Urgent solution needed to meet the very real threat of drones

THE drone incident at Dublin Airport last week has once again highlighted just how vulnerable the basic infrastructure that we take for granted is to technological attack. With operations suspended for 30 minutes after a pilot spotted a drone while taxying to a runway, in accordance with DAA procedure, the incident in Dublin had far less of an impact than the drone incursions that shut down Gatwick Airport for three days last December. But it is still an extremely serious turn of events and one that needs to be addressed urgently.

It is reassuring then to see that the Government is treating the episode with the gravity it deserves.

After the Gatwick incident, Ireland’s National Civil Aviation Threat and Risk Group met to discuss the situation and come up with a plan of action should something similar unfold here.

That group – which involves the gardaí, defence forces, officials from the departments of transport, justice and foreign affairs, the Irish Aviation Authority, and representatives from Ireland’s airports and airlines – will meet again this week to examine the fallout from the events at Dublin airport last Thursday.

Unfortunately, they are hamstrung in what they can do to deal with the threat.

Drones are a relatively new phenomenon and currently there are few, if any, foolproof ways of protecting sensitive sites from them.

One solution that has been tried at several airports across the world is the use of electronic ‘drone guns’ which fire disruptive beams that jam the signals to a drone and bring it down.

Other sites have used specially trained birds of prey to catch the drones while powerful net guns have also had limited success.

The problem with all these ‘solutions’ is that they are typically extremely expensive and, even given the high cost, they are not very effective.

Conversely – if you wish to cause disruption on a massive scale – the drones themselves are very cheap and highly effective.

It’s essentially a reverse arms race that is currently being won by increasingly cheap and better quality drones.

It is still unclear if the drone incursion at Dublin airport was malicious or the mistaken action of an irresponsible, ill-informed and poorly trained drone user.

Whatever the background to the incident it, like Gatwick before it, has shown how easy it is to shut down a major international airport.

A decade ago a terrorist operation aimed at shutting down an entire airport for three days would have required months of preparation, planning and training as well as hundreds of thousands of Euro.

Now, as we saw at Gatwick before Christmas, it takes just two people, who would require almost no training, and a pair of drones that could cost as little as €100 apiece.

At best they could shut down an airport. At worst they could use a drone, with their explosive and flammable lithium batteries, to bring down an airliner by flying into its jet engines.

It is hard to know what can be done in the face of this new threat but it is one we must take very seriously.