Illegal drones ground water-dropping helicopters in Maria fire battle | Hacker News Reader

Illegal drones ground water-dropping helicopters in Maria fire battle

latimes.com

145 pointsstarpilot170 comments

I hope DJI responds with a firmware update preventing flight in temporary no-fly zones. Right now they respect static no fly zones, but when temporary ones get put up you can still fly inside them.

It's a real shame that large ready-to-fly drones aren't required by law to prevent arming in no-fly zones. About half of the DJI pilots I know actively prevent their firmware from being upgraded to the one that will respect static no-fly zones.

> It's a real shame that large ready-to-fly drones aren't required by law to prevent arming in no-fly zones.

What if I have a permission to fly there?

A friend of mine struggles with this a lot. He does real estate photography and has photographed even at international airports (under strict supervision).

The FAA establishes complete "no-fly" zones where you may never fly a UAS period. These are zones like active landing/takeoff routes and areas with low flying aircraft like the fire fighting aircraft in the article.

I have never heard of someone obtaining FAA authorization to fly a UAS in one of these zones, so I seriously doubt someone using a ready-to-fly kit would be able to do so.

One common misconception is the difference between a no-fly zone and controlled airspace. If you want to fly in controlled airspace (within 3 miles of an airport or so), you can obtain said authorization using the LAANC system. It's extremely easy, you just install an app, verify your phone number, and submit the flight request.

There are actually a couple classes of airspace that are technically “controlled” but don’t require authorization from nearby towers.

May want to refresh your 107 information.

For the purpose of non-aviation people reading a comment thread about drones, it's good enough. I could edit my post and include all the weird side cases about controlled airspace but at the end of the day it's not relevant to the reader.

Visualizing these areas with an AR headset would be really useful

DJI already have a process for getting clearance to fly in restricted zones. It's called flysafe self unlock.

[Edit: changed "no-fly" to restricted]

I was with you for your first half. Defaults matter - it's likely this situation was caused by someone who obtained a drone with little effort, and is blissfully taking pictures of the fire operations. And then wondering why the helicopters have stopped flying and there's nothing to photograph. Hence the TV ads.

But it's no wonder why many device owners would push back having their devices implanted with inescapable third party controls. The people with enough awareness to do this also likely have a enough awareness to not disrupt emergency air traffic as well!

Generally if someone wants to direct their drone to do illegal things, the common sense assumption is that they're going to make that happen somehow, rather than reacting by trying to bake in technological authoritarianism. It's naive to think that since it's possible to write code to enforce a condition, that this can scale to the level of society!

It could be someone in fire operations themselves that wants to try out using off the shelf technology to improve their operation, but instead stuck budgeting and requisitioning a single "government priced" drone rather self-purchasing a few expendable ones on a lark. Or sure, it could also be some shithead who laughs as they help the fire spread. Despite the amount of hypothetical attention, the latter asshole is extremely rare, and the right way to deal with them is heavy civil and criminal punishment as going around the safety defaults has established their firm intent.

I would actually draw the parallel with cars here; the airspace/roads are similarly regulated and should require a license to use. For sure some uses can be less regulated than other (like bicycles or kites), but drones have demonstrated to be clearly more complex.

I realize that we should not be rushed in disturbing a blooming industry and I have a lot of respect for the progress made in recent years, but as things stand in my (uninformed) opinion something akin to license plate registration/piloting license is the best long term choice to protect good actors.

Broadcasting an identity would indeed be a good way to do post-facto enforcement instead of resorting to technological authoritarianism.

However, it's worth remembering that car license plates have become a major surveillance vector in the modern age. It would be straightforward to fix this - imagine RF or eink transponders with a number that changes every minute, with a cryptographic key required to tie the broadcasted nym to anything else, and a public audit trail every time it is done - but government inertia is huge. This regime should really be fixed before it is expanded.

Loosing all benefit for other citizens while just mildly annoying those in power by putting pretend barriers in place? No, thanks.

I'd really like to know who owns those 4-5 scrap bicycles standing around near my home, so they can be removed and spots made available. For drones I feel similar... determining the owner of something close by should be possible without going through police.

As a matter of fact I do not feel it is a good idea to tie civil and/or criminal topics to cryptographic technologies (this does not exclude voting, but that is a completely different discussion).

Essentially you are asking to legislate a IoT frameworks that is resilient enough to be used in courts or law.

It could be someone in fire operations themselves that wants to try out using off the shelf technology to improve their operation

It's a conflagration. The people in fire operations have better things to do than play with toy "drones." They also know better than to fly in areas where water is being deployed.

It's naive to think that since it's possible to write code to enforce a condition, that this can scale to the level of society!

We can control technology a lot easier than we can control people.

> The people in fire operations have better things to do than play with toy "drones."

That's a strong assertion, given all of the information one can imagine obtaining about the fire. I don't know the current state of practice, but it seems like even individual ground crews would benefit from cheap overhead views.

They might, and it would be up to the incident commander, who's also aware of water tanker flights, to allow it or not. Firefighting operations have command and control. They have to.

Duh, I don't know how that wasn't implicit in what I said. Are people really reading my comment thinking I'm advocating that bystanders go fly drones into fires, tweet the pictures, and congratulate themselves for helping the firefighting effort? If it's not clear, don't do that.

I was just pointing out the firefighters, you know the people using their sweat, intellect, and long term health to control the fires, just might themselves cook up some use for consumer drones. For which they would then have to convince their commanders, one of the objections being price, and so giving drone manufacturers an excuse to implement market segmentation would hinder them.

The sort of arrogant self-absorbed people who would fly a drone over a wildfire are the same sort of arrogant self-absorbed people who would flash their drone with hacked firmware to bypass any restrictions.

Rules are for other people.

Probably many people are just ignorant, not deliberately mischievous.

That’s pretty much the reason Europeans don’t allow people to own guns.

This is not correct. The details of gun ownership rights depends on the individual European state, but it's absolutely possible for a civilian to own guns. In fact, some do. It's just not engrained in the general culture or connected to the protection of rights, and subject to stricter regulation.

Look, I didn’t say “all Europeans”.

And “stricter regulation” is literally “you need to prove you need a gun and that you are sane” in most of the cases.

"Prove you need it" isn't really an accurate summation of European gun laws, since as far as I'm aware they all allow ownership of firearms in cases where somebody wants a gun, rather than needs it. Who in Europe needs to hunt for substance, or needs to participate in marksmanship sports? These are recreational hobbies that the gun laws of all European nations I'm aware of accommodate.

I know many European gun laws are what would be described in the US as 'shall-issue', so it's not 'prove you need it' in all cases.

In the UK, which has some of the strictest laws, it's more like show you have a legitimate reason. Hunting is a common one, but self defense is not a legitimate reason. Apparently, working in maritime security in a piracy area lets you buy almost anything, even handguns and automatic weapons that are otherwise banned.

> In the UK, which has some of the strictest laws, it's more like show you have a legitimate reason.

This is not true for guns. The UK police are required, by law, to issue a gun certificate unless they have a specific reason not to. Rifles are different.

I really don't want to wade into this debate, but I'm really confused by how you are using "gun" and "rifle" here. "Rifle" us a strict subset of "gun" in my vocabulary.

A gun is a shotgun, a canon, something that fires shot or a shell, that kind of thing. A rifle has rifling and fires a bullet. It's technical, but we're talking about laws so the technicalities matter. In the UK a licence for a gun, such as a shotgun, is 'shall-issue' to use terminology the US is familiar with. They need a reason to deny - you don't need a reason to be approved.

For future reference, in the U.S. and Canada (and possibly elsewhere), gun also refers to rifles and handguns, not just smoothbore guns.

I find it incredibly amusing how everyone in this thread clearly had forgotten in the context of what I had made that comment in the first place.

Now - if you use a gun outside the hunting area or marksmanship competition, what do you think would happen to you?

I have started this thread because that's exactly what drone owners are currently doing. Trying to defend them because they "didn't know about non-static no-fly zones" is a good reason to take away their license to use the drones as opposed to saying that "people make mistakes".

In a lot of European countries self defence is enough of a reason to be granted a weapon license. The regulation is mostly about sanity, central databases and background and regular storage checks.

Is allowed but regulated. There are duck hunters in Europe also.

The drone problem has being disclosed since years. People flying drones are technologically competent. "If you fly we cant" campaign was launched on several media.

Argumenting ignorance as excuse is strange after all those years.

I have never seen this campaign, though I would have some reservations about flying a drone around a fire my curiosity may get the better of me. Just anecdotal evidence, buy it's entirely possible to be technologically competent and ignorant.

Additionally, my father isn't overly technologically competent but does own a drone, they've been fairly standard gifts for family members who buy everything for a while now. I can easily imagine him and his golfing buddies talking about getting footage of a fire on their drones.

It never would have occurred to me that aircraft tough enough for the heat and turbulence and debris over a forest fire could be affected by drones. I can find a few "if you fly, we can't" search results but I hadn't seen that message before today. Maybe they're just very precisely targeted? (Drones are tempting but I don't own one.)

I'm pretty sure that people who design, build, operate, maintain, pilot or regulate aircraft know more about that topic than anyone else does. Without strong evidence to the contrary, I'm going to believe them when they say it's dangerous to have drones in the air they're trying to use.

"It never would have occurred to me" doesn't meet the standard for strong evidence to the contrary.

I'm not saying the problem doesn't exist, just that it's counter-intuitive and not widely publicized.

I don't think the parent is arguing that it isn't true, just that ignorance is more likely than suggested.

> It never would have occurred to me that aircraft tough enough for the heat and turbulence and debris over a forest fire could be affected by drones

If ignorance is an excuse, then drone operators should be tested on such knowledge and licensed. Someone who doesn't realize their drone can impact another aircraft shouldn't be operating drones in the first place.

A drone hitting the tail rotor of a helicopter will drop it right out of the sky. A drone crashing into the leading edge of a jet's wing will hole it mightily (there's a video online if you google it.) Birds can do serious damage too but birds usually try to avoid low, slow aircraft. Drones don't.

It's been well publicized especially in areas that have many forest fires, but some people still don't get the message. I still meet people who have never heard that pointing lasers at airplanes can result in serious jail time, and when I tell them they think I'm kidding.

It's 100% ignorance. And there's no requirement to be technically competent thanks to ez-mode consumer drones.

The problem is there's no certification or training requirement, there's no barrier to entry. Any cretin can go and buy something like a DJI Inspire, not read any of the rules/regulations, not understand how dangerous it is, and fly it straight into their neighbour's garage door.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TQQcBWV6Vs

There's a small handful of people who know the rules and choose to break them, but they're also the people who will immediately land and bail if they hear air traffic because they understand that the consequences of any fuckups will be life-ruining. The guys holding back firefighting operations are just clueless idiots.

Not always... They could just be curious people who want to see the fire. Just because they didn't fully think through their actions doesn't mean they would continue if it was pointed out to them.

And some people might want to see the fire.. but maybe not enough to risk bricking their drone. Introducing additional financial risk could be all the disincentive they need.

If you caught a flashed drone and found the user, it would enable stiffer penalties also. Flashing the drone would signal clear intent to break the law.

I don't think a person needs to be self-absorbed or arrogant to flash their drone. It reminds me of jailbreaking when iPhones first came out. We were warned it would void our warranty and possible we could go to jail for hacking our own device. But we did it anyways because I like to have full control over my devices. I would want the same with my drone. Why? Because though I would respect a no fly zone in a fire situation I may not do the same if my government was arbitrarily placing them up during protests or to prevent people from recording human rights issues.

Well said, I'm disappointed that you're getting downvoted for expressing this sentiment. Actions like BART blocking cellphones show that the government is entirely willing to make arbitrary technology restrictions to squash protests. If drones were widely available in Nazi Germany, would they have been allowed to fly near concentration camps? Pass whatever silly laws you want, but don't call those who preserve their tools and freedoms arrogant and self absorbed -- save those labels for the assholes who actually interfere with firefighting operations.

Strict laws can help to fix people who don't want to play by the rules.

Shotguns are a fun solution for these assholes. I of course mean shooting the drones, not the pilots.

Sounds like a bad idea in a dry area battling wildfires given that the lithium batteries could burn.

At this point that's where the legal/justice system should intervene. Not all problems can (or should) be fixed by a technological solution.

Same thing with consumer routers, I wouldn't want the FCC to forbid custom firmwares to cease to exists because some bad actors could use frequencies they're not supposed to. These custom firmwares are useful in many cases, including supporting them with security fixes when the manufacturer doesn't.

Doesn't it seem likely at least some of these drones are operated by the same people chasing accidents/violent crime scenes with cameras to then sell the footage to TV/news?

It's not uncommon for them to break rules to get the shot. Arguably it defines a big part of their profession, and if it's paying their bills they're going to keep doing it.

The film Nightcrawler provides an interesting lens to view this situation through.

That would be a reasonable explanation. People can accept the risk of being fined if there is a reasonable expectation of monetary reward.

But this still does not explain why so many fires and why now and not one month ago.

Hmm, maybe when I own the device, I should be able to use it without interference ( and suffer the appropriate consequences ). I wonder if you be posting the same thing if say.. your automaker made your car refuse to enter Boston, as it was just designated a no drive zone. Rules matter and should be enforced. Just not via limiting my ownership rights.

Your car however carries registration, which has a strong papertrail that leads directly to you, which can easily be observed from a distance.

Drones on the other hand may not carry registration requirements at all (depending on jurisdiction, power and weight), and building one yourself doesn't require more-than-hobbyist level knowledge of engineering.

A technical solution probably is required, but what that technical solution is I can't say.

"A technical solution probably is required, but what that technical solution is I can't say."

The government could make drones that shoot down unauthorized drones.

It's safer to not need to do this at all.

in the US, any drone above 250g must be registered with the FAA. there are very few drones below this weight that can hover in place or be controlled at all from more than 100 feet away away. the new DJI mavic mini is a notable exception.

I know it's tempting to essentially say "fuck them, just force them to comply" when people partaking in an activity you don't really care about cause problems, but imo this is not the best solution for a free society. if you believe car registration creates an effective deterrent, why not advocate for stricter registration requirements for drones? if you believe drone enthusiasts are ignorant, why not require an exam?

> building one yourself doesn't require more-than-hobbyist level knowledge of engineering

this seems like a red herring in your argument. the DIY crowd is not likely to bother implementing no-fly-zone enforcement in their own project.

I don't think you've really grasped what I'm saying at all.

I do care about drones, I've built several myself.

A technical solution doesn't come without regulation, so yes, this area does need better regulation, so that people can't ruin a hobby with terrible behaviour such as getting in the way of fire-fighting. (I'm Australian, bushfires are one of our hot-button issues.)

The regulation can be used to enforce the technical solution, so that the DIY crowd knows there is a hurdle to entry they need to comply with. Some won't, but you'll have significantly less unknown drones in serious danger areas.

I don't have a significant answer, and I've already said that.

based on the original comment you were responding to, I assumed you were arguing in favor of software controls. my apologies, I should have read your post more carefully.

Gp said that the drones currently obey static no fly zones. If you bought a car knowing it will refuse to enter static no-drive zones, you shouldn't be surprised when it refuses to drive into temporary no-drive zones.

Is any licensure required for large drones? For instance, the amateur radio exams, specifically the technician (first level), don't require a ton of study, but you do need to know the rules to pass and be granted the associated privileges. From there, radios are fairly open and don't place many or any restrictions in software or hardware.

The 'drone' rules situation in the US is a mess. When I stopped paying attention (Not in the US) The drone community, and Academy of model Aeronautics, the FAA and Congress were in a weird four way fight.

Congress had told The FAA they were explicitly not allowed to regulate model aircraft, and delegated some regulation powers to hobbyist groups, the only recognised group being the AMA. The drone community doesn't want to respect the AMA regulations, because the rules don't accommodate first person or semi autonomous control of aircraft or commercial uses. But there is no-one else to advocate for the drone users when the FAA starts trying to regulate drones.

Hanlon's razor https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

> would flash their drone with hacked firmware

Is it possible to have the firmware signed so that if it doesn't match a hash then it bricks the device?

yes, but where would you get that hash from? Unless there's a trusted computing unit with an encrypted enclave, you can't prevent the user from also creating a matching hash.

I say it's better to use the rule of law - make drones registered, and licensed. If you fly it and got caught doing no-fly zone, you get punished.

It's relatively cheap and easy to use something like ARM TrustZone that has a public key hash set in the processor via blowing fuses on the die itself to ensure that that processor will only boot up with a firmware image that's signed by the manufacturer. If you wanted to get around it you would need to replace the processor with a virgin one and then get it to load your modified firmware.

It's completely impractical to do something like this to evade a geofence block. It would be much easier to just add a tiny microcontroller between the GPS receiver onboard and the processor that just introduces a large offset in the NMEA messages such that it would think it's hundreds of miles away from it's true location and evade the geofence that way.

> The sort of arrogant self-absorbed people who would fly a drone over a wildfire are the same sort of arrogant self-absorbed people who would flash their drone with hacked firmware to bypass any restrictions.

Perfect is the enemy of good. [0]

DJI has a 70% market share.[1] If they made the changes which the parent requested, then it would certainly lower the number of times this would happen. IMO, not all self-absorbed people are into flashing hacked firmware. Lowering the number of these incidents has the potential to save lives, and also lowers the risk of regulatory changes for radio controlled aircraft.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJI_(company)

> aren't required by law to prevent arming in no-fly zones

Arming? Are these drones carrying some kind of weapon or explosive?

arm - Verb (transitive) To prepare a tool or a weapon for action; to activate.

Do you arm your car when you turn it on? No, so why use it for a drone?

The terminology and practice comes from the time when drones were primarily built by hobbyists. Rotors are dangerous for fleshy things, and it's easy to leave controls in an unsafe state (throttles especially, they usually don't have a spring return).

An arming sequence prevents accidents when tinkering and requires the controls to be reset. Like if you're connecting a battery preflight, you don't want the rotors to suddenly spin up and slice your arms to bits. Exposed CF blades spinning at 5k RPM can really mess you up.

No, but I arm the alarm when I get out.

This may be shocking to you, but natural languages aren't consistent and logical :-)

Sometimes he still no fly zones can be quite large. I currently live about 40 minutes away from the St. Louis airport and last year President Trump decided to visit St. Louis it is continuing campaigning for 2020 and made a stop at that airport. The FAA no-fly zone prevented me from taking off my drone 100 m in the air to take pictures of wildlife over my pond for something happening 25+ miles away.

I am all for maintaining user discretion over absolute lockouts and work on education, situational awareness and heavy fines and punishment on meaningful infractions.

And lastly if the systems are to encumbered people are just going to roll their own software which is an avenue I then investigated for my Mavic after that incident.

Why bother pushing this onto hardware makers? Just authorize authorities to shoot the things down.

Well I think with ample threats and a few examples made we could seriously help deter some of these events. Would anyone be crazy enough to fly a drone over area 51? I don't think so because they would know as soon as they were caught they would be going to some hole in the earth of a prison. We don't just tend to let fires burn on their own so any active fire should by default be considered actively fought by firefighters therefore keep your drones away. I would just make it illegal to be within "x" distance from any active fire with threat of 5 years in prison, loss of vehicle, ect... or whatever the punishment should be.

Shooting drones could cause additional fires.

> Shooting drones could cause additional fires.

But would clear the pass to helicopters that could just send a shoot of water in the same area to grant that this would not occur and then keep doing their job. The result would be still less hectares burnt than if keeping the helicopters parked.

Send a shoot of water on a lithium fire?

Ok, maybe more than one shoot. So you can identify quickly the point of drone landing.

Honest question. What would be worst, a lithium fire surrounded by soaked soil, or a match fire surrounded by dry combustible?

Of course if the landing happens in an area burnt yet, would not have anything more to burn except this battery and some plastics.

won’t most bullets end up landing somewhere/on someone usually unrelated to the scene ? Not commenting on authorities being encouraged to shoot more things.

Or was this sarcastic and I just got wooshed ?

Just require all drones to accept a law enforcement signal which causes the drone to send a picture of the owner/operator to the police, send the gps location of where the drone mot recently took off, and the current location of the operator, a gps track of where the drone has been over the last three years, fly to the law enforcement location and land, then disable itself until cryptographic key only available to law enforcement is provided, and finally send a message back to the controller telling them to report to such and such a police station within twenty-four to receive their citation.

California law now allows firefighters to do that, but with RF jamming rather than bullets.

That won't do much if the drone has a pre-programmed GPS route to follow?

That sounds more difficult to implement and I doubt it would work as well.

This is a country that expects people to be responsible enough that we don’t require pilot licenses to fly homebrew aircraft, I think we should encourage more personal responsibility rather than hacking around stupid people with firmware updates.

We have the tech to create no-fly zones around the paths of individual aircraft, including other drones. It could become cheap enough for cheap drones. That could let the skies be densely filled with flying machines while being safer than now.

Imagine a swarm of personal and news drones hovering around a fire, but in harmony with assorted emergency response craft, dodging away with a generous safety envelope. Hopefully the current chaos is transitional and we can have our own eyes in the sky without getting in the way of the solution.

I direct your attention now to the existence of software bugs, in particular to their frequency of occurrence and the infrequency of patching in firmware devices.

You know what works better than everyone's software being correct, up to date, not affected by a log file filling the flash stick unexpectedly or the heat or a battery getting a bit hot or a null pointer error or being overloaded by needing to track too many other drones or sheer murphyesque buggery?

Empty air. It's a well-proved safety technology, empty air. Doesn't require much in the way of upgrades to make it work, reverse and forward compatibility is assured, it's simple to implement and has an excellent record against catastrophic failure modes of the not-enough-space variety.

The amount of empty air required for safety decreases as the technology improves. And there is life saving value in being able to launch your own drone or tune in to a news drone, to decide on the right response. How many die because they don't know when to evacuate or which way to go? Too large of a safety envelope can reduce safety by slowing the diffusion of info about the fire.

Lets not forget "Air tanker drops in wildfires are often just for show" https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-wildfires29-2008jul29-st...

"To professional firefighters, though, it was a prime example of a “political air show,” the high-profile use of expensive aircraft to appease elected officials."

“CNN drops.”

So what would be an effective way to fight wildfires then? Just clear brush, better fire resistant structure...or?

It's not that aerial drops aren't effective. But the way they are used is sometimes more political than practical.

It may be a practically effective way to get news coverage, important for getting the public to move their ass out of the dangerous area. Not to mention a visible symbol requiring funding.

I can’t help but think of analogy to engineering orgs where leadership places higher value on engineers whose highly visible “heroics” fix a mess they created in the first place, rather than the engineer that makes boring decisions that prevent the problems in the first place.

I have zero knowledge or expertise in forest management or wildfire fighting, but I suspect there isn’t a simply a single method that’s more effective. Meaningful progress likely requires an interrelated system of measures spanning education, policy, understanding risk tolerances, prevention and response. But if expensive response measures — with low-efficacy — are taken primarily for political reasons, I’d love to see the political value shift to more boring proactive measures. With that said, I don’t have any understanding/data on efficacy of tankers, or what proactive measures would be more valuable, just thinking aloud.

That is not the case in the Maria fire. Take a look at the map to see how close the fire came to Santa Paula: https://vcoes.maps.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=24d...

In many of the fires we have here in the CA central coast, air support is absolutely critical. Especially when there are Santa Ana winds blowing down the mountains towards civilization.

When a fire is reported during the high fire season, the standard response is: “four fire engines, two bulldozers, two hand crews, a water tender, two air tankers, an air-attack plane and a helicopter, plus a battalion chief to run the operation”. https://www.noozhawk.com/article/with_recent_rains_santa_bar...

We take fires very seriously here.

Is this a modern thing, or have there been fires like this since California was settled on by Europeans in 1700s? If so, how did the inhabitants deal with them then?

Startup idea: an accurate weapon for destroying drones that are flying in places they shouldn't be. Has anyone tried doing something like this?

A ton of it, from having other drones capture the hostile ones with nets, to disrupting the hostile drones RF signals to force it into landing.

Been a bit of a fad a while ago when drones first became somewhat mainstream.

Disrupting the control signal doesn’t force a landing. Even on super locked down DJI drones you can program several actions, including continuing a waypoint mission.

Jammers are a moronic idea for this task. They cause an unpredictable response and increase risk.

You might wanna take those issues up to the people actually working on these things [0], I only shared what I remembered about startups working on the problem.

[0] https://newatlas.com/droneshield-dronegun-mkiii-jamming-dron...

They are aware of the limitations, read the carefully worded marketing on that page:

"When on target, they can prompt a drone to land safely on the spot or return to its point of takeoff, while cutting the video livestream back to the operator immediately."

Just because someone is making a product doesn't mean the product isn't stupid. I remember there was a mob making another anti-drone 'gun' which jammed GPS. That didn't end well for them.

Unless the target drone is actively being used in a hostile manner (as opposed to idiots flying where they shouldn't be), then removing the operator's control of the drone without establishing another means of control makes the situation more dangerous.

You mean a gun or missile? Unlikely in a populated area. There are several companies that sell equipment that's promised to jam these drones, however.

I think an attack drone would work well.

It's relatively easy to shoot down a drone, you can do it with birdshot. The problem would be falling debris and the safety hazard that represents. Might be a moot point in cases of fire, but in general that would be a pretty specialized startup around a task that a basic shotgun would already excel at.

Birdshot is effective against drones, but only within a few hundred meters:

https://www.northeastshooters.com/xen/threads/how-far-will-b...

There's a very big difference between the maximum distance an individual pellet of birdshot will go (which is still likely less than 300 yards at its maximal ballistic trajectory)and the "effective range" which is usually defined something like 'the maximum range at which accurate fire will produce a 50% hit probability'.

For birdshot, that's usually considered to be around 40 yards for a bird. A drone would probably be similar.

you can do it with birdshot.

You can also do with with a bird.

https://time.com/4675164/drone-hunting-eagles/

(Awesome picture in the link of an eagle sinking its talons into a drone mid-flight.)

It is inhumane to use birds to take down drones. The rotors can easily mame or kill even a large bird

My intent isn't to engage in argument with you, but I'm curious, by that line of reasoning do you feel the same about K9 dogs used to take down criminals who may be armed?

Not the OP, but K9 is the alternative to using a human for the same purpose. Birds in this case were suggested as an alternative to using a $1 shotgun shell.

The birds are theoretically a lot more capable. Birdshot from a shotgun won't work well if the drone is trying to avoid it by flying a bit too high, too far away, too fast, etc. A bird of prey stands to be a lot more successful if the drone pilot isn't trying to make things easy.

The risk to the bird shouldn't be ignored. It seems to me the use of birds in this way is most defensible when human lives are plausibly on the line, such as when drones are negatively impacting firefighting efforts.

The first time I tried to fly a drone I broke all four of its rotors and _scratched the glass_ on my patio door. A bird would almost certainly be severely hurt by the rotors. You can't seriously make the argument in favor of using birds. In fact, if there is an argument to be made here it's in favor of the drone immediately powering down the rotors if it notices a bird approaching.

It seems plausible to me that a bird of prey could learn how to attack drones from safe angles; I don't think a bird would necessarily be hurt by the drone, but I concede that it's a highly possible outcome.

Restricting the use of anti-drone birds to scenarios where human lives are on the line seems like a reasonable compromise, and I do seriously make this argument. I'd further consider it reasonable to hold the drone pilot legally accountable for any harm to the bird.

Not to mention that you can't use birdshot in certain areas because the bbs are going to come back down and you don't want to hurt a dozen people because you have to take down a drone in the middle of NYC.

Birdshot is nice when you're in the middle of nowhere and no people are downrange, but you shouldn't fire a fucking gun when people are down range.

Edit: I should mention falling birdshot is fairly harmless. But I'm thinking lower angles, high rise buildings, or when you're taking down a drone near an airport (which is one of the major concerns). There are people and sensitive objects down range. And even with birdshot you should never shoot when there are people down range. Just be responsible with your guns.

I'll take the bait and argue that using dogs as weapons is animal abuse.

Falling birdshot is harmless, it has a low terminal velocity. When it falls on dry leaves in the fall, it sounds like rain.

The falling drone might hurt though. It conceivably might even start another fire if the battery took some damage.

>It conceivably might even start another fire if the battery took some damage.

What you're saying is that all drones should be grounded if the fire risk is high.

Maybe? I'm not sure. I don't know enough about the typical failure modes of a drone to say whether fire is a likely outcome. But I think the battery pack getting blasted by a shotgun stands a good chance of bringing out the worst failure modes.

DO NOT DO THIS.

1: Missed bullets/shot may kill your friends and neighbors [0]. Especially in densely populated sub/urban environments.

2: Many drones use LiPo batteries. When punctured, LiPo batteries may catch fire [1]. You stand a good chance of starting even more fires if you shoot at drones.

Congrats, you have likely made things worse.

If you are thinking of shooting at a drone: STOP.

Put down the firearm and pick up the phone.

Call the police. Then call your state and local representatives[2]. Then call your neighbors. Organize and vote.

Pass laws, not ammo.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20070928000018/http://ats.ctsnet...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUFxlf4fXjo

[2] https://openstates.org/find_your_legislator/

Falling birdshot is not going to harm anyone unless it gets in their eye. It's like tiny pebbles, not a slug which you're probably thinking of.

I agree, birdshot is very unlikely to harm anyone. All missed shot are unlikely to harm, in fact. Larger things like buckshot would be more likely to harm others, though still it's very low. Actual bullets like 45, 223, 22, or 9mm, accounting for ~50% (1/2) of most sold calibers in the US in 2015 [0], will do some real damage. Shotgun gauges only account for ~12% (1/8) of the calibers sold.

All said, it is still MUCH safer to not shoot at a drone at all. Let the local police take cafe of it.

Heck, get a super-soaker or something kind of water-ballon slingshot, if you must.

[0] http://knowledgeglue.com/what-are-the-most-popular-calibers-...

Surely it goes without saying that private citizens should not discharge firearms aimed at another person's property? I mean literally there is no need to say it, as it's extraordinarily unlikely that the person you're responding to or anyone else on this site is foolish enough to do that. Yeah, there is a YouTube video here and there of some idiot shooting at a drone. But it seems unlikely that this is a rampant phenomenon, seeing as how it's illegal and probably a felony in most places. E.g. I don't know if a drone counts as an "aircraft" under NY state law, but it's a class E felony to discharge a firearm at an unoccupied aircraft here (1 1/2-4 years in prison).

Edit: oops, 18 USC 32 imposes a maximum of twenty years for sabotage of an aircraft anywhere in the USA, and apparently the USG has been interpreting this to include drones. Note that this law also applies to local and state law enforcement. Only the feds are allowed to deploy anti-aircraft technology.

https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/88696-before-you-p...

To be fair, the person that I was replying to literally advocates using firearms to take down drones as a viable solution. I agree with you, it is a insane thing to do. It seems that for drones, the laws may need to extend to state and local law enforcement, not just federal.

The comment you replied to observed that it is possible to use a firearm to shoot down a drone. It did not "advocate" for using firearms.

I didn't advocate shooting down drones. It should not be done under normal circumstances due to the falling debris hazard. But of all the ways to shoot down a drone (assuming it were necessary to protect public safety), using a shotgun is probably the safest, and I agree this should be done by police. Unless perhaps you're a firefighter trying to dump a helicopter full of water on a fire, and then I think most reasonable people would make an exception there too.

Anduril working hard on this concept https://www.engadget.com/amp/2019/10/03/palmer-luckey-anduri...

Anduril just recently announced their drone-interceptor drone:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/4/20898931/anduril-anvil-dr...

I’ve been wanting to get some of these 12-gauge net cartridges [0]. They really seem more like a novelty unfortunately.

[0] https://www.budk.com/12-Gauge-Skynet-Drone-Defense--3-Pack-3...

Like, a rifle? Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. The gun space isn't exactly rife with opportunity for a disruptive startup.

Rifles aren’t a desirable drone-interception tool. For one thing, it’s hard to hit a small moving target that may be hundreds of meters up in the air. Overshoot is also a huge problem - unlike birdshot pellets which fall harmlessly to the ground after 300 meters or so, rifle bullets can travel at lethal velocity for several kilometers. Even if you hit the drone, your bullet may keep traveling.

it’s hard to hit a small moving target that may be hundreds of meters up in the air.

I wonder if a local skeet-shooting club could be deployed for this sort fo thing. Certainly they have the practice. But I'm not sure about the range.

You don't use a rifle for skeet shooting either...

I don't think you need a .50 cal to take out a drone; a 22 would be fine and basically doesn't have the overshoot problems you described.

.22 LR fired at 45 degrees will travel for at least a mile, according to ballistic calculators and the warning on my ammo box.

There was a marketing campaign for a jamming gun to essentially disable drones. (I imagine some would just float statically though)

Yes! People have trained large birds to do this as well!

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hawk+catching+a+drone&ia=videos&ia...

The military has been doing this for a long time.

Google “drone defense systems”

Are drones' RC controllers any more sophisticated than regular old-skool ones? If not (if the communication protocol still lacks encryption and authentication), they could easily be intercepted and destroyed by sending them to the ground. Also, the source of radio transmission can probably easily be located by appropriately trained "drone hunters". It does mean that not all of the responders can deal with the catastrophe at hand, but a few stiff penalties would make drones less frequent in disaster areas.

If it's 2.4 Ghz, then even the straight RC systems use some form of spread-spectrum frequency hopping. Newer variants include some limited forms of error checking, and most drone controllers have a return-to-launch-site feature that can be enabled if they lose contact with the controller.

Only slightly more advanced drones can fly a pre-programmed course without talking to the transmitter at all.

Thank you for the info!

There’s already a bunch of products that do this. In Singapore the police use drones that shoot nets to catch other drones. The net shooting drone handles tracking and targeting, and the net is tethered, so it doesn’t fall to the ground. The military has laser technology designed for this purpose, and there’s various radio jammer solutions on the market. Also, police in the Netherlands use trained eagles.

There’s plenty of existing solutions to this problem already.

> Has anyone tried doing something like this?

Yes, lots. There's active and open gov solicitations for solutions. It's enough of a problem that the major news media have been covering it for a few years. Talking about solutions like eagles, RF jammers, net guns, etc.

relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CzURm7OpAA ("Knocking my neighbors kids cruddy drone offline")

The article mentioned people may be operating drones to film footage for social media or to sell to TV stations.

If this was really the case then it shouldn't be too hard to track these kinds of folks down.

Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21426012 (14h ago)

Time for firefighters to keep a few shotguns in the equipment with bird shot. They already have clearance to destroy property to stop a fire.

I'd imagine things are not as simple as that in large forest fires.

What if they shoot this stuff down, and start more fires?

They have to think about all that probably.

Is there not anything similar to a cell phone jammer for RC?

Would also be cool if they can send out an overriding "return to home" signal that will make the drones return to their starting position. This is something that would need to be in the hardware or firmware or to where the device would be bricked if removed from there or software.

There are a bunch of different frequency ranges they can use, and it's not trivial to jam lots of frequencies without running into legal issues. If you figured out what frequency range the drone is using you might be able to drown it out but the odds seem high that other equipment might be using that frequency band and it could interfere with emergency operations.

Like, hypothetical example - a long range hobbyist drone might be hooked up with a SIM card and the cellular network, so blocking it would require blocking cells like the ones used by emergency responders.

Shorter range drones are probably using unlicensed bands, and you might be able to block those - but again emergency responders might be using them for short range communications equipment etc.

Long range jamming also runs into power issues due to the inverse square law, I think. You'd need to do it directionally, and at that point I think you'd be better off just shooting the drone down with something like a gas-powered BB rifle or net launcher.

GPS jamming would be more effective. The flight computer relies on it heavily.

For older consumer products yes. For new ones or military purpose, nah. Optical flow + vSLAM + IMU is now the primary localisation system. GPS is just there to stay on track for long paths.

Just throwing this out there, but can this issue be tackled with licensing? Similar to a HAM radio operator license. The drones would also have to be registered and identified with the operator license number. I feel like it is likely where this is heading anyway.

Most drones already do need to be registered and commercial operators need to be licensed. Pieces of paper don’t stop stupid though unfortunately.

I think this would take care of a lot of low hanging fruit, but probably not much more. Just like in HAM it is hard to find someone abusing the airwaves unless they are constantly broadcasting (and you can go on a fox hunt. But it is a hunt). So you get the people that are just flying to see the fire and you can ring them up or knock on their door.

The real problem though is that this doesn't fix the major concerns with drone DOS attacks. It is not hard to set up a repeater to control the drone (adding an extra level of difficulty to your fox hunt) or by just programming the drone to take certain actions (even basic AI can do some disastrous things). That seems, to me, to be more what the FAA is after and why more effort is being put in to take down drones instead of tracking the operators. This also has the effect of stopping the DOS attack immediately instead of just fining the person later. This being much more important considering that peoples' lives are at risk.

Would it be possible to triangulate the remote? Maybe even from the helicopter?

In theory it's possible. But accurate triangulation requires multiple passes with specialized equipment not carried on firefighting aircraft.

it seems like the only realistic solution to these asshats is to mount jammers on all the police and fire aircraft. You could tax drone sales to pay for it.

morons

In the case of continued deadlock, the water-dropping helicopters will have to become unmanned. (which may even make sense on its own given lowered risk to human pilot)

there may even be a load of upshots: the tyranny of the helicopter equation, mass deployment of firefighting drones from other regions not currently facing fires (without needing to temporarily house pilots from far away), ...

there will always be a trade-off between risk to the firefighter and potential reward for risky moves. with unmanned vehicles the fire might be more effectively fought without needing to take into account the loss of pilots, thus allowing more effective fire fighting moves to be taken.

What type of risky maneuvers are you imagining are required to drop some water on a fire? And how many $30-100 million dollar planes would you throw away to do it?

It's risky enough as it is, I doubt anyone wants to increase that risk.. and it seems to me they're perfectly capable of fighting fires without the multiple $100m losses you think might be "effective". It isn't like these fire depts have that kind of money to throw away.

And they would still want to clear unauthorized drones from the area... It would be a big loss if one of these crashed because of someones hobby drone. And unpiloted or not, a plane that big and heavy won't be capable of moving out of the way of a small drone that gets in its way.

As a premise I am not an expert in any related field, but with regards to flying in the smoke it is possible (maybe, I do not know which constraint are relevant) that an unmanned could have more freedom of approaching a fire from more angles.

Where are you seeing $30-100 million dollars? The largest firefighting plane in operation today cost [about $10 million](https://www.outsideonline.com/2079591/can-10-million-firefig...) to purchase and outfit.

That's an old converted plane. It was a passenger plane, then a cargo plane, then sat on a lot for a couple of years.. so they got it cheap.

A new CL-415 is $35m: https://www.rand.org/blog/2013/12/investing-in-firefighting.... And that's not a particularly large plane.

It does look like a lot of water bombers are old converted planes.. so you're probably closer to the correct number than the number I posted.

I don't think this changes my point though.. they're still expensive planes.

$100m lol. Don't think these cost as much as a fighter jet.

"simply" picking up the water from a lake at night does not sound like a risky kind of flight maneuver to you?

Continued deadlock will go away in a big hurry if a few people get serious jail time and fines. No one wants to increase the prison population but sometimes it’s justified.

> While the unmanned aerial vehicles are small, drones can wreak incredible havoc. A collision with a wing, engine or any part of a larger aircraft can cause severe damage.

How so? Which part of a helicopter is so sensitive to the impact of a drone? They are not fast and they are not heavy.

> “A bird collision with a plane can cause a plane to go down,” said Jessica Gardetto, a spokesperson for the National Interagency Fire Center. “These are hard plastic items.”

Different scenario. Planes crash into birds with a huge speed, and they can get into the turbines, which obviously can damage them.

The blades?

This is seriously your argument? Alright, hold my red bull, it's math time.

Let's assume they're using a Boeing Vertol 234, a civilian model of the Chinook commonly used for firefighting. They're double rotor, and as such the rotors are slower than most single rotor helicopters, at around 225 RPM [1] at full throttle.

The rotors on a chinook are 60ft in diameter [2]. This means that the edge of the blade is traveling about 188.5 ft per revolution. At 225 RPM, that's 706.8 feet per second, or ~481 miles per hour, on par with a commercial aircraft at cruising speed.

So yeah, smacking a drone into a relatively thin and lightweight rotor blade at over 400 miles an hour may cause a wee bit of damage.

[1] http://www.chinook-helicopter.com/standards/areas/blade.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CH-47_Chinook#Specifica...

Just to be clear, I think the people flying drones are assholes. I'm not saying "don't make a such a big deal out of it". I'm just wondering what the actual danger is. Are the blades really that sensitive? I'd assume they would easily shred a drone to pieces and not be harmed in the process, because they already need to be quite tough to not tear apart under the centrifugal force during normal operation. But I have no idea, thats just my intuition.

The issue is a drone, or debris from a drone, getting sucked into the engine intake. This debris can effectively turn the engine into a large amount of shrapnel, crippling the aircraft and its mission.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_object_damage

First good reply, no hand-waving, with real proof, thanks. Theres an actual picture of the possible damage a small bolt can cause on a helicopter turbine.

The very fast spinning blades, the engine intake, the windshield, the tail rotor. Pretty much the entire vehicle is composed only of critical parts, because any extra parts add weight and increase fuel costs. Helicopters, and especially their engines/blades, operate at high speeds as well.

> Which part of a helicopter is so sensitive to the impact of a drone?

Wow. Everything except the skids, if those are present. Foreign object damage to a turbine and fracture of a blade are the ones most likely to be catastrophic.

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