How Can Europe Fight Back Against Incursions by Drone Aircraft?
But once legislation has been passed the challenges do not end. Given the relatively small size of the drones causing the disruption, they can often be very difficult to target through traditional military means. Even if drones can be targeted, an additional risk is then posed – when a drone is shot out of the sky, there is little control over its trajectory as it falls to earth.
Once destroyed, it could easily land on airport infrastructure, on civilian property or in a worst-case scenario on people, causing injury or death.
Decisions whether to target drones causing this disruption must therefore be taken after a great deal of thought and consideration,. But other methods are available and new technologies are being developed that may provide more effective solutions in the future.
Jamming Technology
Instead of using so-called kinetic methods to physically destroy drones that are posing this problem, the use of jamming technology could be used to disrupt the communications link between the drone and the operator. As with kinetic attack, this response poses the challenge of what happens to the drone itself once the signal has been jammed and it falls out of the sky.
There are, however, several advantages to this approach. The first and most important advantage is that jamming can work for relatively long distances. This, disincentivizes further attacks as, in theory at least, any drone being flown cannot get within sufficient range to cause the level of disruption that has been seen in Denmark.
In addition to this, the lack of physical destruction from kinetic engagement means that, in theory at least, the drone can be recovered and information about its operation and whether it is a civilian or military asset can be discovered.
But using jamming technology to prevent drones from flying around civilian airports and military airbases has its own drawbacks. Jamming technology, as it is currently exists, cannot be targeted against individual aircraft. This means that any other aircraft within the vicinity of the airport or airbase where jamming technology is being used is also vulnerable to disruption. Due to this, closure of airspace would still be required to remove the threat of the drone, but this should be for a vastly reduced amount of time than is currently required.
There are, however, potential future technologies that might be incorporated into the defense of civilian airports and military airspaces. One such technology is currently being developed by the Royal Navy and has been named DragonFire. This uses the power of a long-range laser to physically destroy a drone in the sky from distances of up to three miles.
A further technology that is being developed by the British army, is jamming technology that can be directed on to targets with greater precision than is currently available outside of the British military.
These new technologies will take time to be widely used in civilian applications. So the sort of disruption we’ve been seeing lately will probably continue in the near future.
Matthew Powell is Teaching Fellow in Strategic and Air Power Studies, University of Portsmouth. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.
