Oh, you read that right. A drone gun. But this high-tech device of awesomeness doesn't fire bullets - the DroneDefender from Battelle sends out a signal up to 400 meters away to take advantage of typical standard drone (or UAV if you're feeling like you want to name things the actual names that they actually are) commands.
Will the affected flying nuisance suddenly fall out of the sky? I'm not quite sure. Regardless, anyone thinking about sending one up and over the White House fence will probably think twice. Law enforcement are being more and more armed with novel new ways to patrol the airspace between the ground and the patrol helicopter's rotor blades. Other ways till now have been a bit less high-tech. Some examples that stick in my memory include a country across the pond allowing their law enforcement (I think it was the Dutch) to train predator birds to hunt down illegal drones.
If only I could afford to begin falconry as a hobby.
Another was a university in Michigan that affixed a net launcher to another drone. While creative and visually appealing to watch one day, all I foresee is a slow moving dog fight right above our heads with a bunch of nets on the ground. (I'm only assuming the enforcing UAV will have multiple shots, if memory serves it had one at the time.)
Then there's the guy from the Renaissance Fair ... who took enforcing the an apparent "no-fly" zone over their event into his own hands. Or maybe he was deep in character and took offence to the flying alien thing in the sky.
The DroneDefender
In short, a police officer would fire a 30-degree cone and disrupts GPS navigation and remote control. This sounds like bad news for that China-based drone that puts a person inside without controls.
Sean Gallagher of arstechnica, found Battelle at the Navy League Sea Air Space Exposition. He watched a demo and writes:
"Aboard the Department of Defense's Stiletto "marine demonstrator" boat, Jake Sullivan was showing off his company's own counter-drone "gun," the Dronebuster. Sullivan, chief technology officer of California-based Flex Force, said that his company began development of Dronebuster shortly after drones interfered with firefighters in California last year. The intent was to develop something for first-responders and local law enforcement.
A version of the Dronebuster is already in the hands of some federal government customers. That device uses broadband jamming like the DroneDefender. It has the advantage of being much smaller than the DroneDefender, and it can be aimed using optical sights or an integrated radio frequency power meter and signal analyzer. Someone trained on the device can even distinguish what kind of signal is being emitted from the drone—telemetry (such as remote video streaming) or control. Still, its jamming technology makes it illegal to use in the US."
Dear reader, this could very well be a piece of tech that needs a few years for budgets to catch up to the development of the industry. Let me reword Gallagher's last sentence with a bit from the Battelle.org site:
"This device has not been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission. This device is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased in the United States, other than to the United States government and its agencies, until authorization is obtained. Under current law, the DroneDefender may be used in the United States only by employees of the Federal government and its agencies, and use by others may be illegal. Due to Federal regulations, this video is a simulation of the Battelle DroneDefender™ system. It has, though, been successfully tested in Federal government-conducted field trials."
To be even more clear (in case you're like me and need to read legal jargon three times before it becomes understandable), a source from the Battelle company explained to me directly via an email, "the technology is only available to federal officers at this time because of FCC regulations. We have heard lots of interest from local and state police departments, but they currently are not permitted to purchase the DroneDefender."
It may not be available right now ... but still, one has to appreciate how far the drone, UAV, or UAS industry has come. At one point these things were expensive toys you purchased at stores and annoyed the family on Christmas. Then they started putting payloads on them (we're not talking Predator drones here, ok ... think smaller).
Now we're trying to figure out how to enforce the law in this new playing field.
Still though, rogue drones aren't that much of a problem in my area - from what I can tell. Let me know in the comments if they are for you.
Stay safe out there ...
And look up.
(Does this put a damper on my flying car?)
