Drone Security

Hawk vs. Drone! (Hawk Attacks Quadcopter)

The snafu at Gatwick a few days ago got me thinking about drones. My first thought was that every drone that could be a hazard needs to carry a radio identifier of some sort. My next thought was what do you do about a drone that is misbehaving? If it is carrying an identifier, then you can track down the owner and call the kid's mom and let her bring the smack down on him. But what if it isn't carrying an ID? You might be able to jam the control signals, or possible even override them, but that assumes it is being controlled via radio. What if it's not? Then you need some way to intercept it and bring it to the ground. Birds can be employed for this. The Dutch police have squad of birds and bird men for this purpose. I can see where that there could be situations that a bird could not handle. Night flying, for instance. In that case you are going to want an interceptor drone. I suspect we are going to have an escalating drone war. DARPA may already be working on one. If they aren't, they should be.

Update January 2019. We have visited this issue before.