Reports

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.

Download the map now >>

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.

"Of those industries that are seen as particularly at-risk of unlawful drone use, 83% claim they require counter-drone solutions and are yet to fulfill this requirement..."

Estimated at around $127 billion, the 'drone revolution' is booming. But amongst the optimism is a creeping concern about the security and safety threat that this technology presents to critical national infrastructure, homeland security and a range of commercial sectors.

Defence IQ surveyed over 430 people with an interest in unmanned aerial vehicle/counter-drone technology developments. We asked them whether they believed the threat is really as serious as many suspect and if the commercial sector is ready for major security incidents resulting from drone-use. Download the infographic for the full results...

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. 

Download the map on the right >>

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…

• Dubai's airport financial cost of having to stop traffic for a couple of hours because of drones spotted flying in the area
• London's airports many near-misses and the current countermeasure in place at Southend airport
• The massive disruption of flight operations at Chengdu Shuangliu International airport

While this year’s Countering Drones forum will be providing a dedicated focus on the technologies and legal implications surrounding drone countermeasures for at-risk sites, it will also be offering scope on the efforts to raise public awareness on drone regulations so as to lessen the risk of negligent incidents. After all, massive financial and physical disruption can occur even when an operator is not actively trying to cause chaos, as some of these latest cases can attest.

In this exclusive article, Nathan Wall, Airside Safety Lead at Cork Airport and one of this year's speakers, explains how the NO DRONE ZONE campaign has launched and why it is so vital in preventing incidents around our airdromes...

While regulations emerge in more countries, the number of incidents that could potentially create serious damage keeps increasing at a rate too fast to keep up. More civilian drones than ever are being used illegally or above sensitive areas and could threaten national security. In this updated map, discover which new countries have implemented regulations and what incidents have happened in the past year.

[Disclaimer: This information is provided for guidance and comparison only. Information is subject to change. Defence IQ accepts no responsibility for the use of this information.]

Drones—or as they are also known, armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)—are in the headlines and provoking debates, especially for their use in U.S. targeted killings. They are spreading across the globe and others are beginning to use them. How dangerous is the proliferation of armed UAVs and what effect will they have on U.S. security?

With the conflict in The Democratic Republic of the Congo nearing 10 years of almost non-stop fighting, and with political relations between the government and rebel groups - and more recently Rwanda - at a stalemate, focus has shifted to the UN peacekeeping force, MONUSCO, in a search for solutions to the ever-worsening humanitarian situation.

The purpose of this document is to briefly frame the challenges of detecting low, slow, and small (LSS) unmanned aerial systems (UAS).

As Defence IQ has recently reported, the rising number of criminal and negligent incidents involving civilian unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) is pushing harder on the need for a greater awareness of the potential dangers to the public. However, in many cases, awareness is just not enough. The progress of UAS technology requires a tandem attention to the progress of counter-technology – effective and safe methods of neutralising these vehicles when they become a threat, particularly to vulnerable civil sites.

Much of this process is being made in the United States, where the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has, as of August 29, released a rule to allow for the use of small UAS within national airspace. To get a better perspective on how this technology is moving forward, we caught up with Andrew Lacher, UAS Integration Lead and Research Strategist at technology R&D centre the MITRE Corporation, ahead of his brief at the Countering Drones conference...

The NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) programme remains of critical importance to the alliance and to the future shape of unmanned aviation in Europe. But the problems facing both the platform and the general sector aren’t quite as close to being solved as appearance suggests judging by reports from the rollout event for the first AGS airframe.