With the commercialization of drones and their accessibility to the public, there has become an increased issue of the public piloting their (gear) into places uninvited. Who recalls the Gatwick Airport Christmas chaos? Now, an Israeli defense tech company has unveiled an “anti-drone solution” that uses laser beams to shoot down flying drones from miles in the distance.
This new advancement is the latest in a series of efforts to produce anti-drone technology. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd, the company responsible, has produced a high-power laser beam to track and destroy drones mid-air. The video above, complete with dramatic music, was released in the last few days and demonstrates how the system uses coarse tracking (a wide angle view) and fine tracking (much more zoomed in) to keep tabs on a target. The Drone Dome can spot objects as small as 0.002 square meters from a distance of 3.5 km (2.1 miles).
In what the company describe as a “hard-kill,” the drones seen in the video are shot down from the sky, clearly fried by the laser. There’s even a “three-drone swarm” option, allowing users to take down multiple targets in quick succession.
It's certainly a more viable option than when police in the Netherlands trained eagles to take down drones back in 2016.
I'd love to have permission to use one of those.
Lending a new meaning to a "drone strike".
So dumb.
Dumb? Why? It is unfortunately necessary for civil and military uses.
I am a CAA registered drone flyer and there is no law in place that gives these people the right to take out my drone for any reason what so ever. I wont be breaking any law they will be bring it on
I think you may have missed the intent of this article. We need the ability to take out drones where they should not be flying, such as in airport airspace, not just to arbitrarily shoot down drones.
This isn't a 'shoot a drone for fun' issue. This is, as Billy mentioned, for dolts flying their drones into controlled airspace. If, say, a guy has a Cessna Skylane and has a prop strike because someone is flying their drone in an airport's airspace, that Cessna owner is REQUIRED to tear the engine down to ensure that there is no damage to the engine. It costs a bunch of money to do a tear down and inspection.
What should happen is if the drone pilot is caught, that pilot should be liable for the Cessna owner's invoices. Same for a big airliner. Suck a drone into a big turbofan and it'll more than likely survive, but that big engine must now be torn down to look for damage. Do you have any idea what that costs? And that cost includes the downtime for that airplane.
Dream on a Seagull would do more damage than a drone let alone a Goose hitting a plane. My thoughts are correct this is to take out drones and larger items out of the sky think about it.....why would a company invest millions into developing an item to take out a toy because they are looking way beyond toy drones
The damage done is irrelevant if you own the plane that had a prop strike or the plane that had it's really expensive turbofan suck in 'pick your object'. Also, I didn't put a size limit on the drone. There's a lot of drones out there available to the public that are fairly large and carry a fairly large camera. My son has one (professional photographer) that uses it for his business. He did the whole FAA thing back when this stuff was in its infancy. His drone is quite large.
Also, think about the airports that shut down operations due to a drone appearing in their airspace. The cost to the airlines that would have to vector planes into a holding pattern or worse, send them to an alternate airport should also be paid by the offender.
The sad part of this is the fact that we are even discussing it. Actions have consequences. If this drone thing becomes more prevalent, there is a risk of drones being banned. I do not wish to see this happen, but human nature, bad and good, seems to defy common sense and logic.
One other point; I'm a backyard astronomer and use a green laser pointer when I do public outreach events to point out areas of the sky. As you know, there are idiots out there related to the idiot drone 'pilots' we're discussing that insist on pointing their laser into airplane cockpits. Again, logic and common sense are thrown out the window.