[venaoy]

It's fascinating to think about potential counter-defenses... I can imagine this will spur development of new technologies to intercept small personal drones like these. Regular air defense artillery is too dangerous to use in a busy airspace like the San Diego/Tijuana border where this drone was found, and it is designed to work against military drones which are much bigger. New and different technology is needed to intercept and destroy small personal drug-smuggling drones.

[Crito]

Birdshot. Range would be an issue, but the higher up the target is the more margin of error you have.

That or maybe falcons. Train birds of prey to knock drones out of the sky. Might not be safe for the bird, depending on the type of drone. I wonder if falcons are smart enough to make that sort of judgement call themselves..

[lttlrck]

They could be trained to drop weighted rope onto the props.

Edit: though I guess there might be some simple countermeasures

[pavel_lishin]

I'm imagining competing gangs fueling competition in this space; why bother paying to import your own drugs from across the border, when you can snag the competition's deliveries right from the sky?

[thisjepisje]

Like this?

http://samy.pl/skyjack/

[jamessb]

Or the Rapere Intercept Drone, which uses physical rather than electronic means: http://rapere.io/

[atmosx]

That's easy to defend from (although the project itself is awesome!!!!) using WPA2.

[tjradcliffe]

Likely counter-measure will be more drones. It's easy to knock a drone out of the sky with another drone, especially if the counter-drone is disposable. Avoidance technology becomes complicated. It's relatively easy to program an autonomous drone for clear skies. Adding threat detection and avoidance is a lot harder.

Or the US could just go with something that actually works, like the Portugal system of scrapping all drug laws. After fifteen years none of the imagined horrors have come true, addiction has dropped to half the previous value, law enforcement costs have gone down, and things are generally better.

People look at Portugal, see that the facts contradict their imaginary scenarios, and deny the facts, but that doesn't change them.

[deeviant]

Seems like a pretty good use case for lasers as you can generally hit only what your aiming out, and you don't have any explosive and/or metal shrapnel falling back down into populated areas.

[aaron987]

Blasting the drone out of the sky is probably not the best option. Drones are becoming more popular for legitimate uses like photography, farming, and maybe deliveries in the future. Without knowing what the drone is carrying, it would be hard to determine which ones should be shot down and which are serving some legitimate purpose.

For that reason, I think the ideal solution would involve capturing the drone somehow, maybe with a net of some kind. Innocent drones could be marked with contact information, allowing them to be returned to their owner in the event that they are mistakenly captured.

As an added benefit, harmlessly capturing the drone would provide more useful evidence for the police investigating drug crimes.

[jpitz]

>and you don't have any explosive and/or metal shrapnel falling back down into populated areas. ... if and only if the laser completely obliterates the target, which requires a fair bit more power and precision than a disabling shot.

[deeviant]

I was mainly speaking to the anti-aircraft weapon's addition shrapnel, rather than the drone itself. It's pretty hard to shoot down a drone without, ah, having the drone fall down. You can try some sort of hack, or radio blackout, but those are pretty easy to defeat.

But most modern AA weapons have tremendous velocities and are often explosive. Even after losses due to air resistance, AA shrapnel can come with with lethal velocities. I was told by somebody I trust that the Baghdad suffered more damage in financial terms from AA fallout than the actual US air strikes in the first US/Iraq war.

[FLUX-YOU]

Taking a page from Bane, just get a bigger drone to grab it.

[elihu]

I think the most effective countermeasure is just good tracking ability. Drones are pretty conspicuous -- having one land in your backyard is like a giant billboard saying "DRUG DEAL IN PROGRESS, RIGHT HERE!"

The counter-countermeasure, of course, is to start making "deliveries" to random people, and tie up law enforcement by compelling them to arrest innocent parties.

[seanp2k2]

Wonder how many small-time dealers are already selling smaller quantities via FPV with a drone. Take the drugs off, attach the cash, fly back to the car a mile away...anonymous, no risk of confrontation, you know where you're delivering to if they fail to pay etc.

[kristofferR]

Israel is deploying Iron Beam this year, a laser system, to shoot down (among other things) drones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Beam

[seanp2k2]

Good luck detecting RCs that look like birds: http://youtu.be/sczE8nNkrY4

[jqm]

hmmm... and Hawks?

[88e282102ae2e5b]

But would that fly legally? I'm skeptical about the idea of law enforcement agents destroying someone's property without even inspecting the cargo first, even in these times.

[lostgame]

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hk8_QomqSt4/hqdefault.jpg