Catch me if you can: London drone attack lays bare airport vulnerabilities

FILE PHOTO: Passengers wait around in the South Terminal building at Gatwick Airport after drones flying illegally over the airfield forced the closure of the airport, in Gatwick, Britain, December 20, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

By Paul Sandle

LONDON (Reuters) – A mystery drone operator’s success in shutting down Britain’s second busiest airport for more than 36 hours has exposed the vulnerability of others across the world to saboteurs armed with such cheap and easily available devices.

The incursion at London Gatwick, a brazen game of cat and mouse that those responsible played with Europe’s top military power, underlined how many airports lack the means to catch drone pilots quickly, let alone destroy the unmanned aerial vehicles themselves.

Advances in technology mean drones can be controlled from far away using cameras on board, or even programmed to navigate their own way to targets, and back again.

“There is no silver bullet technology,” said Geoff Moore, business development manager at UK-based Blighter Surveillance Systems, which supplies the U.S. military with anti-drone technology he said was used in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq.

“Drone technology is evolving quickly, the levels of autonomy are increasing, the ease of flight is increasing to the point where they can be almost ‘fire and forget’ one-button launchable.”

The nightmare at Gatwick, which stranded more than 100,000 people when all flights were grounded, was finally brought under control on Friday after the government ordered the army to use military equipment to protect the site.

Moore said radar systems used by air traffic control were designed to spot commercial aircraft rather than something as small and as close to the ground as a drone. To detect them, airports need specialist radar reinforced by thermal imaging technology. “There are no specific regulations or guidelines on UK airports that mandate that they have to deploy drone detection systems,” he said.

STRAY BULLET DANGER

After detecting the drone, it needs to be disabled by interfering with its navigation system or by simply shooting it down. Authorities at Gatwick were reluctant to use guns because of the danger posed by stray bullets at a crowded airport.

And it is not enough to jam some radio frequencies because modern drones were not always radio-controlled like old-fashioned model aircraft.

Richard Gill, founder and chief executive of Drone Defence, said the fact that the drones at Gatwick were not disabled more quickly indicates that they were not relying on a radio link.

“The drone potentially could have been pre-programmed to cause this disruption and there could have been more than one drone over the period,” he told BBC radio.

Gill said the technology that allowed a drone to be pre-programmed so that it navigates to a point or a number of points and then returns to base to recharge, could be bought from online.

“A motivated individual could potentially carry out this act,” he said. “But it is very sophisticated, it is pre-planned, it is very deliberate what they have done to cause the maximum disruption at a really busy airport in the UK.”

JAMMING DRONES?

Jamming tactics can be risky in an airport where there are other critical communications systems.

Defense systems cannot simply block radio frequencies used to control drones, or GPS signals that the devices use to navigate, because of regulations, Moore said.

“The problem with the UK is there are some regulatory requirements around the use of things like radio frequency jamming – it’s illegal to do that,” he said. “There’s not so many mitigation technologies available in the UK because mostly they are restricted or unavailable.”

ADS, a trade group representing the aerospace, defense and security sectors, said it had asked the government to strengthen police powers, as well as the ability of airport operators and others to deploy electronic counter-measures.

Chief Executive Paul Everitt said UK security companies could help airport authorities with systems that detect, track and identify drones, electronic measures to prevent drone incursion, and with advice about the legal implications of using electronic counter-measures in Britain.

But at Gatwick, the perpetrators were still at large on Friday after the most advanced drone attack yet on a major airport.

(Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and David Stamp)

Drones ground flights at London Gatwick, sowing chaos for Christmas travelers

Passengers wait around in the South Terminal building at Gatwick Airport after drones flying illegally over the airfield forced the closure of the airport, in Gatwick, Britain, December 20, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nichol

By Sarah Young

LONDON (Reuters) – Drones flying near London’s Gatwick airport grounded flights for at least 15 hours, causing chaos for tens of thousands of Christmas travelers in what authorities said was a reckless attempt to cripple Britain’s second busiest airport.

Flights were halted at Gatwick at 2103 GMT on Wednesday after two drones were spotted flying near its airfield, triggering the biggest disruption to its operations since a volcanic ash cloud grounded flights in 2010.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman said those flying the drones were “irresponsible and completely unacceptable” and voiced sympathy for people having their travel plans upset just days before Christmas.

The airport and Gatwick’s biggest airline easyJet told passengers to check before traveling to the airport as several thousand people waited there in chaotic scenes.

“It’s really busy. People are sitting everywhere, on the stairs, on the floors,” passenger Ani Kochiashvili, who was booked onto a Wednesday evening flight, told Reuters by phone.

Police said more than 20 units were searching for the drone operators on Thursday when the airport had expected to handle around 115,000 passengers.

“At the moment we’re still getting sightings of the drones in and around the airfield,” Gatwick Policing Airport Commander Justin Burtenshaw told the BBC.

Sussex regional police said public safety was paramount, adding in a statement: “There are no indications to suggest this is terror-related.”

Gatwick, which lies 50 km (30 miles) south of London, gave no indication on when it would reopen and described the situation as an “ongoing incident”.

There has been an increase in near-collisions by unmanned aircraft and commercial jets, heightening concerns for safety across the aviation industry in recent years.

The number of near misses between private drones and aircraft in Britain more than tripled between 2015 and 2017, with 92 incidents recorded last year, according to the UK Airprox Board.

Stranded passengers look at the departures board at Gatwick Airport, Britain, December 20, 2018 in this picture obtained from social media. Ani Kochiashvili/via REUTERS

Stranded passengers look at the departures board at Gatwick Airport, Britain, December 20, 2018 in this picture obtained from social media. Ani Kochiashvili/via REUTERS

“INDUSTRIAL DRONE”

Gatwick Chief Operating Officer Chris Woodroofe warned that the knock-on effects from the airport closure would last for more than 24 hours. He described one of the drones as a heavy industrial model.

“It’s definitely not a standard, off-the-shelf type drone. “Given what has happened I definitely believe it is a deliberate act, yes,” he said on BBC radio.

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

Under British law it is illegal to fly drones within 1 km (0.62 mile) of an airport boundary. The offense is punishable by up to five years in prison.

Policing airport commander Burtenshaw said the police were exploring other options to try and bring the situation to a close. He said he was confident of tracking down whoever was behind the drones, but it wouldn’t be easy.

“It’s a painstaking thing with the new drones; the bigger the drones the further the reach of the operator so it’s a difficult and challenging thing to locate them.”

SAFETY FIRST

Gatwick apologized on Twitter https://twitter.com/Gatwick_Airport/status/1075530895094894594 to affected passengers, adding that safety was its “foremost priority”.

Tens of thousands of passengers were affected, with hundreds of thousands of journeys likely to be disrupted in the coming days, the airport said.

Gatwick, which competes with Europe’s busiest airport, Heathrow, west of London, had previously said Sunday would be its busiest day of the festive period.

There have been multiple reports of drone sightings since the initial report on Wednesday evening, Gatwick said. The runway briefly appeared to reopen around 0300 GMT before drones were spotted again.

Kochiashvili, who had been due to fly to Tbilisi, Georgia, on Wednesday, said she had spent six hours overnight sitting on a plane which did not take off.

“I’m very annoyed because I’m with two kids, a three-month-old and three-year-old. They require a lot of space and food and changing and all that, and the airport is crazy busy so it’s challenging. There’s literally zero information being shared,” she told Reuters by phone.

Passengers took to Twitter to share their stories.

One waiting at the airport on Thursday said: “At Gatwick Airport, drone chaos, surprisingly good-natured, but complete mayhem.”

(Reporting by Sarah Young in London and Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Mark Heinrich)