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Re:Gatwick drones: Two arrested over flight disruption by Sir_Substance on Saturday December 22, 2018 @11:50AM (#18741296)
I don't really wanna call this a "solved problem" because it's certainly not, but there /are/ off the shelf anti-drone munitions and have been for a while:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG7hUE2BZZo&feature=youtu.be...

I too think it's very weird that the UK government apparently doesn't have /any/ specialized antidrone munitions around and refused to attempt to fire anything at these drones.

Re:Gatwick drones: Two arrested over flight disruption by dogma1138 on Saturday December 22, 2018 @12:44PM (#18741563)
These munitions are more or less a joke they only work in ideal conditions and have a range shorter than normal kinetic projectiles.

By the time the police arrives the drones are gone and nothing can shoot down a drone at 10,000 feet short of a man portable surface to air missile.

Even at the maximum altitude allowed for these drones which is 400 feet you wouldn’t be able to hit it reliably with anything that isn’t terminally guided and man protable with maybe the exception of a high powered scoped rifle and a very good marksman.

But again the problem is that these drones don’t stick around for hours they are gone in minutes, by the time anyone can get in range they would be long gone.

Edit: looks like they are deploying or have deployed (since this if from the Daily Fail) a military grade drone detection system with some soft and hard kill capabilities that the British armed forces purchased for troop defense in Syria and Iraq:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6519211/The-...

Re:Gatwick drones: Two arrested over flight disruption by mikekchar on Saturday December 22, 2018 @05:13PM (#18742785)
The back up batteries at Fukushima power plant were capable of being recharged, thereby avoiding a meltdown. However, the connectors hadn't been manufactured for years and nobody could jury rig something up in time to avert disaster. Humans make really stupid oversights on things that happen rarely. In hindsight it's really stupidly obvious that something should have been prepared ahead of time. But when looking forward, it's easy to overlook obvious things because the potential number of future problems is infinite. "Are we prepared for a drone attack?" The first question is, "What does a drone attack look like?" That they didn't get that far doesn't actually surprise me.