I didn't see an existing thread so apologies if this is duplicate.
Always interesting to see what experienced travelers think about such events:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...airport-drones

It creeped me out to read about the damage that a drone could do to a large airplane. I'm a scared-enough flyer as it is.

Scary. I hope the creep behind this is found and gets the five years in prison that's possible. The disruption and inconvenience to so many travelers is unbelievable. What, does he think this is funny?

Remember when the fear was laser pens?

”This is why we can’t have nice things..”

This isn't one event. There have been a series of on going events. He should get five years for each and every one of them.

Now every crook, kook, and terrorist will start planning. A few hundred dollars and a few dolts can shut down LHR, or JFK, or CDG, Will trip insurance cover drone blockades?

And flights are again suspended.
I assume the army packed up their jamming devices and went home. Time to make them available to all major airports methinks.
Drones can be misused in so many scary ways.
I feel for those who have had their holidays messed up by this, but especially for those trying to get to weddings, funerals and dying family members.

I like what UK's Transport Secretary said:

“We will have to learn very quickly from what happened … I intend to convene discussions with airports around the UK,” he said, though he added: “The reality is the ability to stop drones is just emerging … There certainly isn’t a straightforward, off-the-shelf, commercial solution.”

Not too encouraging.

WHy isn't there? Drones work on fixed frequencies so you ouwld think it would be relatively easy to jam them.
An expert did say the drones must have been modified as the normal battery life ffor one that size is only about 15-20 minutes. SInce drones are programmed to return home when the battery fails you'd think it's be possible to track the thing.

Hets

Apparently, this thing isn’t last years Christmas present. It is by all accounts a substantial commercial product capable of much more than something you would buy from Amazon.

The latest theory is that it is some sort of eco warrior he’ll bent on ruining Christmas for so many,

It is a sad and poignant day for us, it is 30 years ago today that Pan Am flight 103 was blown up, very close to our house.

I dont thing the human race has progressed much since.

This is a very poor media message.

I don't think anyone would expect there to be a "straightforward, off the shelf commercial solution" to a planned and directed criminal incursion of one of the world's major airports with a commercial quality (and presumably specially adapted) drone where we still don't know the extent of the intent. Just like one might not expect there to be a "straightforward, off the shelf commercial solution" that keeps the London Underground from being blown up or a commercial airliner from being blown from the sky. Must there be a "straightforward, off the shelf commercial solution" for us to be protected in London's airports - the world's business network of airports of any city in the world? We expect in one of the world's premier (and most targeted) cities to be protected with a range of capabilities, not just what you can buy ready-made.

One might not be surprised that the airport was caught off-guard by the attack but it's shocking that it was able to persist while (presumably) the country's best security experts trained in and prepared for drone attacks looked on helplessly. In a major global city that's been continually under some form of threat for many decades, you have to believe there are crack teams that are well prepared to deal with a rogue drone wherever it might appear. Drones carrying nuke, bio, etc loads have long been identified as a potential terror tool over stadiums and other high profile places where lots of lives can be lost. So why couldn't this have been very quickly resolved? Kind of troubling for general security everywhere across the land.

Is a very good point WA.

I’d have thought they could identify the frequency of operation and then triangulate to establish where the operator was located. Very quickly.

In 1965, MI6 were capable of producing Aston Martins with ejector seats and laser guided rockets from cigarettes. What have they been doing since?

There was a techy geek interviewed on the News at 10 last night who showed his wonder product that was able to locate drones and their operators. Use him!

Two arrests have been made: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-46657505

The trouble was that the operators kept moving, according to the reports I saw.

The news that I read about the arrest had very little detail and I know next to nothing about drones and less about security in general. And I know you're just responding to BC's specific point.

However, aligned with my head scratching on the government's excuse that there is no "straightforward, off-the-shelf, commercial solution” for drone defence, we need to consider that drones are built and used by militaries (including our enemies) and sophisticated terror groups as purpose built weapon systems. Like I'm sure we do, our enemies are secretly building new and different drone systems and I'm sure it's a very quickly evolving space. Unless we expect our enemies to attack us with straightforward, off-the-shelf drones, why are we talking about defending the land with straightforward, off-the-shelf, commercial solutions. Shocking and scary when you think about it. Just like any defence systems, it's a challenge to stay one step ahead but that's what we depend on our military, police, intelligence and anti-terror units to do.

Therefore, if the operators were moving around, that alone sounds like a Mickey Mouse tactic that a 12 year old mischievous drone operator might use when annoying his neighbours with his Christmas present drone. Again, with no knowledge of anything in this space you can think that a sophisticated military level attack might use many different controller transmission points, relays and range extender type devices, some kind of highly protected and hidden data transmission approach or one that mimics other types of data transmission. Etc, etc. Who knows but you can imagine that a sophisticated drone attack would involve much more than an operator simply moving around to avoid detection.

The moving around thing.

Isn’t triangulation the method by which phones are tracked? Google does this every millisecond of the day unless you disable your apps.

As far as I could see widely available top end drones have a range of 10km, charge time of 3 hours and a battery life of 30 minutes.

I don’t want to feed a monster but I’d be very worried if I were a French air traffic controller in view of the anti establishment actions recently in France.

There’s a lot a enfranchised middle income travellers out there, there are far more people who have been left behind and have an axe to grind.

It's been a long time since school but trianglantuation from memory requires three receivers. The directional receiver draws a line in the direction of the signal and the point the three intersect at is the source. Some thing along those lines.

By moving around did they really mean move or did they mean it seems like they moved? With two operators and two sets of controllers couldn't you just hand off ? That would make it seem like they were moving around.

Last week there was a news report on Isis building and using drones. Not very well. But they're trying. Google ISIS drone and you'll find reports going back more than a year.

The details of what techniques of detection and avoidance of detection are beyond my grasp or interest but yes, i think you can imagine that real drone defences would take into account what seems quite basic - multiple points of control and multiple points of control that are moving around.

The main (and scary) point for me is that this seemed like a relatively unsophisticated attack that (presumably) seemed to very easily foil the country's best experts on anti-drone defence. We don't have all the details but on the scale of a highly sophisticated and coordinated military grade type of attack with many operatives, careful planning, latest military grade drone and weapon systems, secured communication channels, etc, etc. down to a kid with a toy, this seems to be relatively unsophisticated, even if it was an adapted commercial type drone. I have no idea but I hope that this was a wake up call to our preparedness for something that could have been much, much worse.

“. Google ISIS drone”

and you you may get a knock on the door from MI5.

there again...,

Hmmm. If I were ISIS, now would be the time to search while a million others are doing the same. Security by obscurity.