Drones are the hot topic for Times Square tonight.
There are multi-agency controlled drones for crowd observation. These are tethered so that, in the event of failure, they don’t drop into the crowd below.
There are also “anti-drone” systems which are being mentioned but without much detail. These are in place to handle unauthorized flight systems that enter the Square’s airspace.
What I want to know is how the anti-drone systems intercept a UAV and then prevent both systems from tumbling out of control into the crowd. There really aren’t a lot of options for intercept here:
1. Jam the receiver of unauthorized system so that it is no longer under control of the original pilot. What now? It’s either at a hover above the crowd with no pilot, or it free falls.
2. Entangle the system’s propellers (perhaps with net or wire). Now it’s snared in the air, but attached to what? It needs to go somewhere, under complete control.
3. Over-ride the UAV’s receiver and take control by remote, flying it out of the airspace. This sounds like movie science fiction but a company, WhiteFox, recently received a $12M contract for this type of solution (complimented by radio frequency detection to identify if it’s a commercial or custom UAV).
I want to know more! It’s not like we’re doing anything eventful tonight. Off to Google I go.