With the increasing proliferation of cheap consumer drones, it has become a big challenge for security personnel to keep an eye out for drones and to intercept and deter them when encountered. Rogue drones are starting to become more and more common. Sometimes these are just drones that have gone out of control of some hobbyist. At other times, these can be part of a coordinated threat. Till date, there have been numerous high-profile incidents involving drones entering airports and other restricted airspace. This has led to a number of solutions coming up to counter drones wandering into private property or restricted areas.
1. Eagles
A Dutch company Guard From Above trained Golden Eagles to snatch quadcopters out of the sky and bring them to ground. The experiment got a lot of fanfare but eventually had to be shelved because of high cost of training and maintaining eagles
2. Guns
Guns and rifles are the most natural response to flying drones but they a viable alternative only in secluded areas far from the main cities. Also, in many cases it might not be preferable to destroy the drone due to forensic purposes. Another type of ground-based deterrent is the use of guns which shoot nets to capture the drones. An example of this is the Skywall 100 system.
3. Electronic Jammers
These work by generating high intensity white noise signals in the same frequency range as that of the drone’s communication systems. When a drone encounters such strong interference it either lands where it is hovering or returns to the place from where it took off. This would have been an extremely viable method to counter the drones but unfortunately creating electronic interference to jam equipments is prohibited in many countries.
4. Defensive Drones
Some companies have introduced defensive drones to counter the trespassing drones mid-air. Most of these drones discharge nets mid-air which entangle the rogue drone’s propellers thereby disabling it.
In spite of many companies in this space, there has still not been a clear answer to the ever-growing problems of trespassing drones. This is one of the reasons that law enforcement authorities stay concerned about the increasing number of drones. Cheap and easily available anti-drone options will make it much easier to impound trespassing drones and ensure that any airspace violations are taken care of at the earliest.
