Drone advice for airports going forward

[JMartJr]

Greetings all!

It seems to me that the airports of the world will be in need of good advice on how to weed out false drone reports from actual drones in airspace where they do not belong. It also occurs to me that there is a unique collection of folks here, who have spent some time thinking about false reports and stuff in the sky and the psychology of flaps and all that, who come to the discussion from different POVs and knowledge sets, and who are pretty smart.

So I'm curious -- if it were up to you, what advice would you give? We don't want collisions with drones or with the ground swerving to avoid a drone while close to the ground, but we also don't want airports closed needlessly over and over again.

The floor is open...

 

[Mick West]

It's tricky because there's not a lot of time between eyewitness reports and the decision to close airspace. How do you decide quickly on limited information, and no time for a Metabunk-style analysis?

I'd suggest some kind of scoring system for reports, where the highest-ranking piece of evidence would be if they used binoculars to verify that it was actually a drone.

• Binocular verification. +5
• Multiple independent identical reports +5
• Object stops and hovers + 3
• Object changes direction +3
• Flightradar 24 was checked +2
• Distinctive drone audio +2
• Source is a "trained observer" +1
• In the middle of drone flap: -3
• Anonymous report: -5

With 10 points being a baseline requirement.

 

[Mendel]

larger airports acquire drone detection systems to avoid the consequences of shutting down for drone activity

 

[Mendel]

I'd suggest some kind of scoring system for reports

reports must be current, and verified with ATC

 

[FatPhil]

So I'm curious -- if it were up to you, what advice would you give? We don't want collisions with drones or with the ground swerving to avoid a drone while close to the ground, but we also don't want airports closed needlessly over and over again.

Leave it to the professionals, those with skin in the game. Most reports are noise, and therefore have more cost than benefit. C.f. terrorist-detecting face scanners at airports that are 99.9% accurate and therefore absolutely useless.

 

[FatPhil]

larger airports acquire drone detection systems to avoid the consequences of shutting down for drone activity

Being able to detect them does not preclude shutting down because of them, they are an air safety hazard even if they're innocent. They're less inclined to move out of the way of jet intakes than birds are, for example; birds having hearing, qualia generally, and brains.

 

[Mendel]

Being able to detect them does not preclude shutting down because of them, they are an air safety hazard even if they're innocent. They're less inclined to move out of the way of jet intakes than birds are, for example; birds having hearing, qualia generally, and brains.

drone operators can be approached by law enforcement before their craft pose a safety hazard, see e.g. upthread regarding Gardermoen.

birds are not equipped to evade aircraft, unfortunately; drone operators have a stake in not running their toy into something hard. (They very rarely do.) A consumer quadcopter weighs less than the birds a jet engine is rated to survive hitting.

 

[jarlrmai]

I think some sort of commercial grade AR system integrated with flight tracking data would be useful for ground based airport security. Basically the FR24 AR app but one that works a lot better.

 

[Gary C]

It's tricky because there's not a lot of time between eyewitness reports and the decision to close airspace. How do you decide quickly on limited information, and no time for a Metabunk-style analysis?

I'd suggest some kind of scoring system for reports, where the highest-ranking piece of evidence would be if they used binoculars to verify that it was actually a drone.

• Binocular verification. +5
• Multiple independent identical reports +5 **
• Object stops and hovers + 3
• Object changes direction +3
• Flightradar 24 was checked +2
• Distinctive drone audio +2
• Source is a "trained observer" +1
• In the middle of drone flap: -3
• Anonymous report: -5

With 10 points being a baseline requirement.

** Observed from multiple locations to establish that it is actually over controlled airspace.

Equip LEO and Airport Security operated drones with LEDs that flash in a coded sequence pre-assigned to the operating organization. This would enable rapid deconfliction of duplicate reports/videos when social contagion begins to generate new reports that are actually law enforcement/security staff response aircraft/drones.

Inward facing LIDAR equipped security cameras around the airport perimeter. Would allow a single camera to establish that the target object is/is not over controlled airspace.

 

[Mendel]

Inward facing LIDAR equipped security cameras around the airport perimeter. Would allow a single camera to establish that the target object is/is not over controlled airspace.

Controlled airspace extends far beyond the airport perimeter.

 

[Gary C]

Controlled airspace extends far beyond the airport perimeter.

Fair point, the local authorities are going to have to work with each airport and the national level aviation safety body to decide how close a drone has to be to constitute a safety/security problem in the first place.

 

[Mendel]

Fair point, the local authorities are going to have to work with each airport and the national level aviation safety body to decide how close a drone has to be to constitute a safety/security problem in the first place.

A drone in controlled airspace has a legal problem long before it becomes an air safety problem. That's what the drone detection systems promise help with.

 

[jdog]

A drone in controlled airspace has a legal problem long before it becomes an air safety problem. That's what the drone detection systems promise help with.

Aha, so it's all a plot by Big Drone Detection!

On a more serious note, there's already a whole industry for airport drone detection and protection, so I can't pretend to offer any meaningful insights. But I recall reading the other day that one Danish airport that had a drone detection system didn't report any of these incursions; I can't find the story now as it's buried within a mountain of slop.

I do find a story that the small Hans Christian Andersen Airport (which is the site of a drone testing center) deployed a drone detection radar system earlier this year (https://defence-industry.eu/weibel-xenta-c-drone-detection-radar-deployed-at-hca-airport) and it didn't have any issues this past week, though it's apparently not a commercial airport.

 

[jarlrmai]

You can have the most advanced drone detection system there is but if someone on the ground reports seeing something you still have to react.

 

[Mendel]

You can have the most advanced drone detection system there is but if someone on the ground reports seeing something you still have to react.

yeah, but in this case, the report goes to the drone detection team, and they have the means to confirm or reject it

 

[jarlrmai]

No they don't, they have a possible drone that may have breached the drone detection system. Just because the drone detection system doesn't pick it up doesn't mean it isn't there.

 

[JMartJr]

Being able to detect them does not preclude shutting down because of them, they are an air safety hazard even if they're innocent. They're less inclined to move out of the way of jet intakes than birds are, for example; birds having hearing, qualia generally, and brains.

True -- and closing down for actual drones is fine with me. How to make more drone operators behave responsibly (most, I think, do, but there are a cadre of untrained got-a-drone-for-CHristmas-and-have-no-idea-what-I'm-doing operators out there) is a different topic, I think...

 

[JMartJr]

You can have the most advanced drone detection system there is but if someone on the ground reports seeing something you still have to react.

IF that remains the case, I predict there will be increasingly common needless airport closings. Closing an airport is preferable to a plane being brought down, but NEEDLESSLY closing one has economic and human impacts with no concomitant gain in safety.

I'd favor erring on the side of caution -- but reducing the error rate will, I think, be important going forward.

 

[JMartJr]

No they don't, they have a possible drone that may have breached the drone detection system. Just because the drone detection system doesn't pick it up doesn't mean it isn't there.

Nor does a report of a drone being seen, though.


Is a detection system more or less reliable than human observer making a report? Given the massively unreliable nature of observers, as we saw during the NJ flap, I suspect the detection system is more reliable. But I don't KNOW that, maybe such systems are also massively unreliable at this point?

Wow, three replies in a row, sorry about that, I'll shut up now and let somebody else have a turn! ^_^