Awaiting technology for drone accountability

A Boeing 737 landed with nose cone damage on Dec. 12 in Tijuana, Mexico, and there has been no official report to date on whether evidence of a drone strike has been found. In Britain, drone sightings reported by dozens of people, including flight crews, passengers, and staff around Gatwick Airport south of London caused a 36-hour ordeal Dec. 19 and 20. The reported drone activity prompted cancellation of hundreds of flights and disrupted the travel plans of 140,000 passengers days before Christmas. The British Army, which deployed unspecified technology to detect and possibly interdict one or more drones seen buzzing Britain’s second-busiest airport, had withdrawn by Jan. 3, according to media reports, and the case remained unsolved.

While the FAA had by November approved more than 50,000 drone operations by certificated remote pilots through the Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC), there remains no capability to verify compliance with rules and limitations. Researchers at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University tracked hundreds of drone flights in the vicinity of Daytona Beach International Airport in May, including some that apparently violated airspace rules. One of the drones detected appeared to have intercepted the glideslope of a busy runway. An FAA spokesman, in a series of follow-up emails, was unable to provide information about which of those specific flights detected by the research team (using a system capable only of identifying drones of one particular manufacturer), or how many flights overall, had been authorized for that particular airspace and time period.

Bloomberg reported on Dec. 21 that counter-drone technology tested by the U.S. government in recent years has performed poorly: Radar lost track of drones that stop and hover, and false positives were common. The loss of radio signals to interference has also made drones more difficult to detect than expected.

The FAA began 2018 digesting a report from a committee formed to recommend how unmanned aircraft can be identified and tracked, an effort that had produced little consensus among the various participants on what technology (or technologies) to require. A year later, there is still no consensus around which technology to use: The Wall Street Journal reported on Dec. 30 that the FAA plans to test up to eight prototype systems, though the budget and timetable of the project have yet to be established. Debate continues about the technical details of how to detect and track drones, and to whom that information will be available.

The FAA has made clear that the ability to locate and identify unmanned aircraft in the National Airspace System is an essential prerequisite to allowing unmanned aircraft operations beyond current limits, particularly flights beyond visual line of sight. Congress authorized the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to monitor drone radio signals and develop effective countermeasures, and the events at Gatwick have only increased the pressure to empower law enforcement and aviation authorities with the capability to find and stop bad actors.

What that technology will look like, and who will pay for it, remain as unknown as the identity of the person or persons whose drone use around a British airport propelled the issue to the forefront of public awareness.