Posted on 02/20/2019 9:09:56 PM PST by Seizethecarp
The no-fly zone for drones around airports is to be extended following the disruption at Gatwick in December, the government says.
From 13 March it will be illegal to fly a drone within three miles of an airport, rather than the current 0.6-mile (1km) exclusion zone.
The government also said it wants police to have new stop and search powers to tackle drone misuse.
The government said the new stop and search powers would apply to people suspected of using drones maliciously nears airports.
The powers, to be included in the government's new Drones Bill, would also allow police to access electronic data stored on a drone.
The Association of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (Arpas UK), which represents the drone industry, welcomed the wider no-fly zone but cautioned on the stop-and-search plans.
"Police will need to know exactly what the rules are and in exercising their powers do so in the right way," said Rupert Dent, an Arpas UK committee member.
"We are keen it doesn't prevent legitimate operators from operating drones in a legitimate fashion."
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
But what will trigger a stop and a search?
I may be ignorant of technology here, but can’t they knock down drones operating illegally?
Supposedly there was some very advanced top secret military technology brought in at one of the airports, but they are not saying how successful it was and no confirmed arrests resulted, which you would think would be the case if an actual drone was knocked down and tracked back to a perp.
Knocking down drones out in open space with the numerous types of advertised military hardware is different than doing it in densely populated urban areas where a lot of collateral damage can occur, it seems.
Hit a drone with another drone? That’s not likely to damage other kinds of infrastructure badly, if at all.
I imagine in Britain, possession of a drone and a butterknife is the death penalty.
Drones should not be hard to jam, but that invites the same problem: disruption to legitimate users. Putting up with police questioning is probably better than losing a drone to a security services induced crash.
As a practical matter that would require massively expensive infrastructure and a number of quick responding trained personnel.
From a drone sales website:
But, little do they know that there are many fully autonomous drones out there nowadays. They can do all sorts of smart features without any need of manual controlling. Some of them even feature waypoints mode that allow you to precisely draw a flight path which your drone will follow.
If you’re going to have military on the scene, having drones and drone drivers ready to go would seem like one of the lesser burdens.
Are those drones programmed so that they won’t fly until taken a safe distance from the airport?
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