>- UK refusal to fire on the craft is absurd because rubber bullets, simunitions, and less-than-lethal rounds are more than capable of destabilizing the hull and structure of the craft... while inflicting no damage on distant landed craft or personnel. (I wouldn't expect HN to know this, tbh)
I think the only naive person here is you.
Firstly rubber bullets like those used for crowd control are fired form either a special barrel break or from a 40mm underbarell attachment (grenade launcher).
These are disks made out of steel covered with a thick layer of rubber and they are inaccurate as fuck, you will not hit a man sized target even at 50 yards with them yet alone a drone.
The other option is various shotgun polymer slugs which have a slightly better accuracy but still hitting a drone size target is nearly impossible.
You’re best bet is birdshot it then again you are limited with range.
However you still have the issue that the police isn’t trained nor equipped to fire at drones and until they can be achieved they have no option.
And even if you train those policemen to effectively hit drones those drones aren’t easily accessible and fly out of reach.
The previous incident last week which also shutdown the airport had a drone at 10,000 feet, but even a few 100’s of feet would put the drone outside of the range of anything that you could plausibly use at an airport.
That said since these drones only have a short loitering time and even if they are shot down the police still needs to investigate and clear the area to ensure that there are not other drones and to collect any evidence and statements you don’t gain anything by shooting them down the airspace would still be locked down for just as long.
So when your decision is to try to shoot drones you likely can’t hit to cut their loitering time by 5-10 min at best while potentially endangering the field or people or to wait for them to fly back to their owner in the hopes of catching them it’s not a hard decision at all and doesn’t show any level of incompetence on the behalf of the British police.
P.S. in every case effectively the shutdown came after the drones have left the area already, they are only there for a few minutes the airport is huge by the time the police can even get close they are gone but then order is then issued to ensure that there are no more drones in the area.
Unless we will start putting on phalanx installations every couple of 100’s or yards around the perimeter of the airport there is no kinetic way to shoot these things down.