Drone Freeze Ray

[Teager]

Here's a way to keep those drones away from you

How does it work? How does it actually intercept a drone?

It involves radio waves. The device is outfitted with rather sophisticated cameras that can identify a drone or multiple drones approaching the area. And then it has a rather strong directional antenna, which can overwhelm the drone with radio waves. It's sort of the equivalent of a denial-of-service attack, which, on the web, is when you overwhelm a web server with requests so that it can no longer respond to any. It's a similar analogy, where you're overloading the drone with radio waves, severing the connection it has with its operator so that once disconnected with the pilot, the drone doesn't know what do, so it just hangs there, frozen, in mid-air, until it runs out of energy or batteries, at which point it floats to the ground.

Floats? Or crashes?

Well, most drones are designed to float. If they don't have that programming, yes, it will crash. But the [freeze ray] manufacturers actually tout this feature as being part of its covert capabilities. The idea being that a drone operator is flying their drone, out and about. All of a sudden it freezes in mid-air, it's no longer responsive and then it comes to the ground. So the hope is that that individual operator has no idea that they've been intercepted by this drone ray, thus protecting the privacy and security of whoever has that drone ray installed.

More at link and a video.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/don-t-like-that-drone-overhead-grab-an-anti-drone-freeze-ray-1.3267317

 

[Colin Parkinson]

hmmm unless you can over-ride it's built in return to home upon signal loss it will go into that mode.

 

[dimsum]

hmmm unless you can over-ride it's built in return to home upon signal loss it will go into that mode.

Agreed.  But if the intention is to keep it from a specific area, then it has fulfilled its mission.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

See now, I thought if it was a DRONE it would have a pre-programmed flight path and this wouldn't affect it at all;  however if it was an RPA or UAV... ;D

 

[SupersonicMax]

Unless the Freeze Ray transmits on a large band of frequencies, there are ways to counter the jamming (this is all it is, jamming).  Even then, there are clever ways to defeat such system (seems like it is very directional). 

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

http://fas.org/spp/military/program/nssrm/initiatives/crpa.htm

 

[Baz]

The article, like the way most of this is presented to the general public, oversimplified the entire problem.

Yes, it's not a drone it's an RPV/UAV/whatever other TLA we choose to apply to it... but to the general public it's a drone, and we need to deal with that.

As others have said, it depends on how the vehicle is built to behave:
- if it is a drone or "intelligent drone" (reacts to its environment) then nothing will happen... it will continue to do what it was told.  There is a place for such things: go out and look at this and bring back the pictures.
- if it is a dumb RPV (think model aircraft dumb) it will crash
- if it is an advanced UAV like global hawker it will keep doing what it was told to do until it reaches the next decision point, and then it will do what it was told to do in the case of loss comms at that point, etc.
- if it is something in between that it will execute it's lost comms code, which is probably return home as has been said.

I think the only ones that we freeze and float down are the small ones you see the video from on YouTube all the time.  They have basic autopilot which mean they will hover unless told to do otherwis; ironically it kind of makes them drone pluses because they will act like a drone if given no commands.  There are some military ones like that.

But the article does touch on another aspect of the whole UAV Achilles heel... bandwidth.  It's expensive and it's exploitable, no matter what tech you put against it.

Haves quick is designed to avoid jamming, or more correctly work through jamming,  true.  It's deficult to follow the hops with a jammer, the theory being if the radio is hopping before the jammer catches up then you can work through it.  Conversely, jamming the entire band requires lots of power and also restricts it's friendly use.  However, receiving Have quick has become relatively easy... put a broadband software radio on the entire jump band; that's why COMSEC is also employed.

Therefore, if you want real time information from the UAV, you have to transmit it, and that transmission can be intercepted ( with varying degrees of d8fficulty).  If you can intercept it, you can locate it; and if you can locate it, you can do something about it.

For the type of "drones" this is aimed at, the ones predominately derived from cheap civilian tech, there's another approach.  Once it's located, shine a laser at it.  This will overload the optics and it won't see anything.  Of course, you better be sure you're not shining a laser at an actually manned aircraft if you're a civilian as that has its down ramifications.  By the way, brings up a point... if you are shining a laser at something, you can be located, and there are boxes that do just that.  I've read some UK police helicopters carry just such a box and it's quite good at producing resulting knocks on people's doors...

No new technology is going to be immune to other new technology; the game just goes on.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

The latest Phantom 3 has optically sensors on the bottom for mapping while flying indoors away from GPS. I suspect that optical self guidance and avoidance systems will be the next big thing in the recreational drone world. I fly a Phantom II vision for work and buying a Phantom when I retire in 3 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEfUwd1k5iw