Garda management reluctant to provide drone patrols at airports, prisons and other facilities given sheer scale of task
One anti-drone technology was the Skynet Drone Defence, which was effectively a net inside a plastic casing – like an oversized shotgun cartridge. It is shot up at a drone in order for the net to cover and disable it. Another product on the market is by Australian-US company DroneShield, which looks like an oversized machine gun. It is pointed from the ground towards a drone and overwhelms it via radio frequencies.
“For years the most effective action was a shotgun, but now this is a space that a huge amount of investment has gone into,” he said. It was also now deemed too dangerous and unpredictable to shoot down a drone close to an airport for fear of where a stray shot may land. “If a drone we identify isn’t on our list of drones allowed to be in the area at that time – maybe a drone being operated by the media at an event or something like that – we see that automatically. And all we do is press a button called ‘home’ and that drone comes to our helimat,” he said of a predesignated landing space marked with a flat mat.
In the aftermath of last weekend’s drone sightings at the airport – which grounded flights for a time on Friday, Saturday and Monday – it emerged slowly and painfully this week that not only do Irish airports not have the technology and kit required to down drones, the Government and State agencies are starting from scratch on this issue.
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