Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a Spiderman-style web to bring down drones

British scientists develop entanglement devices to prevent repeat of Gatwick attack that caused chaos

SPIDERMAN-style webs fired at drones to bring them crashing to the ground are at the centre of plans to prevent another Gatwick Airport attack. “Entanglement devices” featuring tassels that paralyse rotors and can be deployed over “drone swarms” have been submitted as a patent by the Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace.

The move follows hundreds of international flights being cancelled for three days after drones were spotted close to Gatwick’s runway in 2018.

The military and police were deployed amid fears an “unmanned aerial vehicle” (UAV) possibly controlled by a terrorist could bring down a passenger jet, killing hundreds of people.

Although Mr Wallace warned those putting lives at risk by flying a UAV near airports would face “the most severe sentences” he would not be drawn on methods that could be deployed to bring down drones.

But an MoD patent application filed with the Intellectual Property Office reveals a series of new ways to tackle “illegal or nuisance drones”.

The inventions are part of a Defence Science and Technology Laboratory project, the Porton Down-based agency which has led research on anti-drone technology.

The designs use a “plurality of filaments attached together to form a tassel” that “when deployed... spread apart over a wide area before being pulled into the drone propellers, wrapping around them and forcing the drone to land.”

While early designs saw the tassels “knocked away”, this new version means when “one filament is knocked away from a propeller, the remaining filaments are resultantly pulled into the propeller... severely affecting the drone’s ability to manoeuvre, or reducing the ability of the drone to generate lift such that it is forced to land or impact the ground.”

The document says tassels could be made from “ripstop” man-made woven fibres, strings or ribbons and create webs large enough to engulf the entire drone and all of its rotors.

The lighter the material the more likely the webs would “float or loiter in the proximity of a drone, rather than fall away from its vicinity.”

A second element would involve a stealth airborne “intercept vehicle” – or drone – which could fly over a “drone swarm” before dropping a “payload” of entanglement devices to generate a

‘They spread apart over a wide area before being pulled into the propellers, forcing the drone to land’

“debris field”. A more advanced design is for the “intercept drone”, which drops the devices to be fired towards the offending vehicle before it begins flying to deliver its webs.

But the most ambitious technique is to drop a “plurality of entanglement devices” with numerous “masses, lengths and numbers [of ] filaments” so that “some fall faster than others, or are more susceptible to movement in an air stream” maximising the area covered.

These latest methods follow the more conventional approach of ensnaring the device compared with more high-tech ways of preventing it entering controlled airspace by interrupting – or “jamming” – wireless frequencies or by using geo-fencing where a virtual or digital boundary is created.

It is hoped this latest design could be deployed if and when those high-tech methods fail.

The document explains how drones “are increasingly used for recreational purposes, but also can be used for remote operations and surveillance”.