How can airports fight back against drones?(rte.ie)
rte.ie
How can airports fight back against drones?
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2025/1001/1536198-drones-airport-distruption-denmark-eu-summit/
11 comments
While I agree it isn't right or moral, I'd argue that this behaviour has been 'normal' for a long time now - but for most of the last 100 years the main funding and actors behind the undeclared wars were the global West.
We are now in a place where it is cheaper than ever and even easier to set up attacks from afar https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/04/23/russian-sp...
We are now in a place where it is cheaper than ever and even easier to set up attacks from afar https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/04/23/russian-sp...
> Jamming technology, as it is currently exists, cannot be targeted against individual aircraft
What prevents me from filling the air with seemingly white noise with an encrypted digital data in it?
What prevents me from filling the air with seemingly white noise with an encrypted digital data in it?
Would your signal eminate from the drones, or a dedicated platform?
Against the drones, that would be difficult to prevent, but the limitations imposed by the transmitter gear (size, weight, inverse square law of area being jammed) would probably limit the impact.
The dedicated platform would be located via signal strength analysis and likely physically destroyed.
Against the drones, that would be difficult to prevent, but the limitations imposed by the transmitter gear (size, weight, inverse square law of area being jammed) would probably limit the impact.
The dedicated platform would be located via signal strength analysis and likely physically destroyed.
> likely physically destroyed.
Not in the context of an airport security.
Not in the context of an airport security.
It feels like we have disparate mental models for what is happening.
Mine was that the noise generation was part of the adversary's actions (as is the presence of the drones themselves).
Are you suggesting that the noise (+encrypted data) is part of the airport's standard procedures, and authorized users pick out (and decrypt) the data, and everything else (like Command & Control) of adversarial devices is overwhelmed by the overall noise?
Mine was that the noise generation was part of the adversary's actions (as is the presence of the drones themselves).
Are you suggesting that the noise (+encrypted data) is part of the airport's standard procedures, and authorized users pick out (and decrypt) the data, and everything else (like Command & Control) of adversarial devices is overwhelmed by the overall noise?
Yep, pretty much that.
Distributing (and controlling) the necessary decryption seems like a helaciously difficult challenge for general/commercial aviation. Who are the authorized recievers of the ebcrypted data? How do we revoke access as time goes on? How do we handle normal key rotation (so that the adversary can't have unlimited time to crack/bruteforce the current keys)?
(Not my core field, so this is SWAG-ish): There is also a separate but equally important problem of signal vs noise - isolating the signal for decryption. Doable, but fairly costly to implement, and far more brittle than I suspect would be acceptable.
(Not my core field, so this is SWAG-ish): There is also a separate but equally important problem of signal vs noise - isolating the signal for decryption. Doable, but fairly costly to implement, and far more brittle than I suspect would be acceptable.
everybody is working up fully autonomous drones
russians are fielding fiberopp drones
retail drones are bieng weaponised everywhere
delivery drones
agricultural drones
search and rescue drones
so, no "fighting back" , as we enter a new age of universal aysymetric warfare
prolly better to have peace overwhelm peoples desires for revenge and mayhem, but I am thinking there will be an upswing in billionares building bombproof stuff, and a lot of mayhem happens before peace breaks out
prolly better to have peace overwhelm peoples desires for revenge and mayhem, but I am thinking there will be an upswing in billionares building bombproof stuff, and a lot of mayhem happens before peace breaks out
Send the hounds, err, the hawks!
Probably by not committing genocide
There are also risks of doing nothing. It's a cost/benefit issue more than anything else, but legislative maybe has to come first: empower airport police to take action.
I think we're in an undeclared asymmetric war. Arson attacks, test runs, sovereign citizens being encouraged to take direct action against infrastructure. People are wierd, people are gullible, people are impressionable and people are angry and motivated. It's easy pickings for state actors to do arms length actions. "Here, take this smelly rag and stuff it under the nose of this person at an airport for a prank on secret camera tv" actually happened: it was a nerve agent.
Former soviet Republic nations flags being waved by .. pacific Island noumean independence rebels. Iranian agents paying Australian crime gangs to commit arson attacks against synagogues. This is not normal.