festive ­season.

The Gatwick drones were ­initially suspected to have been flown by a couple who lived in nearby Crawley — Elaine Kirk, 54, and Paul Gait, 47 — but they were release­d without charge last night after police questioning.

Peter Gibson from Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority said the rapid evolution of drone technology and capabilities, ­coupled with increasing affordability, created the need for an immediate upgrade to the way their use was monitored and managed.

New monitoring technology that can identify the serial number of a drone and locate where the device controller is on the ground, as well as a mandatory accredit­ation process complete with online exam for recreational drone flyers, will be implemented across the country from next month.

“While London’s incident was not the catalyst for our changes, it is certainly timely,” Mr Gibson told The Australian. “There’s a lot more people flying drones now and with that comes the risk that some people will fly them in­appropriately.”

In January, CASA is rolling out new drone surveillance technol­ogy and will conduct live monitoring services at major airports before co-ordinating random drone safety checks across the country. “We will be able to see what type of drones are being used, where, how often and obviou­sly identify if they’re being used incorrectly,” Mr Gibson said.

“The technology allows you to identify where the drone is in the sky, where the controller is on the ground and in most cases also tells us the serial number of the drone. This way we can far more easily ­locate who is flying the drone and, if they’re in breach of the rules, we can issue a penalty on the spot.”

He said CASA would target known hot spots, including ­Sydney Harbour, and would be able to identify new areas of high-density drone use.

A new registration and accreditation scheme for recreational drone flyers, set to be introduced by the middle of next year, would also help prevent a mass aviation disruption in Australia similar to Gatwick’s, Mr Gibson said.

“People purchasing drones will be required to register with us so we have information about who is flying drones, and as part of that process you’ll be required to look at some educational material and do an online test to show you’ve got an understanding of the rules,” Mr Gibson said.

“This will give us information on who is actually flying drones and enable us to directly push ­educational material so they’re aware of the rules.”

Only one drone manufacturer currently requires customers to complete an online quiz based on CASA regulations before purchase, whereas other suppliers issue information at the point of sale, which directs them to the drone-flyer website.

Current regulations include not being able to fly closer than 30m to other people, not within 5.5km of an airport and not higher than 400ft. Penalties include fines of up to $10,000 for serious offences, such as creating a safety ­hazard to an aircraft, which can also land someone behind bars for up to five years.

Mr Gibson said CASA had ­issued 63 fines over drone use this year, most of which were referred to it by state police, but he expected far more fines to be issued once the technology is rolled out.

“The message for everyone getting a drone this Christmas is that safety is important, make sure you know the rules and follow them, but also these new measures are coming and so if you do use a drone inappropriately, your chances of being caught are about to ­increase dramatically.”

MTF...P2