The anti-drone solution du jour is a net-shooting bazooka. The British company OpenWorks Engineering recently unveiled its SkyWall 100, which it claims can blast an unfurling net around a drone 100 meters (328 feet) away.

As cool as it looks, you have to wonder how well this unwieldy single-shot weapon could handle a quadcopter in real life, or if it could take out faster, fixed-wing drones. (Here's a video of men trying to shoot them down withwith machine guns. It's harder than you think.) But even if the SkyWall 100 actually works, it would illegal in most cases according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

"Shooting down a drone has the same consequences, legally, technically speaking, as bringing down an airliner or a Cessna," says Jeffery Antonelli, an expert in drone law. "It's illegal under federal law." And if you tried taking down a drone with some sort of jamming or signal attack, you'd also have the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on your case.

Now, if a plane or helicopter were violating your airspace, which the 1946 United States v. Causby case puts at below 83 feet, then "you'd call the FAA and report the tail number," says Antonelli. But FAA registration numbers for hobby drones don't have to visible on the outside, so what's there to report? (By the way, when we asked the FAA what to do in these situations, it recommended notifying the police, and referred us to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The NTIA is currently working on a "best practices" document with other stakeholders interested in drones. But its recommendations will be voluntary.)

"Shooting down a drone has the same consequences, legally, technically speaking, as bringing down an airliner or a Cessna"

The small drone problem has "no viable solution," admits Patrick Egan, editor of the online drone pub sUAS News. That hasn't stopped people from trying to come up with them. So let's look at the pros and cons of each. Just remember, this is for educational purposes only.

Net Guns

SkyWall 100 is one more variation on the anti-drone net gun concept. DroneShield, which makes the drone-detecting acoustic sensors, at one point experimented with such a device. (DroneShield officials emphasize that they are exclusively in the detection market now.) That net gun, resembling those used for animal control, was aboutthe size of a large flashlight. But it was a close-range weapon, only able to reach drones hovering 50 feet away.

To fix the range issue, other companies have mounted net guns on drones for air-to-air attack. Take the EXCIPIO Aerial Netting System. Developed by Theiss UAV Solutions, this flying gun can catch up to a rotary-wing drone, dramatically extending the range of the net solution. Even so, trying to take down a fast fixed-wing droneis tricky, so the company is working on sensors and autonomous controls to get EXCIPIO locked on target.

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One problem with shooting a drone out of the sky, however you accomplish that task, is that it falls. Potentially on people. That's why the ground-based SkyWall 100 has a parachute attached to its net. The air-to-air folks, meanwhile, have had to come up with their own solutions. The French-builtDrone Interceptor MP200, for instance, flies with an unfurled net to entangle targets, though doing so will affect speed and maneuverability. By contrast, the Drone Catcher,developed by Michigan Tech University's Human-Interactive Robotics Lab, fires a net with a tether.

EXCIPIO will have a tether and a parachute, Theiss UAV Solutions founder Shawn Theiss says. "We have the option of relocating [the drone] by keeping it attached to [the tether] or releasing it and letting it parachute down" if it's too big to be carried away, he says.

Pros:

·No discharge of firearm.

·No signals interference.

·Local and state authorities likely OK with it if it's on your property.

Cons:

·Most systems have to be reloaded after one shot.

·If mounted on a drone, you need a pilot and a drone that's always ready to launch.

·Technically, you are still on the hook with the FAA.

Shotguns

There aremore firearms than people in this country, so why not just use a shotgun to take down a drone?Last August, looked at the issue and judged Number 10 birdshot, which carries around 1,000 tiny pellets per cartridge, a good bet to take out your neighbor's annoying drone.

A shotgun has an effective range of 120-150 feet (if not more, given the fragility of many quadcopters), which could sufficient. But a shotgun would likely come up short defending a large site.

Then there's that whole legal issue again.

Last July, a Kentucky man wasarrested and charged with wanton endangerment and criminal mischief for shooting down a drone, but a county District Court judgelater threw out the charges. (He usedNumber 8 birdshot, in case you were wondering.) Other jurisdictions may not be so forgiving. "I wouldn't hold that as precedent for someone shooting down a drone elsewhere," Antonelli says. Indeed, a New Jersey man was indicted last August on "two charges of criminal mischief and the possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose" for shooting down a drone.

Besides varying city ordinances and state law, there's the FAA, which could step in next time. Well, at least, in theory: an FAA spokesman said he couldn't recall a case where the administration took civil action against a drone-shooter. Certainly not when a drone belonging to an animal rights group was shot down over a fundraiser for Sen. Jim Inhofe.

That lack of FAA enforcement may change, though, once more expensive commercial drones start getting knocked down, says Douglas Marshall, an adjunct law professor at DePaul University.

Pros:

·Not an expensive, specialized weapon

·Wide shot spread has a good chance of taking out faster fixed-wing drones.

·Multiple shots

·No signals interference, so no trouble with the FCC.

Cons:

·Falling aircraft might hit someone.

·Depending on the jurisdiction, you might get in trouble with local authorities.

·Still on the hook with the FAA.

Signal Disruptors

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Since drones are remotely piloted, they are vulnerable to attacks that sever the communications link because pilot and aircraft. Engineers at the Battelle Memorial Institute have developed DroneDefender, a directional jammer that looks a cross between a rifle and an antenna.

When aimed and fixed on a drone, DroneDefender disrupts the radio and GPS signals guiding it, says Dan Stamm, program manager for the anti-drone device. And the jammer can do so up from up to 400 meters (1,312 feet) away, making it a long-range weapon.

The disrupting energy is also fired out in a 30-degree cone, so DroneDefender also has a reasonable chance of hitting fast, fixed-wing drones. "As long as we have the [drone] contained within the viewfinder, our system is very effective," Stamm says.

If hit by a jammer, the cheapies will just fall out of the sky

What happens when the signals are disrupted? Alex Morrow, technical director for DroneDefender, says the drone will go into a pre-programmed routine, such as "return home" mode, or hover to the ground. In this way, the remotely piloted aircraft—which might very well belong to an innocent kid and not a troublemaker—is not harmed.

Of course, that assumes the drone has a GPS antenna. "There's a range of drones. You've got the little things that you get for $47 on Amazon. Those don't have anything besides a camera," says John Knowles, editor of the Journal of Electronic Defense.

If hit by a jammer, the cheapies will just fall out of the sky.

Pros:

·No discharge of firearm.

·Fast, long-range weapon.

·Multiple "shots."

Cons:

·Drone falls out of the air or returns, uncaptured, to base.

·In the U.S, only the feds have the right to jam.

Drone Hijacking

Now we're venturing into a more exotic realm. Instead of simply disrupting an operator's control over a drone, it is possible to hijack the craft, ordering it to land or go back and spy on its original operator.

There are two ways to commandeer a drone, Knowles says. First, you can radiate a rival command signal that overpowers the first signal, which weakens as the drone flies further away from the operator. Second, one can hack the drone by transmitting malicious code.

This first approach requires a little bit of knowledge, but perhaps not as much as you'd think. Hobby drones use Wi-Fi and operate in the 2.4 gigahertz frequency range. Plus, the command signal is an open standard waveform, which doesn't require a special transmitter to work. In fact, all you need is an iPhone, a readily downloadable app and a power amplifier. "The receiver on the drone can't determine where the command signal is coming from, and it uses the strongest signal on the network," Knowles explains. If you put out the strongest signal, you control the drone.

As for hacking, security researchers have found ways to exploit Wi-Fi to inject drones with malicious code. In 2012 there wasVirus-Copter, which infected target drones and caused them to "run amok." The following year,Skyjack was able to take over target Parrot AR.Drones and transform them into obedient "zombies" of the hacker's drone. Ryan Satterfield, founder of the Planet Zuda security company, says drone hacking is easy to do—easier than trying to overpower a signal.

"All you have to do is connect to the Wi-Fi," he says, "open up Telnet on your terminal, or if you're using Windows, just type in 'Telnet.' Then, in Windows, you would type in 'open' and the IP address [of the drone]…and then you're are at the real-time operating system command line."

There are problems with hacking drones, of course. It won't work with simple, hardwired RC planes, and it's challenging to do across a wide range of drones. In addition, it seems unlikely that hacking, at least in the near-term, would be a workable solution for a homeowner or facility guard ambushed by an aerial intruder.

Pros:

·No discharge of firearm.

·Fast, long-range weapon.

·Multiple "shots."

·Can capture drone intact or send it back to reveal assailant.

Cons:

·Requires some technical knowledge.

·Hacking is hard to do across a wide range of models.

·Both the FAA and FCC will not be happy.

Eagles. Yes, Eagles.

Forget virus-bearing anti-drone drones. The Dutch National Police is working with a company called Guard From Above on a much more natural drone predator: bald eagles trained to snatch small drones out of the air. It seems like an interesting solution, and one that doesn't involve birdshot, nets, or jamming. But who feeds and houses the birds? How do eagles handle larger drones? We don't know the answers to these questions yet.

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A related issue is potential injuries to the bird. As noted inNational Geographic, bald eagles haven't been off the Endangered Species List for very long, and adrone rotor blade can be a very dangerous thing. (Why eagles? CEO Sjoerd Hoogendoorn says eagles just turned out to be the "best" solution of other birds of prey.) Guard From Above says inits FAQ that it is aware of potential dangers and it is awaiting the results of a Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research study on the blades' "possible impact on the birds' claws."

Pros:

·No discharge of kinetic and non-kinetic weapons.

·Living, precision-guided attack.

·Multiple attacks.

·Can capture small drones.

Cons:

·Cost and logistics of training, housing and maintaining bird.

·Drone blades might hurt bird.

What To Do

As more and more people buy drones, the chances of one hovering over your backyard or facility increase, and we will need clearer rules and better enforcement to reflect that new reality. For now, though, it's a bit like the Wild West out there: The federal government doesn't go after drone shooters, and it's hard to sick the police on drone owners who violate your airspace.

Still, put down the shotgun—and don't even think of a jammer.



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