As an addition to its recently announced drone policies, the government has now directed the drone makers to install a kill switch in their drones for bringing them down in the case they go rogue.
The directive holds utmost importance in a world that sees rising adoption of drones. With the recent incidents across the world, like the one on London¡¯s Gatwick airport in December that made the authorities ground multiple flights due to a drone scare, there is no doubt that drones can easily cause massive chaos if intended for the purpose.
With security agencies in India also raising concerns over the increasing drone use in the country, the government now wants to have complete control over rogue drones. To do this, an independent tracking hardware has been suggested for use, which will be able to interfere with the drone's sensors including GPS. Industry analysts say that the technology is prevalent and can be installed in existing drones too.
So the end result in the case a drone goes out of control would be the authorities bringing it down, either at a specified location or on the spot. However, the additional hardware is not the only way to bring such drones down. A look at other nations and their practised measures against drones reveal a long list of anti-drone policies in effect. Here are some of them, in case the Indian authorities would be interested in other prospects:
1. Using Nets
There are pistols. There are rifles. And then there are bazookas. But these drone-catching bazookas are not your regular ones filled with explosives. Instead, they appoint a net to take down any rogue drone in the vicinity. And as expected, there is no?way for drones to escape that, until they become fast enough to dodge these mid-air. The system has also been used by OpenWorks in an automatic machine gun-like structure.
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2. Spoofing
Now, this is more of a cyber-attack than a physical attempt to capture drones. Several spoofing techniques have been employed by different companies to date but the effect is more or less the same. The drone is remotely hijacked from its original controller and controlled as per need. The kind of technique that can actually be disastrous in the wrong hands.
This works well on commercial drones, partly because they seldom employ spoofing protection due to the cost. But it might fail in the case of military drones, which cycle through different frequencies to avoid spoofing.
3. Radio Jammers
Kind of like spoofing through radio frequencies. Radio jammers help gain control of a drone, disrupting its original radio frequencies. What¡¯s more interesting, at least from an operator¡¯s perspective, is that these come in the form ¡®as cool as it gets¡¯ MIB-like guns, which are aimed at the drone to fire conical radio frequency jammers.
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4. Geofencing
This is like creating invisible barriers, in the air, where the drones cannot enter or exit from. Drone makers like DJI are already using this technology, marking the major areas of security as inaccessible for its drones.
5. Animals
Believe it or not, authorities in some countries have been deploying various members the animal kingdom to bring down drones. A recent example of this is the Dutch police that teamed up with a raptor training company named Guard From Above to see the feasibility of using birds of prey for snatching drones mid-air.
There is a serious thought to be given to anti-drone measures, as not all of them are effective in every scenario. For those using cyber methods, not all of the prevalent drones are vulnerable to technology. Also, it is easy for future drones to have technology that can render such methods useless. Similarly, physical methods cannot be practised in areas inaccessible to humans, usually found around the countries' borders.