An Entire Anti-Drone Industry Is Emerging

An entire anti-drone industry is emerging that will arm anti-drone people with anti-drone technology.

These new tools will enable drone detection, tracking, identification, disabling, and even hacking and hijacking the drones as they fly.

The big-iron drone hunters

The anti-drone idea started years ago with the military. The big military contractors, like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Thales Group, Israel Aerospace Industries and Russia's United Instrument Manufacturing Corporation, which focuses on countering US-made military drones, were happy to develop expensive, powerful anti-drone technologies.

The US Army is testing Raytheon's Phaser, a massive electromagnetic pulse (EMP) device that can shut down an entire drone swarm with a single blast. It's essentially a microwave radiation transmitter mounted on a 20-foot shipping container.

The trouble is, big-iron solutions are right for the airplane-sized drones used by major military powers. But insurgents, terrorists and criminals are increasingly flying smaller, consumer-sized drones for delivering bombs. And these smaller drones need a smaller solution. Surprisingly, ISIS terrorists aren't just using off-the-shelf consumer drones, but also building their own from scratch.

The US Marine Corps is working on a truck-mounted laser beam that kills smaller drones in flight. And the US Air Force wants handheld drone-killing kits.

Prison Drones

Prisons worldwide have a big drone problem. Accomplices on the outside are smuggling smartphones, drugs, and weapons using drones. Prison guards in Denmark recently discovered that someone used a drone to fly two mobile phones and a saw blade right through the window of a prisoner's cell.

The drone pilot wasn't caught. In fact, with prison drone smuggling, they rarely are. That's why The UK's Ministry of Justice wants drone-makers to hard-code prison locations into consumer drones to make prisons into no-fly zones.

Airport Drone problems

Airports also have a drone problem. Although far less likely than bird strikes, drones are a growing concern. Airport drone strikes and near strikes are way up.

The Dubai airport was closed three times this year because of drones. It recently deployed a "drone hunter," a drone that uses an infrared camera to identify drones near the airport.

A small private airplane flying about four miles from the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport last month spotted a drone flying at an incredible 4,000-feet altitude. FAA rules say that drones are not allowed to fly above 400 feet.

Denver International Airport last month started testing "drone zappers" as part of a wider effort by the FAA to identify the best way for all major U.S. airports to deal with the drone menace.

Drones have become such a central problem for airports that airplane makers are getting into the action. Companies like Airbus and Boeing are developing anti-drone technologies, presumably to be installed in the jets themselves.

Unauthorized, unwanted or illegal drone flying is a growing problem all over the world. Celebrity-obsessed fans and paparazzi are increasingly buzzing movie and TV sets, such as The Game of Thrones set in Ireland.

Construction sites for splashy or secretive building projects get the drone treatment as well, sites like Apple's new spaceship campus in Cupertino, Calif.

First responders are increasingly harassed and endangered by drones. Curious onlookers are using drones to check out fires, police standoffs and the damage caused by natural disasters. Such events involve fast-moving helicopters and other aircraft that are endangered by drones. Another problem is that drones make noise that can hamper search efforts.

The Technology

The fast-growing anti-drone industry involves wildly different approaches and technologies.

One is the "space gun" approach, which uses special-purpose rifles designed to shoot a focused ray that jams all the frequencies that consumer drones use to communicate with their handheld controllers.

The newest anti-drone "space gun" is DroneShield's DroneGun, demonstrated on video for the first time this week. Another is Battelle's DroneDefender.

Both work by jamming all the radio signals that drones could use to interact with a controller. They make the drone react as if the controller is offline.

Because signal jammers are illegal in the United States, DroneGun and DroneDefender can't legally be used until laws change or special permission is given. They are legal for certain federal agencies, such as the Secret Service. DroneShield is also an industry leader in drone detection and monitoring products.

The signal jamming approach is one of the most common, and most of the products are ground-based rather than shoulder-fired.

A company called Elbit Systems unveiled last month its ReDrone system, which detects drones, then identifies them, tracks them like radar, then disrupts drones by interfering with the radio connection between drone and controller.

Other companies that make 360-degree, multi-drone signal disrupter systems include Blighter Surveillance Systems, Liteye Systems, Selex, SRC and Dedrone. The Dedrone product can also disrupt by using lasers, or blind a camera on a drone, according to the company.

Another way to stop a drone is to throw a net over the drone to bring it down. These can be shoulder-fired nets, as with the Skywall 100, a bazooka that can bring down a drone from up to 100 yards away. It uses a computer-controlled targeting system that shows distance, and displays a green light when aim is correct.

The Skywall 100 launches a canister that explodes before reaching the drone, deploying a net that tangles up the rotors. Once a drone is ensnared, a parachute brings it gently down to earth. The parachute protects people below from falling drones.

Theiss UAV Solutions' EXCIPIO also launches a net out of a cannon, but does so from another drone. This approach has a longer range than the cannon approach, but you get only one shot.

Michigan Tech is also working on a "Drone-Catcher" system involving a drone that shoots a net to capture another drone.

Malou Tech has demonstrated its Drone Interceptor system that hangs a net from the bottom of a drone. You catch the other drone by flying over it. The spinning rotors get tangled in the net, and the drone can be carried back to the operator.

Another approach is to hack drones

The hilariously named security company Pwnie Express claims to have developed the first drone malware. First introduced in January and called Maldrone, Pwnie Express uses Wi-Fi to infect other drones with a payload that, among other things, disables the autopilot, causing the drone to fall out of the sky. The company demonstrated this being delivered from another drone.

A company called Department 13, funded by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), hacks drones by injecting packets of code into the radio protocol used for communication between the drone and its handheld controller. When the product, called the Mesmer, successfully cracks a radio protocol, it can take command of the drone.

Here come the consumer drone hunters

If you think anti-drone tech for consumers sounds farfetched, you should know that apps for tracking drones already exist. Apps like DeTect's Drone Watcher App and Drone Detector Free are available now on the Google Play store.

Computerworld:    No Need To Shoot Down Drones – Just Hijack Them:       Effective Drone Defence & Control: