Dog fight: Start-ups take aim at errant drones

Consumer drones used by criminals, terrorists • Firms sell counter-drone services, products

A boom in consumer drone sales has spawned a counter-industry of start-ups aiming to stop drones flying where they should not by disabling them or knocking them out of the sky.

Dozens of start-up firms are developing techniques – such as deploying birds of prey and firing gas through a bazooka – to take on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are being used to smuggle drugs, drop bombs, spy on enemy lines or buzz public spaces.

The arms race is fed in part by the slow pace of government regulation for drones.

In Australia, for example, different agencies regulate drones and counter-drone technologies. “There are potential privacy issues in operating remotely piloted aircraft, but the Civil Aviation Safety Authority’s role is restricted to safety. Privacy is not in our remit,” the CASA told Reuters.

“There’s a bit of a fear factor here,” Lux Research analyst Kyle Landry said. “The high volume of drones, plus regulations that can’t quite keep pace, equals a need for personal counter-drone technology.”

The consumer drone market is expected to be worth $5 billion by 2021, according to market researcher Tractica. The average drone in the United States will cost more than $500 and pack a range of features such as high-definition cameras and built-in GPS, consultancy NPD Group said.

Australian authorities relaxed drone regulations in September, allowing anyone to fly drones weighing up to 2 kilograms without training, insurance, registration or certification.

Elsewhere, millions of consumers can fly high-end devices – and so can drug traffickers, criminal gangs and insurgents.

Drones have been used to smuggle cellphones, drugs and weapons into prisons, in one case triggering a riot. One US prison warden has converted a bookshelf into an impromptu display of drones A SKYDRONER 500 anti-drone system detects and deactivates a drone during a demonstration in Singapore last month. Dozens of start-up firms are developing techniques – such as deploying birds of prey and firing gas through a bazooka – to take on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are being used to smuggle drugs, drop bombs, spy on enemy lines or buzz public spaces. his officers have confiscated.

Armed groups in Iraq, Ukraine, Syria and Turkey are increasingly using offthe-shelf drones for reconnaissance or as improvised explosive devices, said Nic Jenzen-Jones, the director of Armament Research Services, a consultancy on weapons.

A booby-trapped drone launched by Islamic State terrorists killed two Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and wounded two French soldiers in October near Mosul.

The use of drones by such groups is likely to spread, Jenzen-Jones said. “There’s an understanding that the threat can migrate beyond existing conflict zones,” he told Reuters.

ANTI-DRONES

This is feeding demand for increasingly advanced technology to bring down or disable unwanted drones.

At one end of the scale, the Dutch national police recently bought several birds of prey from a start-up called Guard From Above to pluck unwanted drones from the sky, its CEO and founder Sjoerd Hoogendoorn said in an email.

Other approaches focus on netting drones, either via bigger drones or by guns firing a net and a parachute via compressed gas.

Some, such as Germany’s DeDrone, take a less-intrusive approach by using a combination of sensors – camera, acoustic, Wi-Fi signal detectors and radio-frequency (RF) scanners – to passively monitor drones within designated areas.

Newer start-ups, however, are focusing on cracking the radio wireless protocols used to control a drone’s direction and payload to then take it over and block its video transmission.

Singapore’s Tele Radio Engineering uses RF signals in its SkyDroner device to track and control drones and a video feed to confirm targets visually.

DroneVision Inc. of Taiwan says it is the first to anticipate the frequency hopping many drones use. Founder Kason Shih says his anti-drone gun – resembling a rifle with two oversized barrels coupled with a backpack – blocks the drone’s GPS signals and video transmission, forcing it back to where it took off via the drone’s own failsafe features.

VARIED CLIENTELE

Clients range from intelligence agencies to hotels, the start-up companies say. DroneVision, for example, helped local police down 40 drones flying around Taipei 101, one of the world’s tallest buildings and a magnet for drone users, in a single day.

In the Middle East, upscale hotels are talking to at least two companies about blocking drones from taking shots of their celebrity guests longing poolside or in the privacy of their bathrooms.

And even while the military may have the capability to bring down drones, demand is shifting to nimbler, more-agile devices to cope with attacks using smaller off-the-shelf devices, Jenzen-Jones said. “The key is looking for systems that are scalable, lightweight and easily deployable,” he said.

DroneShield, an Australian-listed company, said it has sold its drone detection equipment to an Asian national security agency it declined to identify and the Turkish Prime Minister’s Office.

HEY, REGULATORS

‘The high volume of drones, plus regulations that can’t quite keep pace, equals a need for personal counter-drone technology’

The problem is that regulations on the use of drones – and about countering them – are still in their infancy, the companies say. In countries such as the US and Australia, for example, drones are considered private property, and they can only be jammed by government agencies.

“Mitigation capabilities are therefore limited,” said Jonathan Hunter, the CEO of Department 13

However, DroneShield chief financial officer Oleg Vornik said: “This is expected to change shortly as governments start to recognize that critical infrastructure facilities such as airports need to be able to defend themselves against drones.”

In the US, the Federal Aviation Administration is testing various counter-drone technologies at several airports.

Interest in the space will only grow.

London will next year host the world’s first two conferences on counter-drone technologies, Jenzen-Jones said. But there will also likely be consolidation.

DroneShield’s Vornik said the company has counted 100 counter-drone start-ups and is talking to more than a dozen of them as potential acquisition targets.

It is too early to see evidence of moves to get around antidrone technology, he said. But Amazon.com last month tested deliveries in the UK via drones and published a patent describing how it might defend drones from threats, ranging from a bow and arrow to signal jammers. (Reuters)