Gatwick closed (mod note post 1)

mickmackey1

sugarman wrote: »

Itd be nothing more than a speck, a pilot at the airport took a pic from his cabin on the ground earlier and posted it to his twitter but it literally looked like a piece of dust on the lens.

The police are saying they received more than 50 sightings. So they must be pretty obvious from the ground. And 'industrial level' drones would be of a decent size I would have thought.

mickdw

50 sightings. Unreal not to be able to get a handle on it / them.
Doesn't add up at this stage.

Ninthlife

Ninthlife wrote: »

So technically I could have 50 drones all lined up pre programmed to fly a certain route and land in a designated end point and put a timer on each drone to start its flight?

Yep and if you get into the realm of DIY the sky is the limit.

I mostly fly helicopters rather than quads and some of the stuff you can do with modern r/c helis is unbelievable. Flying upside down and buzzing around in a way that seems to defy the laws of physics. Look at the way this thing moves and then imagine how it pertains to a future AI drone that doesn't want to be shot down..

https://youtu.be/l5FqYiZb_5s?t=34

It's pretty terrifying and not all that far-fetched to imagine a swarm of these rolling into a busy city centre and f*cking **** up with improvised explosives or a hazardous gas.

artanevilla

sugarman wrote: »

To the naked eye yeah, but to capture it on a camera would be next to impossible at the distance and altitude its at, especially with a smartphone. Sure even a telephoto lens on a high end DSLR would struggle to capture it with focus and stability issues if they even did manage to catch a glimpse.

Yeah but the police aren't lads sitting in a call centre just taking calls from the public. They should really have the resources to at least identify what at this stage must be a decent sized bunch of drones (still quite small), but the ****ing army have been deployed. This should have been put to bed long ago.

Best case scenario this is major incompetentence on the part of the state.

mickdw

I think the airport should have been evacuated. Once this went past an hour or so, it was a serious situation and clearly dealing with nutjobs. Planes grounded, airport packed, imagine if a bomb went off in the middle of that crowd. There would rightly be questions asked as to why the people were not deemed to be in danger within the terminal?
Certainly If I was travelling through there today, I would be hanging out well away from the centre of the action.

sugarman

sugarman wrote: »

To the naked eye yeah, but to capture it on a camera would be next to impossible at the distance and altitude its at, especially with a smartphone. Sure even a telephoto lens on a high end DSLR would struggle to capture it with focus and stability issues if they even did manage to catch a glimpse.

In fairness, the media are all over it now. I'm confident the photographers covering this have telephoto lenses well capable of getting something at a distance, with cameras using a fairly high MP count, to crop in on it.


It is generally bewildering that this is still ongoing. As others have said, it's either moving in and out of an urban area (the drone, I mean) so surely someone would have reported it by now, or it is pottering in and out from a rural location around the airport, meaning it should be relatively easy to follow (especially if you've both the Police and Army at your disposal).




As someone who generally rolls my eyes quite hard at any kind of conspiracy theory, I am starting to feel like there's something else going on here. A drone does not close an airport by repeatedly traveling in and out of it, and the government, army and police are bewildered as regards what to do; not in real life.


The image this is sending out, in my opinion, is that if you had any kind of terrorism interest at all, you'd be seeing this and realising that if you can get any kind of explosive attached to a drone, the world is your oyster, as the UK simply don't know what to do with a drone.


Instead of even mentioning it, they should simply have requested a media blackout on it, and ignored it until it's over and done (that goes for both if it is actually a drone causing all this trouble, or if that's just an excuse for another issue).

knucklehead6

Open and flight operations have resumed

irelandspurs

I think it's amazon

Ninthlife

irelandspurs wrote: »

I think it's amazon

You spelt aliens wrong

Van.Bosch

Strange that it reopens at 6 despite telling people last night not to come to the airport this morning. Wouldn’t you be livid if your flight went but you weren’t on it?

robinph

Latest from the airport / police is basically that the baddies got away. They haven't caught anyone, haven't got any drones, haven't got any leads they are admitting to following.

Main reason for reopening seems to be there hasn't been any more drone since yesterday lunchtime and they now have a bunch of lads with bigger guns wearing cammo outfits on call.

Padraig Mor

robinph wrote: »

Latest from the airport / police is basically that the baddies got away. They haven't caught anyone, haven't got any drones, haven't got any leads they are admitting to following.

Main reason for reopening seems to be there hasn't been any more drone since yesterday lunchtime and they now have a bunch of lads with bigger guns wearing cammo outfits on call.

They said last night at 9 that there had been drone activity within the previous hour.

Car99

I bet theyre worried the drone and pilot are on their way to an airport near you !

Beechwoodspark

So is that it then? No sign of the drone or the operator.

The entire incident doesn’t add up for me.

ectoraige

Car99 wrote: »

I bet theyre worried the drone and pilot are on their way to an airport near you !

Yeah, I wonder is this going to play out like the Washington sniper.

FrancieBrady

Maybe the extortion fees were paid?

This had the potential to close the airport for the busiest period of the year, many many many millions would have been lost.

knucklehead6

FrancieBrady wrote: »

Maybe the extortion fees were paid?

This had the potential to close the airport for the busiest period of the year, many many many millions would have been lost.

I’d be incredibly surprised if this is the case.

dhaughton99

Beechwoodspark wrote: »

So is that it then? No sign of the drone or the operator.

The entire incident doesn’t add up for me.

That’s probably the last you’ll hear of this story and back to normal and all forgotten about by tomorrow. The media won’t ask questions.

It all stinks, big time. My bet is that it was a much larger threat or had intel on something or someone and had nothing to do with drones.

robinph

I guess if the police are saying "we have no leads" there is only so many times that the media can ask them what leads they have, but it still seems very odd. Yes it's a something for them to be covering to poor kid who's not made their flight to lapland or the couple trying to fly to somewhere for their honeymoon/ wedding, but there is very limited detail or even questioning of the who, what, how and why of it all.

robinph

Conspiracy theory alert: It has stopped the media from covering the fact that parliament went on holiday two days ago which would have resulted in the media stood outside Westminster asking each MP they could get their hands on why they were not back in work and trying to sort out the mess.

plodder

Car99 wrote: »

I bet theyre worried the drone and pilot are on their way to an airport near you !

The whole aviation world has been caught with its pants down here, especially if this was just one lone "activist" it doesn't bear thinking about what an organised group could do. I don't believe the authorities have any of the counter-measures speculated about, eg GPS spoofing. Like a lot of other counter-measures, it has been demonstrated in controlled conditions, but outside of specific military applications I can't see it being used. I'm not sure what they can actually do beyond flooding the surrounding area with personnel and patrolling in helicopters. Neither of which are great long term solutions, nor particularly effective.

ednwireland

why didnt they swamp the place with troops, just to get eyes on the ground , few hundred troops would have had more chance of spotting what was going on surely. seems like there was no contingency.

robinph

ednwireland wrote: »

why didnt they swamp the place with troops, just to get eyes on the ground , few hundred troops would have had more chance of spotting what was going on surely. seems like there was no contingency.

They should have been on the phone to the military first thing in the morning when the drone re-appeared to request a bunch of soldiers. Stick a load of them around the perimeter and be the eyes for the police. The military can't really do a whole lot internally I think without some serious authorisations from on high, but you can use them to collect rubbish, help with fires (during strikes) and stand around looking for drones without any claims of them overstepping any marks.

By the time they decided to call on their help though it was already late in the day and far to late to get them moved before dark.

realdanbreen

FrancieBrady wrote: »

Maybe the extortion fees were paid?

This had the potential to close the airport for the busiest period of the year, many many many millions would have been lost.

I agree. Drones appear, close the airport, then drones are gone! The authorities are now acting in a 'nothing to see here' manner and the police have also clammed up.

IQO

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/24/mystery-drones-spotted-paris-eiffel-louvre
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31599903

This French drone "mystery" was also never really explained a few years back, at some point they just disappeared and left the daily news cycle.

robinph

IQO wrote: »

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/24/mystery-drones-spotted-paris-eiffel-louvre
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31599903

This French drone "mystery" was also never really explained a few years back, at some point they just disappeared and left the daily news cycle.

I can see it being far more difficult to track the drone down within a built up area, but in an airport where the authorities have sole access to the massive open space in the middle and clear views all around and relatively simple to close down any access roads around most of the area as there are only limited roads...then I'd have expected better from them in being able to catch whoever is responsible, or at least where the drone was coming from/ going to.

Wanderer2010

Ill admit I haven't read all of this thread but my initial reaction to this was "Why on earth is it taking them so long to find out who is operating these drones?". We have some amazing technology out there with regards satellites, signal tracing etc and yet here is the army, and all the associated costs that it brings, coming in to sweep the area and still not actually finding the source. Its embarrassing to witness- a few scumbags grinding a massive airport to a complete halt because they want to cause trouble with drones? Obviously the technology isn't as good as I thought, it looks really bad for the airport that they haven't caught these idiots.

ednwireland

just look for someone who has bought lots of drone batteries recently

The Nutty M

I wonder has the operation around Horley got anything to do with the drones at the moment. 2 news helicopters circling for the last while.

robinph

The Nutty M wrote: »

I wonder has the operation around Horley got anything to do with the drones at the moment. 2 news helicopters circling for the last while.

Could just be to get some pictures of planes taking off and landing for the midday news seeing as they were probably told to keep well away yesterday.