Drone chaos halts flights again
THOUSANDS of passengers faced a continuing Christmas nightmare after a new drone sighting forced Gatwick to close again last night.
It was seen after Britain’s secondbusiest airport had slowly begun to recover following a complete shutdown due to drones on Wednesday night and all day on Thursday.
The confirmed sighting, which caused an 80-minute suspension of flights, raised concerns that the authorities faced a cat-and-mouse battle against drone operators.
The chaos has already caused misery for up to 240,000 travellers.
Earlier in the day, the deployment of British troops with a sophisticated drone-hunting kit had seemed to deter the rogue operator.
Activists
But at about 5.10pm yesterday the airport was shut once more.
A Gatwick spokeswoman said: “While we investigated, airfield movements were suspended.
“The military measures we have in place at the airport have provided us with the reassurance necessary that it is safe to reopen our airfield.”
Sussex Police admitted that they still do not know who is behind the drone disruption but were following up a “number of persons of interest”.
They believe more than one individual and more than one drone are involved, with more than 50 sightings of the devices in 24 hours.
They are keeping an open-mind about whether the incidents are “state-sponsored” or terrorist-related. Other possible suspects are thought to include climate change activists.
But the failure of any group to claim responsibility means that delinquents cannot be ruled out.
There had been hope of an end to the misery when troops brought in technology designed to tackle drones.
With no drones spotted since 10pm on Thursday, a reduced number of flights began landing and taking off early yesterday morning.
Soldiers were called in late on Wednesday after the drone operators ran rings round Sussex Police for nearly 24 hours.
Sussex Police say they now have had a range of devices, from “technical sophisticated options” to shotguns.
But Colonel Richard Kemp, a former Intelligence chairman of the Cabinet’s emergency Cobra committee, said: “It is amazing that this kit was not in place and that we have had to wait two days for it to be installed. This drone incident is hardly a surprise. They’ve been known about for years.”
Sussex Police Assistant Chief Constable Steve Barry said: “We are keeping all options open in terms of what the motivation might have been.”
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said: “I have had discussions with the ABI [Association of British Insurers] on reimbursing those passengers with insurance cover whose flights were delayed or cancelled.
“I have had further conversations with the aviation industry about measures that can be put in place to help protect airports from similar incidents happening again.”
IF WE can’t stop a couple of drones from disrupting one of our leading airports, what chance have we got against an enemy attack? Our armed forces are ranked the fifth most powerful in the world, with the UK just behind the US, Russia and China in our ability to project devastating military action around the globe, and yet a bloke with a radio-controlled drone has brought our transport system to its knees. Shooting down the drone was considered at one stage to be too dangerous by health and safety experts. Get a grip!
We spend billions on defence and yet no one has seriously considered this cheap threat to our key international airports. Security services such as GCHQ can eavesdrop on conversations the other side of the world and can photograph enemies from space, but a major part of our infrastructure is brought to a halt by a geek overlooking Gatwick.
New technology is available to block drone radio signals and pinpoint who is flying them. Why did Gatwick not have that to hand? A few thousand pounds spent on antidrone measures would have saved millions in disrupted flights and holidays.
Who pays the price? The passengers who may not receive compensation because the Civil Aviation Authority considers this drone attack “extraordinary circumstances”. Is it really extraordinary or a new factor in air travel? Drone sightings near airports, including near misses, have risen dramatically recently and Gatwick should have been fully prepared, as it is for any terrorist threat.
THE law must also keep pace with developments and fully appreciate the gravity of this new kind of assault. A UK law introduced this year that threatens rogue drone operators with a £2,500 fine and jail if caught within two-thirds of a mile of an airport is inadequate. In the US the ban is five miles from any restricted air space. They clearly understand the national security dimensions of this.
A fine and a short jail sentence is hardly going to deter a terrorist or an enemy agent from using drones to ground our air services. This is now a loophole in our national defence and we need to plug it with a sophisticated proactive system that can knock out drones near airports and trace their operators. The equipment is available and being used in warzones such as Iraq and Syria to defeat ISIS weaponised drones. We just need to wake up to this threat at home.
Equally worrying is the growing fear that this is very much a planned attack on Gatwick airport not by an unhinged hobbyist but by an extremist group. The finger points not at Islamist radicals at war with us but a new kind of “terrorist”: the ecowarrior. This latest incident would seem to fit into a pattern of protests designed to cause maximum disruption to our national transport system.
In November, hundreds of radical environmentalists brought London transport to a halt by blocking bridges and roads across the capital. They are a part of a new potentially dangerous breed of ecoactivists who want to draw attention to the so-called dangers of climate change by disrupting our day-to-day travel. Many of those protestors on the streets of London are against international air travel and a third runway at Heathrow.
I am not at all suggesting the organisers of that protest were involved in this incident, but a lone-wolf individual or a small splinter group of like-minded activists might well have decided to take further this form of protest by ruining the holidays of thousands of Brits looking forward to Christmas abroad. It seems to be the only motive that makes sense and recent police statements confirm that suspicion.
Some parts of the media don’t help by heightening hysteria over climate change, going along with biased assertions that we have only a few years left to save our planet from supposedly devastating temperature rises. This is used by extremists to justify evermore radical, ever-more disruptive action. The media should be far more critical of their protests because by treading softly they will only encourage it. There should be a much more balanced debate drawing attention to the reality that much climate change rhetoric is based on scientific speculation, not on hard facts. Climate change has always happened over millions of years and it is not always bad news. Currently the UK is experiencing a warming period from the mini-ice age of the 17th and 18th centuries which saw regular Frost Fairs on a frozen Thames. When temperatures were hotter in the Middle Ages we enjoyed bumper harvests and a spike in prosperity that funded the glorious age of cathedral building.
W‘This is a loophole in our national defence’
E MUST not give succour to mainly Left-wing protestors who want to use the Green movement to bring down capitalism and impoverish our daily lives. In the meantime we must learn quickly from the drone attacks on Gatwick to protect our airports more decisively against future assaults. Next time the drones might be armed and could bring down aircraft in flight. It is no good giving our troops the best equipment to fight wars abroad, when by spending a few more thousands of pounds we can secure our own transport system on home soil.
The Christmas misery of thousands of families will not then have been in vain if we act promptly on what quite frankly has been a national disgrace.