This programme contains some strong language.
So if you lean forward to the camera here, you'll see that
it's detecting the two of us.
So that's what the robot is seeing.
Effectively, it's recognised that we're human beings.
It's quite terrifying having a drone fly directly at you.
It's completely flying on its own around me.
There's a technology revolution going on in our skies.
Drones are smarter, faster, cheaper,
and much more widespread than ever before.
That's so, quick isn't it?
It's doing barrel rolls.
Wow!
They are destined to transform all our lives in many positive ways,
from delivering parcels and urgent medicines
to helping with emergency relief and search and rescue.
With drone technology evolving so fast, governments and the
aviation industry are scrambling to understand the potential risks.
Already, the skies above the UK are busier than they've ever been.
That is an air disaster that's waiting to happen.
It's not IF this happens...
..it's WHEN this happens.
And we all saw how easily drones can be misused to cause chaos
during 36 hours of crisis at Gatwick.
All flights in and out of Gatwick
have been suspended after two drones
were seen flying near the runway.
Police say it is a deliberate act of disruption.
It's absolutely ludicrous.
You see there - delayed, delayed, delayed.
People have been messaging us this morning, saying
it feels like terrorism.
I'm Aldo Kane, a former Royal Marines Commando,
and now, a high-risk advisor.
I want to know just how real the threat is.
Do our airports have the right defences in place
to keep us safe from this newly-emerging threat?
And what would really happen if a drone hit a plane?
Three, two, one.
That looked catastrophic.
Drones do present a threat to all types of aircraft.
I'm heading to some of the world's leading research facilities
to see where this technology is going.
So, it's a dune buggy with a laser on top?
That's right.
And I'll also investigate how this new tech
is being weaponised by terrorists.
So, we're talking off-the-shelf weaponised drones.
These drones would come over, start dropping bombs.
Two, three, four bombs on top of us.
It still makes my heart beat faster.
We're entering a new age of drone technology,
and I want to find out how, and if, we can keep ourselves safe.
I spent ten years in the Royal Marines as a sniper.
I'd say, operationally, around the world from Northern Ireland,
to Iraq, Middle East,
and everywhere in between.
My job now, since leaving, is a high-risk advisor.
So, I assess the hazards that go with people operating and working
in some of the most extreme places on the planet.
As someone who spends a lot of time on airplanes, I was shocked
by how easily a small drone could bring Gatwick - one of
the world's biggest airports - to a standstill.
So I want to find out what the risk is posed by this tech revolution,
and also what we can do about it.
Over the last decade, drones were born out of developments
and technology driven by mobile phones.
They rely on small and cheap computer chips, GPS units
and camera sensors that were developed to fit into smartphones.
They're already being used for organ transportation,
design and agriculture,
search and rescue.
And in the future they'll be taxiing us around.
Drone sales are predicted to reach over five million worldwide by 2020.
There are also more airplane flights,
so the skies are getting more crowded.
It's easy to see the potential risks.
We don't even know for sure what the effects of a drone colliding
with a plane mid-flight could be.
So I'm on my way to a little-known impact test facility
used by the defence and aerospace industry to measure the strength
of plane structures and engines.
I'm joining one of the UK's leading collision and impact
test scientists, Dr Ian Horsfall, who is running a test
to investigate the problem.
Afternoon.
Hello, Aldo. Dr Ian Horsfall, how are you?
Pleased to meet you. Pleased to meet you.
How you doing, guys?
So, this is Jed...
Hi, Jed, nice to meet you. How are you? Yeah, not bad, thanks.
What is this?
So, this is the star of the show today. This is one of the largest
air cannons in the United Kingdom.
It's capable of throwing a kilogram-sized projectile
at supersonic speeds, if we wanted it to. Wow.
I mean, that's a big barrel, isn't it? Yes.
What length is it? The barrel?
This is six metres long.
It's like the barrel of a main armour on a tank, or something.
Yeah. So, the speed of the projectile that comes out of here will be...?
Today, we're going to aim for 120 metres per second,
which is about just under 250 knots. Right. Which is a typical speed
an aircraft would be doing in the region of approach and takeoff.
So, we're going to recreate a plane coming into land or taking off?
And it's that point where the drone then hits the plane?
Yes.
The test will help to illustrate how much damage a drone could do
when hitting a plane,
by comparing it to another well-known threat to planes...
..birds.
Birds and planes collide every few days at airports in the UK.
And planes are designed specifically to be able to withstand the impact.
To start off with, we're going to do a test using
a gelatine bird simulator.
And if you hold the drone...
The drone and the gelatine, both about a kilogram each.
So that's got, like, mushy properties of a flying bird.
Whereas this - man-made plastic and metal.
So, if this goes straight onto those trestles...
The target that we'll be firing at today is the horizontal stabiliser
from the tail area of an old, small business plane.
Watch that there.
We want, like, a good strike on the leading edge.
That looks good, that looks nice.
The gelatine bird is then packed into a sabot,
an aluminium casing that fits snugly into the barrel of the cannon
so it can be fired smoothly.
So, if you two wouldn't mind walking into the observation room
while I just make the final checks. All right.
Yeah, so the breach is shut, the gas is on.
Take it off safe.
And charge the gun up.
OK, we're ready.
Ready?
This is quite exciting.
Firing, three, two, one.
Oh, wow. Well, that...
Trigger is safe. Look at that, the damage on the...
So, it has perforated the skin.
It's stopped on the front of the spar inside,
so it hasn't perforated the primary structure.
The important fact is that the control surfaces
at the back still work, no damage has been done behind this line,
so the structure's intact.
And we would hope this would still be perfectly controllable.
So it would probably be some vibration and some buffet,
but it should be capable of landing again.
And this is? That's the remains of the bird. It's the remains?
Impact scientists like Ian know quite a lot about bird strikes
on planes, but they don't yet fully understand the effects of drone strikes.
Shall we see what the drone does, then? Yes.
But we need the drone to be small enough to fit
into the barrel of the cannon.
We're going to break it up into its component parts, and what we're
particularly interested in is the motors,
because these are the hardest and densest part of the drone.
And also its battery.
And previous has work shown that those are the components we're most worried about.
The rest the drone is relatively lightweight. Cool.
So, we're going to smash that up, stick it all inside
one of these cannons, and then fire it at the wing. Yes.
There's a job for you. Perfect.
This will be fun.
Pretty robust!
There we go.
That's one of the motors off.
So, we've got the motors.
And these are solid metal, and with that sharp bit there on the front.
Four of these.
A battery, which is about a third of the weight of the drone.
And the motherboard, or the circuit board, and then more
bits of plastic here.
We then packed the drone parts into the sabot with some adhesive foam
to keep them from rattling around.
OK. Yeah. Now we're just going to wait for that to foam up.
I see it coming out the side.
And once the foam had set, we were ready to fire.
So that is one drone good to go.
Ready to go. All right.
OK.
So we're all good? We're all good.
The drone is loaded.
OK, piston coming forward!
So, it gains pressure.
And this glass is...?
Yeah, it's ballistic glass.
Ballistic glass. Good.
It's, like, quite nerve-racking, isn't it? It is!
In three,
two,
one...
Wow...
Box safe and trigger's safe.
Compared to the last one, that looked catastrophic.
Well, you've got drone parts well and truly embedded in there.
The difference between this and the bird is the bird stopped
as soon it hit the main structure of the horizontal stabiliser.
Whereas, in this case, the motor has penetrated through.
And there's...
..one motor in there.
So that's gone through...? At least three layers of metal to
get to that. So, basically, you've got debris from the drones
spread out inside the wing... Yeah.
..cavity in between the spars.
There's damage right back here.
Basically, it's more severe damage than the bird strike,
and therefore, it is more risk to the aircraft.
The likelihood of this happening is quite low, but the potential risk
if it does happen is very high.
What we do know is that drones do present a threat
to all types of aircraft.
And although it's probably very unlikely, there is a possibility
that a drone could cause a very serious accident, and it's not
something we can ignore. It's a serious...
A real and serious threat to our transport.
This test was done with a tail wing from an old business jet,
so it wasn't designed to the same standards today's planes are.
However, the Federal Aviation Administration in the US
helped fund very sophisticated computer modelling,
in order to extrapolate what an impact might do
to a larger passenger plane.
And their conclusions support the result that drone strikes
can be more damaging than birds.
While the bird disintegrates into small pieces that flow like water,
a similar-weight drone shatters into solid parts,
which can increase the severity of the damage to the plane's structure.
The British Airline Pilots Association believe that in the
worst-case-scenario, this could result in the aircraft crashing.
I don't think I quite prepared myself as to what it would
look like when you fired the makings of a drone into...
..the horizontal stabiliser of a commercial plane.
It's terrifying for me to imagine being sat in my seat,
coming in to land, and then you look out the window
and you see a drone coming through the wing at 200mph.
I mean, that's going to make me think twice about flying.
The threat to planes from drones is not just at airports,
it's actually much more widespread.
There's another one there coming in.
As more of us are using drones, reported incidents of drone-plane
near misses in the UK have risen from zero in 2013...
..to 125 in 2018.
There's another one coming in now.
And some of these near disaster events happen
in the most terrifying of locations.
Right up there, above the Shard, in 2016, there was a near miss...
..where a drone almost hit an A320
which was carrying at least 100 people onboard.
This is an aviation safety report.
So the pilot's running up, he's in the A320, and he's heading
on his last leg into Heathrow Airport, above the Shard
when a black drone, about 50 centimetres across,
was sighted out the right flight deck window.
"The pilot has estimated the separation to be only 20 metres
"from the aircraft, at co-altitude," which means...
So, basically, the aircraft and the drone are at the same height,
which is terrifying.
"And that there had not been any time to take avoiding action.
"The crew estimated it probably passed over the right wing
"and the horizontal stabiliser."
And we know from the impact test just how vulnerable those parts
of the plane actually are.
It says here, a collision had only been narrowly avoided...
..and chance had played a major part.
Therefore, they determined the risk to be high category A.
That seems insane that...
..chance had played the biggest part in avoiding an air-to-air collision
between a drone and an A320,
above one of the most densely-populated cities on Earth.
We know already the skies above London and the UK are busier
than they've ever been.
And we also know that more drones have been sold in the last few years
than have ever been sold.
That is an air disaster that's waiting to happen.
It's not IF this happens...
..it's WHEN this happens.
The biggest manufacturer of drones has recently pledged to install
new technology that will warn the operator if they appear to be
on a collision course with an aircraft or helicopter.
But it would not prevent deliberate misuse, as happened at Gatwick.
Some people are quite astounded that a drone can get access
to just above the runway.
Why don't international airports have defences against them?
The drone industry does already use a technology called geo-fencing
to try to prevent drones flying into the airspace around airports and
other sensitive locations in the UK.
Most drones that we buy off the shelf already have a geo-fencing
system built in, which means that the drone's GPS system stops
the drone flying into certain pre-programmed no-fly zones
or geo-fenced areas, such as prisons, army bases and airports.
If the system is working properly, the drone will not be able
to enter the geo-fenced area.
But the drones at Gatwick were able to bypass the geo-fencing system
and fly freely into Gatwick airspace and, reportedly,
right up past the observation tower.
The geo-fencing system was supposed to stop people flying
this kind of drone into protected airport airspace.
But the problem with this system
is that there are easy ways to get round it.
There are, basically, hacks for drones like this.
You can download a file for about 40 quid that will completely disable
the geo-fencing system on the drone.
So, technically, I could take this drone and fly it
anywhere around this airport.
Obviously, I'm not going to do that because it's highly illegal.
But it means that the geo-fencing defence system isn't exactly
the perfect solution.
So if this technology can't guarantee that we can stop a drone
from entering a protected area, we need to have other ways
to stop a rogue drone from threatening our skies.
During the Gatwick crisis, some of the public thought
the answer was obvious.
David reckons all it needs is a skilled clay pigeon shooter
with a shotgun patrolling the airport. And any drone overhead...
Bang, problem solved.
This team of armed officers were seen near the perimeter fence.
It was not clear if officers had been given orders to shoot at the drone.
Surely, you just shoot the thing down?
And that's what should be done the next time it's sighted.
Well, look, I don't know whether marksmen should be
shooting these things down.
They will, if need be,
shoot the drone down.
It was the question that was on everyone's lips after the event.
It was, "Why don't you just shoot the drone down?"
So...
..that's exactly what I'm going to do today.
It sounds like such a simple and obvious idea, to shoot a drone down.
But I'm not even sure that that's possible.
Well, I was a sniper in the Royal Marines.
We trained to shoot a human target out to 1,000 metres,
but a drone is much smaller and much faster.
A drone is a completely different type of target.
So I want to see if shooting down a drone is
really a viable way to stop it.
I've arranged to meet a drone operator at a shooting range
in the Peak District.
It has just the right kind of terrain for me
to investigate this safely.
Hey. Are you Matt?
I am indeed.
How are you doing? Aldo. Nice to meet you. Yeah, you too.
Thanks very much for coming up. That's all right.
So these are the drones that we'll be shooting down?
Yes, that's the idea.
These are just a couple of old ones to, erm... wreck.
I'm going to be shooting about 300 metres,
down towards the base of the hill,
which will provide a safe backstop for the bullets.
So, for me, shooting-wise, this is perfect.
So I'll use this position here.
At 300 metres, you can just about see a drone with the naked eye.
So, this is a .308 calibre rifle.
So, this is the same calibre rifle that I was trained on
when I was a sniper in the Marines.
It's a pretty meaty bullet, packs bit of a punch.
This is probably something similar to the calibre that would be used
at somewhere like Gatwick,
or by police marksmen to then take down that drone.
This range is now live, so if everyone can...
..move back.
When the drone reaches 300 metres,
we turn it's camera to face our position.
I can hardly see the thing.
When you look at the drone through the sight,
it's incredibly small.
At the minute, it's got a green backdrop so we can see it,
and it's still fairly difficult to see, it's tiny.
If the sky is anything like it is normally over the UK,
it's grey and overcast like this,
that drone at 300 metres, or 200 metres,
you're not going to be able to see it. Never mind shoot at it.
Where is it? There we are.
I need to go a fair bit above it.
Now, when you fly a drone and it's on GPS,
the GPS is constantly moving it to keep it in position
when the wind's buffeting it.
And that little movement like that is enough to...
For me to miss it.
A moving drone at 300 metres is too tough to hit.
So we bring it closer and stop moving it around so much,
as if the operator has paused to decide what to do next.
So, what distance have you got there? 200, exactly.
200.
Let me do one more. OK.
Somewhere there?
Yeah, that'll do.
I've got an error message on my drone, it says "motor obstruction".
I mean, I've shot it down, yes.
But it was difficult, it was harder than I thought.
On top of that - every single shot that I've taken here,
the bullet has travelled into that bank for safety.
This bullet here,
if I was to fire it at that, sort of, angle there, over that hill...
..it could easily travel for ten miles.
And these will still kill on the way down.
So, really, is it a viable option to shoot a drone down with a rifle?
I would say...
..not very.
So, if shooting down a drone is both difficult and dangerous,
the next best tactical option, from a military perspective,
would be to try and take out the system controlling it...
..and that means finding the drone operator.
During the Gatwick crisis, the drone operator was never found.
And, since then, airports around the country have been searching
for a way to deal with this problem.
So, I'm on my way now to Southend Airport to see some of the latest
cutting edge, counter-drone technology to better understand how
they can actually find an operator.
London Southend Airport.
This detection system works by locating the radio waves given off
by the operator's handset when it sends signals to control the drone.
The detection equipment for the trial is being operated by
Alex from Mettis Aerospace,
who supply defence systems used by military forces.
I join him outside the airport perimeter as he's setting up his kit.
Hi, Alex.
Hello. Aldo. How are you doing?
Aldo, pleased to meet you. Alex.
So, what's the plan then for today?
The objective today is to identify drones that are going to be flown
in this area here, and feed the information back where we will be
in the control tower. And from the display, we will be able to
determine the exact location of the operator and the air vehicle.
So, as soon as he switches on, he's leaking a signal
which you're able to pick up? Yeah.
That's it, that's up and running.
This system works by placing two radio wave detectors
in suitable locations around the area that's to be protected.
If a drone nears the protected zone,
the detectors will pick up the radio signals given off
from the operator's controller as it communicates with the drone.
The detectors also calculate the direction of the signal.
They are made up of several individual sensors,
arranged in a circle.
The sensor nearest the drone operator will detect
a slightly stronger signal than those further away.
Each sensor gives a bearing towards the signal position,
and the point at which the two bearings cross
reveals the location of the drone operator.
So, that's us in the tower here. Yes.
These are your two sensors out in the field. Yes.
Green line and the yellow line.
Once it's deemed safe, the head of air traffic services
instructs a drone operator to begin the test.
OK, Norman, you can start flying the drone now.
This scenario was designed to mimic what happened at Gatwick.
Yeah, I can see the drone there.
And I can't see the drone operator.
So can the radio frequency detection system find the operator?
So, you see now? If you just see it just popping up... Yeah.
Now we've got the lines. Yes.
So this is this is the triangulation. That's exactly it.
So, where the two lines intersected
is where the highest probability that the drone operator
would be located, so that's putting him in this location here, yep.
Where that cursor is now... Yes.
..is about 100 metres short of that building that I can see there,
south, to the left as we look at it, out to the west. Yeah, uh-huh.
If you can phone him and get him to wave the flag?
OK, Norman, you can let me view your location now.
I can see him, he's waving a white flag now.
Pretty much bang on where you said he was standing.
Alex then revealed some surprising insider information about how
the Gatwick drone operator may have avoided detection
by a system like this.
How would it be possible that that drone operator then wasn't found?
Is it due to buildings?
Or, he was hiding? Or...?
There's no system in place at Gatwick.
If a system such as this were in place at Gatwick
then the sighting of the drone, and any reported sightings,
would have been verified.
And there is a higher probability that the location of the pilot
would have been established.
At the time of the attack,
Gatwick were trialling a drone detection system,
but it could only track one brand of drone,
and it couldn't detect the drone that was actually flown.
So if the UK's second busiest airport didn't have universally
effective counter-drone technology in place at the start of the crisis,
I'm worried about the country's level of readiness, overall.
If we want to catch a malicious operator to make an example of them
and deter others, our biggest airports are going to need
kit like this installed permanently.
But I'm worried that this drone incident at Gatwick has exposed
this weakness in our airport security defences
which could be exploited by others.
We're ruling out teenagers now because it's actually so sustained.
So it's a group wanting something.
Some people have been messaging us this morning,
who are caught up in this, saying it feels like terrorism.
In the future, other organisations may well decide to use
this type of tactic.
Right, you think there might be copycat incidents?
Elsewhere in the UK or around the world?
I'm sure. I'm sure.
Lots of people thought the Gatwick crisis bore the hallmarks
of a terrorist attack.
Although that was ruled out by the authorities at the time,
a clear template for drone attacks has now been set.
One that any individual or group with malicious intent could follow.
I've come to Cotswold Airport in Gloucestershire to meet
a leading expert on the threat from drones.
Dr James Rogers advises governments on the potential risks from drones,
and he has evidence of how the new technology is being exploited by terrorists.
I first started looking into drones when the American military
were using them, en masse,
in around 2009, 2010.
But, since then, we've been tracking just how this drone technology
has spread around the world to different state actors, but also
to non-state actors and terrorists, as well.
Everything from strapping radioactive waste to the bottom
of the drone, through to, you know,
putting small amounts of explosive on them and turning them
into booby traps, or fixing grenades to the bottom of them
and using them to drop them on aid workers, civilians and troops.
That's terrifying. So, effectively, you've got an airborne
improvised explosive device? Yeah, exactly.
Drones were first produced on a mass scale during World War II.
They looked and flew like small planes, and the military used them
for target practice.
By the time I was fighting in Iraq, they had become state of the art,
unmanned airplanes which fire laser-guided missiles,
all controlled by pilots over 1,000 kilometres away.
But the rapid development of drone technology means that criminals
and terrorists are now able to weaponise their drones to carry
out airborne attacks of their own...
..such as in this propaganda footage released by Isis.
This is one of the most controversial areas of the evolving technology.
So, to better understand the risks,
I'm meeting professional drone pilots, Chris and Milo.
Wow. So, you guys are our FPV? First... FPV?
Yes, first person view. First person view.
That means when you're flying, you're inside the drone, right?
Essentially, yeah.
So, we have the small, little racing drones here that we fly.
And down the bottom here, we have a small camera which sends
a signal back up to the aerial here on our goggles.
Essentially, we fly with these goggles on, as they give us
a live video feed of what is on the camera.
It's like flying in the cockpit of a full-sized aircraft,
so we're getting that perspective of buzzing around the sky.
New technology like this, when combined with weaponization,
could give us the greatest cause for concern.
This is light. I take it that's super-nimble when it's flying?
Very, very agile, very nimble.
You can be pretty accurate with these? Very, very accurate. Very fast, as well.
Shall we see what this little fella can do, then? Let's do it.
Pilot's ready to fly. All right, cool. All right, let's go.
Let's go see what this little thing can do. Yeah. Take you up.
It's going so fast, you can barely keep your eyes on it.
Whoa!
It is like Attack of the Killer Bees.
There's no level underneath. Whoa!
I've never seen a drone do a full loop-the-loop.
That's so quick, isn't it?
And it's gone. It's doing barrel rolls. Wow!
It's super-precise, isn't it?
Yeah. Just turns at right angles.
The other thing which is amazing about it is
Milo hasn't moved one bit.
He's not moved. He's not looked down, he's not looked up.
He may as well be completely disconnected and be a mile away.
With his goggles, he's basically inside the drone, flying.
He's the pilot in that drone.
Ooh! That is unbelievably accurate.
Imagine this as a weaponised drone.
And what we've got to remember is that Milo is looking through these goggles.
He doesn't have to be five feet away, ten feet away. No.
He could be... About a mile away.
So in effect, what you've got is a weaponised drone
being controlled from a mile away with pinpoint accuracy.
Absolutely.
That's terrifying.
Potentially.
The UK Government is set to introduce new legislation
requiring drone operators to register on a national database.
However, some security experts believe this may not be enough
to stop criminals or terrorists.
As part of his research, James has been compiling real-life examples
where drones have been weaponised and used to attack civilian targets.
Such as this public address
by President Maduro in Venezuela in August, 2018.
News coverage of the event captured the surprisingly quick attack,
and Maduro's shocked response in horrifying detail.
A couple of would-be assassins bought drones from the United States,
just normally, as anyone would do.
Off-the-shelf drones? Off-the-shelf drones, absolutely.
And then they just weaponised them with explosives.
They practised in a safe house a good few miles away
to make sure they could get the run-in that they wanted to do.
And then they flew it with intense speed and precision
straight at Maduro.
And that's when it goes off.
On this occasion, the bombs exploded in mid-air, away from the President.
However, seven soldiers were reportedly hurt.
Three of them seriously.
The footage captures the obvious panic of the crowd
as it scatters in fear.
First of all, they think it's fireworks.
But then, very quickly, when the second explosion happened,
his bodyguards come and rush around him
and they protect him straight away.
So in theory, what you've got there
is the capacity to build the ultimate killing machine
that's completely controllable and made from a bedroom somewhere.
You can definitely turn these things into a deadly killing machine,
or at least cause a sufficient amount of terror
to get everyone pretty scared about these systems.
Danger from weaponised drones is real. Yeah.
Thankfully, a weaponised drone attack hasn't yet happened in the UK,
but we can't afford to be complacent about the possibility.
I'm on my way to meet someone who knows first-hand
what it's like to come under attack from weaponised drones.
Aldo, right? Macer, yeah? Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you. Thanks very much for seeing me. No problem at all.
In 2014, Macer Gifford left his job in London in the finance industry
and joined a Kurdish militia group, the YPG, in their fight against Isis.
You've been on the receiving end of a drone attack.
What does that look like?
On my first day in Raqqa, we were attacked for the first time.
It was almost very similar to a mortar attack.
I'd got to a position, bombs started to land around us
and we sought cover
and I said to the guys, "Are those mortars?"
"No, no, drones."
And I just couldn't believe that the Islamic State had developed drones to this extent.
And then, from there, from almost day one,
the attacks were daily, constantly, all through Raqqa.
And sometimes, several would come over at any one time.
You could actually hear them coming.
Macer even managed to film a drone approaching on his mobile phone
and their attempts to shoot it down.
We're on a rooftop, we're about 200 metres from the Islamic State.
And if I turn the volume up...
He's going to try and drop this.
Maybe we should go inside.
So, you can hear... you can hear them coming...
You can hear that word, the drone. Yeah.
It still makes my heart beat faster.
It's quite an indescribable feeling.
He's definitely got napalm right underneath this.
You'll see in a second the confusion
as people try and shoot it down.
He's fucking low! Look how...
These drones would come over, start dropping bombs,
two, three, four bombs on top of us.
We'd scatter, we'd leave the roof
and then suddenly, there'll be a wave of fighters following us.
He's fucking low. Look how...
We were taking casualties
sort of three or four at a time, from drone attacks.
I can't hear them.
Has he landed over there?
So, we're talking off-the-shelf, weaponised drones?
These drones cost a thousand bucks, you can buy them cheaper.
Some of them are for sale in the UK.
Pretty terrifying. Absolutely, yeah.
I think what's amazed me is how quick and how prolific
drones have become on the battlefield.
This is a new threat that wasn't around when I was a soldier, when I was fighting.
This is a brand-new threat over the last three or four years.
But with the technology progressing,
with people being better pilots using them,
they're being much more accurate and much more lethal.
And whatever's used on the battlefield is only a very short step away
from being used in the UK for the exact same purpose,
of wreaking terror and fear into the general population.
The potential threat of a drone attack is worrying, but fortunately,
we do have sophisticated counter-drone technology
available in the UK which can be deployed by the military,
and it happened at Gatwick.
But only after an entire day of chaos, costing millions of pounds.
Tonight, the Government announced the military would be stepping in
to help the police at Gatwick.
But the key is that we have got some options now around the airport,
from a police perspective.
And that puts us in a much better position
to respond to drone sightings.
There are a range of measures which are there today,
which should give passengers confidence that they are safe to fly.
I'm not going to talk in detail about all of those.
Some of those are military capabilities.
When the RAF turned up at Gatwick,
drone sightings pretty much stopped.
It seems like the kit they arrived with sent the operator packing.
I want to understand exactly what it can do,
and I've been given permission by the team of military experts who have created it
to see it up close and personal for myself.
This must be it here.
That looks like some serious military hardware there.
When the Royal Air Force deployed to Gatwick Airport,
they brought with them elements of Leonardo's Falcon Shield system.
Hey, how you doing? I'm good. I'm Aldo.
Andrew Roberts. How do you do? Nice to meet you. Good.
Andy is one of the company's team leaders.
This looks like some serious hardware.
This is our drone detect, track, identify and defeat system.
So effectively, it's a jammer.
It allows us to jam the command link,
the video link and also the GPS of the drone.
The system uses an ultra long-range thermal-imaging camera
to identify and track the drone.
And can also include an electronic attack rifle to jam or disable it.
It's almost like an electronic sniper rifle,
effectively, is what we're producing there.
Neatly tucked away in the back of a van
is a systems' control centre, operated by Mark.
Hiya, I'm Mark.
Mark scans the area using the thermal-imaging camera.
At the same time, a radio-based detection system,
like the one I saw at Southend Airport,
also searches for a drone and the operator.
Guys, can we launch the drone now, please?
As soon as the drone operator switches on and launches,
the system picks him up, and his drone, almost instantly.
OK. So the drone's just gone in the air
and there's the detection straight away.
That was seconds after they switched the controller on.
On the screen there, he's got the drone and the drone operator
both detected in the electromagnetic spectrum.
And you can see the camera there
is now slewing over to that area to pick up the drone.
The system can then automatically zoom in and track the drone.
The camera's powerful high-definition sensor
produces incredibly sharp images at great distance.
Super, super powerful. I... I can't see anything with that
and yet, looking at this, I can tell that's a quadcopter. Yeah.
What range does this camera go out to?
So the camera was originally developed for border surveillance.
We can sit on the White Cliffs of Dover
and look over the English Channel
and read the clock on the town hall in Calais.
What?! It is an immensely-powerful camera.
That's pretty impressive.
And what's next, if we decide, then, that that is actually a real drone?
So if we're going to defeat this drone, then what we can do
is we can move on to the next step, which is the electronic attack.
So jamming that drone. Jamming its command signal, jamming its video signal
and then jamming its GPS to bring it down to the ground.
Once a drone has been detected and identified as hostile
using thermal-imaging camera,
the system aims a highly-targeted radio frequency beam at the drone.
Most other jammers fire a radio beam over a much wider area,
which can knock out other radio frequency systems,
such as mobile phones, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
But this jamming system works like an electronic sniper rifle,
firing only a narrow, highly-accurate beam
of high-energy radio waves directly at the drone.
The intensity of this energy blast
drowns out the same frequency signals
used by the operator and GPS system to control the drone.
The operator loses control, and, in many cases,
the drone simply hovers in the sky, before landing safely on the ground.
Jamming is illegal without special military or security clearance.
So to mimic the effects jamming has on the drone,
we're going to cut the drone's connection to its GPS signal
and see what happens.
This is the same as when you're jamming the signal?
Yeah, absolutely.
OK, so what we'll do now is we'll kill the GPS.
And there it goes.
Straight away, went unstable. Yeah.
You can see it just went. It becomes very unstable in the air.
Command and control knocked out, drone on the ground. Correct.
And there you go, there's the operator. There's your operator.
Caught redhanded.
Jamming may be the most sophisticated drone defences we have in the UK,
but we can't expect the military to turn up with it
every time a drone is flown into airport airspace.
Nor is it realistic for every airport
to spend several million pounds on a jamming system like this
and have it on standby 24/7
when there are still restrictions on its use.
But even if every airport did have their own jamming equipment,
it still wouldn't provide complete protection.
What are the limitations with jamming when it comes to drones?
So I guess the limitation would be
when the drone's not being used by remote control or not using GPS,
then jamming can become an issue.
So, if it's a pre-programmed drone
or a drone that doesn't have any connection
between an operator and the drone,
then that would be un-jammable?
That's correct, yeah.
Drones without operators might sound a bit farfetched,
but they are already being developed in labs in the US.
That is the famous Philadelphia skyline over there.
I want to investigate what exactly they can do,
so I'm heading to research company Exyn
to test this new generation of intelligent drones.
Hey, Jason. Hi, Aldo. Very nice to meet you.
Yeah, you, too. Thanks very much for having me.
Jason Derenick leads a team building these intelligent drones,
which map their environment
and make their own decisions about how to navigate it.
And there's a multitude of applications that you can think of for these sorts of technologies.
Everything from, you know, picking items in a warehouse
to actually being first responders
after a man-made or natural disaster.
Basically, sending them into places where it's not safe for people to go.
It just seems so futuristic. Yeah. This is the real deal.
Great benefits, undoubtedly,
but what if smart drones end up in the wrong hands?
Could they be stopped by the usual kinds of drone technology?
So, jamming, is that a worry for these robots?
So for traditional, commercial, off-the-shelf drones, it is.
For these systems that we develop,
the system itself is fully self-contained,
so there's really no signal to jam.
By default, then, you've designed technology which can't be jammed.
Is that right? That's correct.
Today, Jason and his team are testing the smartest-ever model,
a drone that can detect and avoid obstacles in its path, including people.
So if you lean forward to the camera here, you'll see that it's detecting
the two of us in real-time right now. Yeah.
So that's what the robot is seeing.
Effectively, it's recognised that we're human beings. Exactly.
Is that a percentage of likelihood that that's a person? Exactly.
Yeah. So, I'm 99.9% a person.
You're mostly people... Mostly people. That's good.
The smart drone will be given a pre-programmed destination
across the room and back.
But to make its life as tricky as possible,
we're going to put some moving obstacles in its way
to try and block its path.
All right, we're going.
So it's just completely making its mind up as it comes past.
That is amazing.
We completely changed the environment around,
and I was trying to block it.
The drone navigates by bouncing laser light off obstacles in its path
to map their possession and calculate a safe route
past them, including myself.
It's quite terrifying, having a drone fly directly at you.
What's amazing is this is completely...
..autonomous.
It's completely flying on its own around me.
That's incredible. That is amazing.
Wow!
It's amazing seeing it actually think
and plot out its new trajectory in real-time.
I can see endless positive uses for a hi-tech drone like this,
not least, saving lives with disaster relief.
But as it can't be defeated by jamming, that means
if one got into the wrong hands,
there are currently fewer ways to stop it.
I mean, a completely autonomous drone,
could that be used in a malicious way? Is that possible?
That's a really good question.
One of the things I think about when I look at this sort of technology
is I really try to separate it from the particular-use cases that people can apply this for.
How people use it is... essentially on them.
The options that you can use that technology for going forward,
they're just unbelievable.
But ultimately, if this sort of technology gets into the wrong hands,
potentially, that could be an airport's worst... worst nightmare.
From what I've seen, I think the threat from automated,
or even just pre-programmed drones,
is only going to increase in the future.
They're resistant to jamming,
so we need to find another type of counter-drone technology.
So I've come south, to Dallas.
I'm coming to meet up with a defence company
who supplies a lot of tech to the US military.
And basically, I want to see what they are developing
that will be able to counter this futuristic threat
of fully-automated drones.
And the weird part of it, that is they've asked me
to come and meet them at an off-road park,
which has got my mind boggling.
I've been invited here by Raytheon's lead engineer, Nick Maniscalco.
Hey! I'm Aldo. Hi. How you doing? Yeah, good.
Nick. Nice to meet you. Yeah, nice to meet you, too.
What is this? This looks like something off of Mad Max.
This is our laser weapon system
integrated on a Polaris MRZR vehicle.
So, it's a dune buggy with a laser on top? That's right.
We've got a fully-automated tracking system
to detect and take down drones.
You want to go for a ride? Yeah. Let's give it a go. All right.
When do I get a chance to drive it - later on?
We'll see about that.
What made you put the laser on top of a dune buggy?
We wanted to put the system on something that would be rugged,
portable and compact.
It's mobile protection, basically. Mobile protection. Yeah.
As well as being able to reach the most extreme environments,
the buggy's powerful laser can shoot down most types of drone,
including automated ones.
Nick then let me get my hands on the controls of their latest prototype.
Aiming this laser at a drone is designed to be so simple,
even a child could do it.
Is that a game controller?
Yeah. Well, this is what all the kids are using these days.
So we find that when they come out into the Forces,
that they're able to pick these up and learn how to use the system
in just a couple of minutes.
The irony is, who knew all those hours of playing video games would've paid off?
The handset controls a high-definition thermal camera,
similar to the one the RAF used at Gatwick, and it also aims the laser.
So you can see it's clearly a drone, and it's moving.
Yeah. Use the trigger finger to track the target.
Getting them into the crosshairs and...
You got him. I tracked it! You got him. Is that it?
Oh, look, I'm not touching it and now it's moving.
It's locked on. I'm not controlling anything now
and this is moving. So, that's automatically tracking it?
Yeah. You'll just track them all day from here.
Wow! And that's quick. Yeah.
I kind of want to just press the fire button, though.
Unfortunately, firing a high-powered laser directly into the sky
requires permission from the US Government.
But this unseen footage from a previous test
shows the exact moment of impact on a similar drone.
You can see the drone is heated into a blazing fireball
and in just a few seconds, it burns out of the sky.
Nick also has the remains of some recent victims to show me.
This is a drone operator's worst nightmare, isn't it? It sure is.
You've literally just fried the brains on this while it's up in the air.
Yeah. This really illustrates the ability to get the beam
directly on the target, where we want it.
It's amazing, I mean, it's literally smack bang in the middle of that.
So, clearly, this is a super-precise weapon for automated drones.
Today has been futuristic, to say the least.
You've got a laser effectively mounted on the back of a dune buggy,
which can take out a moving drone at 5km range.
I mean, it sounds like far-fetched sort of drone wars,
but that's what it is.
It's like the cutting edge of drone wars.
I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of this type of technology.
We could well see smaller versions of these protecting our airfields,
hospitals, embassies, football grounds.
I mean, it sounds futuristic,
but I don't think it's that far away.
This is probably the future of drone defence around the world.
From what I've seen here in the UK and in the US,
the counter-drone technology to help protect us is out there.
But some of it costs millions and millions of pounds.
Gatwick have spent £5 million on a new drone defence system,
but is it realistic for every airport and vulnerable location
to be able to afford to do the same?
The rise of drone technology has opened up a new arms race in the skies
that is only set to accelerate.
For sure, it can bring us tremendous benefits,
but unless we face up to the potential threat
and are prepared to invest in counter-drone defences,
we could be leaving ourselves at risk of a disaster.
And that should be a concern for us all.