Why are they not being shot down at the very least?
> The defendant stated he had past experience with drones and believed they were surveilling him
The question I'm left with after reading that article - was this test delivery point for a single trial run, or did this company choose one random location and then repeatedly send tests there over and over? If it's the latter, that seems like it should also warrant criminal charges.
As an aside, I presume at this point, the military and FBI are stationing their SIGINT aircraft over the area and probably have a good idea what's going on but aren't saying publicly. These things are emitting electromagnetic energy in more ways that one, eg. radios and electric motor RF signatures.
RIP the SkyCircles accounts on Twitter.
The War Zone is always a reliable source for national security related reporting -
https://www.twz.com/news-features/coast-guard-ship-stalked-b...
I feel this story from them would have been a better post for HN audiences.
Whatever you spray into the sky (to knock a drone out of it) will also fall back to earth, plausibly generating civilian casualties on the ground. (And if you use lasers - high power laser beams have plenty of safety issues, too.)
Also - costs, casualties, & collateral damage may be far more acceptable in an active war zone, and against drones which are busy killing people & destroying valuables whenever they are not shot down.
This is one of those times when the US has a Maginot Military - massively overpowered against traditional threats, inexperienced when dealing with something like this.
This is not a trivial problem. A cheap drone with a relatively small explosive payload flown into an air intake can take down a military aircraft and cause serious problems for an airliner or private jet.
An airfield is the ideal place to do that, because aircraft are most vulnerable during takeoff and landing.
A few people and a hundred drones launched from a few km away can significantly delay incoming and outgoing flights.
Equip the drones with weapons - or larger explosives - and it's potentially Pearl Harbour.
But yeah, Maginot Military sounds about right.
Jamming is first line of defense, a million times more effective FWIW.
Duck Dynasty season 12 is going to be a doozy
We don't know anything about their capabilities as individual drones or as a cluster of drones. For all you know, when you shoot one, the other ten take that as declaration of war.
There is no evidence that the drones carry WMDs, or that they're dangerous like Iran. If we had reason to believe that the drones are associated with WMDs, then it would be okay to neutralize them, but we don't. Because of false assertions about WMDs, we've already had one unnecessary war in Iraq. How many more do you want?