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The past year has unfortunately seen a lot of drone incidents that disrupted airport traffic, posed a potentially disastrous threat to public events and created real damage to critical national infrastructure, as drone operators continue to flout the laws and regulations in place to limit their activities in sensitive locations. Ahead of the Countering Drones conference, Defence iQ compiled a map relating incidents that took place worldwide and have destabilized security nationally.

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Key benefits of downloading the map:

• Learn more about the incident response put in place by some countries against the threat posed by drones
• Gain insight into the drone law and regulations in effect in countries across the globe

By downloading the map, learn more about incidents and regulations in the following countries:

• United Kingdom 
  
• United States
• Canada
• France
  
• Germany 
• UAE 
• Oman
• Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
• Spain

Join us at Countering Drones and hear from law enforcement, airports, critical national infrastructure, subject matter experts, and technology leaders. To download the agenda, please click here.

The once disruptive drones have now become decidedly dangerous when put in the hands of actors with a nefarious, criminal and terrorist intent. While they offer a new tactic for these operators, they present a threat to nations and organizations which are still trying to play catch-up in order to defend against them.

Ahead of this year’s Countering Drones, Andrew Staniforth, Director of Innovation, Saher-Europe and Chairman of the conference, outlines the threat landscape of rogue drones, and how organizations can prepare to protect themselves against the use of drones by malicious actors.

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Key benefits of downloading the article:

• Understand the wide range of criminal activities drones can be used for
• Analyse the current threat landscape of rogue drones
• Learn how to prepare against the malicious use of drones

Read an exclusive preview of the article below:

The illegal use of drones is now a pressing security concern across the world as terrorists, activists and criminals are adopting drone technology and developing new, creative and sophisticated ways in which to commit crime and terrorism. The use of drones for hostile reconnaissance in theatres of conflict, and combined with their adaption to carry Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), has signalled the use of drones as a deadly and determined terrorist tactic. Organised Crime Groups (OCGs) profiting from human trafficking and people smuggling into and across Europe, are using drone technologies to monitor security measures at ports and border checkpoints. As a direct result of … To continue reading, please download the article.

As well as being the conference Chairman, Andrew Staniforth will also lead a workshop on DENI (Detection, Evaluation, Neutralisation & Investigation) Counter-Unmanned Aerial Vehicle training. You can download the full agenda of the conference here.

As recent incidents has shown – the Gatwick airport shut down, the attack on Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the prison escape of French outlaw Rédoine Faïd –, drones have the ability to create chaos at major transport hubs and enable terrorists and criminals to conduct illegal activities. Although authorities now take the threat more seriously, the question around their resilience and adequate response remains. 

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Ahead of this year’s Countering Drones Global Conference, Defence IQ have created this map outlining the latest drone incidents around the world. Speakers from the sectors represented here will be present at the event to further the discussion around the need to detect, identify and neutralise malicious drone activity. 

Download the map to learn more about:

Prisons – How drones enabled the smuggling of £500,000-worth of drugs into prisons across the UK last year

CNI – Greenpeace’s deliberate flying of a drone into EDF’s nuclear power station in France

Public events – The illegal drone which flew above an Ed Sheeran concert in Australia

Airports – The arrest of a man taking selfies inside the terminal area at Hong Kong International airport

Get a taste of the map below:

A pressing security concern is the continuing use of drones to smuggle illegal items into prisons such as narcotics. Last year, seven people in the UK were given jail terms after they were found guilty of using drones to smuggle £500,000-worth of drugs into prisons across the country. Drones have contributed to a huge influx in illegal narcotics entering UK prison populations, with one report by the Independent Monitoring Board noting that at least one prison, HMP The Mount, would have ‘nightly’ drone deliveries of the drug Spice. The UK Government could expand the use of anti-drone technologies for prisons in the near future after a successful trial in…

Aveillant is at the forefront of 3D holographic radar technology, seen as a promising solution to detect and track small drones in the civil airspace. Creator of the Gamekeeper radar currently operated in airports across Monaco, Singapore and Paris and partner of our Countering Drones Conference, Richard Lawrence the Sales & Marketing Manager shares in this exclusive interview with Defence IQ his expertise on the role of solution providers and their challenges in developing counter drone solutions. 

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Download the interview and get answers to the following questions:

• How would you rate the current threat that drones pose to public safety?
• What makes the detection and tracking of small drones so difficult in congested airspaces, such as airports, stadiums, prisons, CNI etc.? How can industry overcome these challenges to efficiently protect civilian and governmental infrastructure?
• Which sector do you see as the current main driver for the need for counter drone solutions?
• Are there any legislative or regulatory obstacles industry faces when creating counter drone solutions?

Get a preview of the interview below:

Defence IQ: What makes the detection and tracking of small drones so difficult in congested airspaces, such as airports, stadiums, prisons, CNI etc.? How can industry overcome these challenges to efficiently protect civilian and governmental infrastructure?

Richard Lawrence: Traditional ATC radar is designed to detect large targets at relatively long range. Drones are often too small for these systems to detect or separate from the background clutter so they are effectively invisible.

As well as being small, drones tend to fly relatively slowly, at low altitudes and may have erratic and unpredictable flight paths. These factors compound the difficulty for traditional radar to detect drones or differentiate them from avian targets.

Unlike other traffic in controlled airspace, drones are rarely equipped to report their altitude so even if they were visible to ATC radar, there would be no reliable way to establish safe vertical separation.

In an urban environment, reflected energy from buildings and other structures produces high levels of static clutter which can overwhelm…

In this exclusive opinion piece, the researchers behind the ‘Red Teaming Report’ on ‘The Nefarious, Criminal and Terrorist Use of Drones’, Professor David Dunn and Dr Christopher Wyatt from the University of Birmingham, explore the challenges surrounding countering drones in the civilian space. 

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Leaders of this year’s Countering Drones Conference workshop on ‘Helping security professionals understand risk, regulation and resilience to counter the accidental or unlawful misuse of drones’, they delve here into the three main themes that will be the core focus of the day: risk, regulation and resilience. 

Download the piece to learn more about:

• The challenges surrounding current risk management systems
• The necessity for regulation to act as a deterrent and bring liability to the different types of drone users
• The need for resilience to be built in infrastructure, for prevention and to combat specific threats

Get a preview of the article below:

RISK is normally considered to be made up of three factors: firstly, the likelihood, or probability, of an event taking place, the second is the impact that event may have, and the third is the appetite to take on that risk. Of these, the factor that gets most attention is probability. The reason for this is that it is considered easiest to affect, in part because impact is inherent in the degree of risk and there would generally be no appetite for taking on a large risk.

REGULATION - Our research into regulation has shown that it functions in two broad ways that need to be differentiated. These are: as a regulatory mechanism and regulation as a screening mechanism.

RESILIENCE - Our research on resilience has led us to see it in three ways. These are: prevention, infrastructure, and specific threats. […] In our view, swarms are going to form the most import single development in drone technology. As a factor, having more and smaller units is going to make so many tasks easier to carry out, whether it is surveying, in agriculture, or in the military.

This exclusive speaker preview from General (Rtd) Mahmoud Al-Bayati, Director General, Counter-Terrorism and National Security Senior Consultant, Iraq delves into the challenges of countering drones used by ISIS in the country. From surveillance to dropping IEDs, the commercially-available aircraft changed warfare from 2014 onwards.