[Cookiesaurusbex]

I went to school and worked for a while studying spectrum management. It boggles my mind to this day that drones get in the way of fire fighting and emergency services because an obvious first step world be to allow emergency vehicles & helicopters to jam the frequencies of drones. There are plenty of other vehicles with this ability (military, secret service, etc) so it's not like the technology to solve the problem is unobtainable or non existent.

[ocdtrekkie]

Would that be legal? Does the FCC offer such an exemption to laws prohibiting signal interference? And in what capacity? We've seen law enforcement jam cellular networks, but firefighters and EMTs? Helicopters? Should civilian helicopters also be able to jam signals? Would all this signal jamming (mostly of Wi-Fi bands) interfere with emergency services equipment or the ability of victims to call for help?

[Johnythree]

The problem is that there's an infinite number of possible frequencies. Most Hobby drones use one of the ISM "junk" bands (eg 900MHz, 2.4Ghz, etc), but it's impossible to jam ALL of the possible frequencies without wiping out communications over a wide area.

[nradov]

Jamming equipment is heavy, bulky, expensive, maintenance intensive, and especially power hungry. Plus due to the vagaries of signal propagation the effects are somewhat unpredictable. Installing jammers on civilian helicopters would be totally impractical.