Terrorist attack ‘is a question of when, not if’
BRITAIN should be braced for a terrorist drone attack, a top expert warned yesterday.
Richard Walton, the former head of Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command, said Islamic State has used drones to drop bombs in the Middle East.
And he said it was “a question of when not if” armed drones would be used here.
Mr Walton, now director of Counter Terrorism Global Ltd, predicted copycat attacks and slammed the Government’s “chaotic response” to the Gatwick airport drone.
Mr Walton, who ran the Scotland Yard unit between 2011 and 2016, said: “It was too long before the drone flying above Gatwick was seen as a national major incident and treated accordingly, and it was too long before the Whitehall machine got involved. I’m surprised there wasn’t a ministerial Cobra meeting within six hours. From the outset it was clear that it would cause chaos. A report by the Combating Terrorism Center in the US set out in 2016 how drones have been used in the terrorist context for a number of years, including by Hezbollah and Islamic State.
“Sooner or later terrorists will use [them] here. It was always a question of when, not if.”
He added: “The Government should have been much more alive to this threat than they were. There is little in place to stop these drones from being flown over Downing Street, Buckingham Palace or other highly sensitive areas.”
Mr Walton called for five-year sentences for drone disruption to be increased to 20 years as a deterrent, and said the kilometre exclusion zone around airports should be widened to five.
But he conceded: “Drones are a very difficult threat in a civilian context, and there is sadly no foolproof solution.”