Anti-Drone Systems Are Starting to Take Off

Camera drones have opened a whole new world of possibilities for photographers looking for a way to capture aerial images, but the meteoric rise in drone adoption has also opened up Pandora�s box as well. Now a new industry is emerging alongside the booming drone industry: anti-drone defense systems.

New technologies are being developed in order to keep drones away from places they shouldn�t be or doing things they shouldn�t do.

Just last week, multiple drones kept firefighters grounded during a wildfire in Southern California. State senators responded by introducing new bills that give firefighters permission to take down drones that are interfering with rescue operations.

That�s just one case in which authorities would like to have more control over the flight of consumer drones. Another would be the possibility of weaponized camera drones flying around. A lighthearted video of a fireworks-shooting drone went viral earlier this year, but people weren�t laughing as much when a flying handgun drone was spotted on YouTube earlier this month:

The 18-year-old man that uploaded that video is now being investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration.

As the number of these incidents and concerns mount, anti-drone defense systems may soon be a booming industry. The Wall Street Journal reports that quite a few companies are working on various solutions to neutralizing drones in the air.

Some of the systems use radio-frequency jamming to disrupt or hijack a drone�s communication capabilities, forcing it to land or change course. A UK-based company called Blighter Surveillance offers this type of technology in a $1 million system called AUDS (the Anti-UAV Defence System). Here�s a 3-minute video showing how AUDS works:

Other devices use high-powered lasers to shoot drones right out of the air from distances of hundreds of meters. One such device is an anti-drone laser being developed by a group of European defense companies, which apparently uses a consumer telephoto lens to spot its target. It successfully destroyed a flying drone from a distance of about 550 yards at a recent test:

An anti-drone laser. Still frame from Wall Street Journal.

Here�s a 2-minute-long report by the Wall Street Journal on the rise of anti-drone technologies:

These anti-drone systems are just one way of addressing these new drone security issues. On the drone side of things, some manufacturers, including market leader DJI, have begun building �no fly zone� restrictions directly into the onboard firmware.

It�ll also be interesting to see whether governments begin forcing drone makers to build extra security measures into the drones themselves � things like kill switches or ways for authorities to take control.