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Later in this thread there were these messages and others.
Gatwick airport closed by drone attack
- Thread starter Touring Mars
- 204 comments
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- 16,488
- Grea'er Laandan
- UKMikeyA
- UKMikeyA
There's a difference between perpetrators and suspects. That's why I said immediately after the detention:
Too bad publications like the Sunday Express and the Mail On Sunday chose to treat habeas corpus as if it were a mere formality, instead of the fundamental basis of criminal law. For the innocent detainees those newspapers' editors are the morons who ruined their Christmas.
Too bad they don't have the deep pockets of a Max Mosley or a Cliff Richard in order to secure legal redress against our gutter press.
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- 2,117
- Arizona
- Thugnificent34
- Zeke34
- 16,488
- Grea'er Laandan
- UKMikeyA
- UKMikeyA
I didn't mean to have a go at you. It's the press that's really dumb.
- 2,117
- Arizona
- Thugnificent34
- Zeke34
- 12,753
- Seattle-ish
That's why releasing the names and photos of those two prematurely is so dangerous. People will hear they've been arrested, but miss that they've been released and cleared. Their lives are in very real danger from unhinged nutjobs who will think it's their duty to administer vigilante justice. (Not you, obviously.)
It's called the Mandela effect. There are thousands of people who believe Nelson Mandela died in prison, despite him being released and becoming President of South Africa. There are thousands of people who will tell you they remember seeing a movie from the 1990s called Shazam featuring Sinbad as a genie, even though there is no such movie. Now for the rest of their lives, this couple will have to deal with thousands of people who will always believe they used drones to shut down Gatwick for three days at Christmas time. The newspapers responsible need to pay dearly for their shoddy journalism, maybe even be put out of business like News of the World.
Dotini
(Banned)
- 15,742
- Seattle
- CR80_Shifty
A cartoon perfectly sums up the Gatwick Airport fiasco. It was posted by UK Paramedic Humour on Facebook and it shows one police officer saying to the other policeman holding a smoking rifle: “I don’t think that was a drone…” as the two are looking down on a Santa and his crashed sleigh and reindeer. In the background, you can see Gatwick Airport.
The Gatwick fiasco is the latest reminder that we're a great people governed by incompetents
22 DECEMBER 2018 • 8:00PM
The army were called in after sightings of drones brought Gatwick airport to a standstill, causing havoc for tens of thousands of passengers. CREDIT: ISABEL INFANTES/PA
The most remarkable point about the news that the Army had been sent to Gatwick airport to try to stop drones invading its airspace was that we had enough of an Army available for the purpose. Not only, after the financial crisis of a decade ago on which so much comes to be blamed, did we choose to spend public money on overseas aid rather than on defending ourselves, but the Ministry of Defence is now so useless
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...-reminder-great-people-governed-incompetents/
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- 28,471
- Windsor, Ontario, Canada
- Johnnypenso
- 84,437
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- GTP_Famine
But originally drawn by Ben Jennings for "The I Paper", before being ripped off completely unreferenced by a Facebook page and then posted on a second site, still completely unreferenced, before a user of a third site, pushing the "no drone" conspiracy angle for no good reason (thanks to misunderstanding the police comments, one hopes not on purpose), posted it again with copy-pasted text without referencing either the text creator from the second site or the original image creator.
- 22,549
- Arizona
- HamiltonMP427
Honestly I don't think there was a drone, and if there was it wouldn't be all that hard to have shut it down. There is a potential that perhaps what was seen was an unidentified object, which lately that area has had some major reports of. Whatever that is, who knows, but the UK isn't really a place to use a cover story to hide UFO sittings if in fact it was one, which at this point it might as well be.
Though I see that when such is suggested the piss is taken out of it because it is suggested.
Though I see that when such is suggested the piss is taken out of it because it is suggested.
Dotini
(Banned)
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- CR80_Shifty
Several welcome and astute observations. I will only add that in evolved human societies there seems to be a useful mental attitude that they shouldn’t be interested in what’s going on behind the official curtain.
Danoff
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- Mile High City
They're rated for bird strikes. Airliners get lots of reinforcement for impact that other aircraft do not get. I have no doubt that a drone, especially one with an explosive charge, could take out an engine, but a twin engine plane is required to be able to take off with one engine (in the US anyway).
- 20,681
- TenEightyOne
- TenEightyOne
That's the case in the UK too (and across most developed nations, as far as I'm aware). Still, an engine failure is either contained or it isn't and it can be hard to predict which until an incident occurs. I don't think pilots, passengers or insurers would accept an "it'll probably be okay" approach to engine failure incidents. The problem with climb-out engine failures is that the plane can't usually land until it's dumped some fuel. That increases the time in the air and, exponentially, the risk of secondary issues. Another question (raised here by @Famine iirc) regards the lithium-iron batteries. What do they do when wedged in an engine with lots of fuel lines and all that lovely oxygen getting rammed in?
Danoff
Premium
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That's pretty much what you do when you fly (or drive). A bird strike can take out an engine on any takeoff. I understand that drones are a bit different, and one that you've seen at your airport is a bit more different still. But it's not a different type of risk. Maybe it's too much additional risk to take, I'm not necessarily saying that the airport did wrong by halting flights. But I'm saying that these planes are quite sturdy, and have redundant systems in case of engine failure. They're engineered to death, and have been for decades.
Edit:
Somehow I'm simultaneously arguing with the notion that flying is supposed to be risk free, and also arguing with the notion that planes are super fragile. Weird place to end up.
Keef
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- Dayton, OH
- GTP_KeefRacer
- GTP Keef
Planes are pretty damn strong, but they're just fragile enough that if something bad happens everybody dies. It's like an on-off switch. It either works beautifully, the most efficient system you've ever seen, or you die. 99.9% of the time it works beautifully.
But that's not a good excuse to lax on safety in any situation, ever. The only reason the system works so well is because people like me scrutinize everything that we and our peers are doing, we follow sensible rules so religiously that it becomes a lifestyle, and if anything seems out of the ordinary it gets reported for safety's sake. Every day I go up I do it with the assumption that this could be the last one, I've noted the risks, I understand every system, and due to the training required I can expect everybody else up there to have the same attitude. None of us are willing to compromise that and most of us are unsatisfied with the level of training and knowledge required for drone operators. I didn't spend years and a second college tuition learning to do something easier than driving on the highway just to have some asshole kid ruin everything by breaking the rules printed on the box of his new toy.
- 22,549
- Arizona
- HamiltonMP427
Not quite...and considering the factor of safety on many aircraft especially those that are passenger aircraft, it'd take more than a drone to finish them off. There has been plenty of bad things to happen and people still survived, there is an entire FARs set of regulations to follow to help with these situation as well as protocol with each individual aircraft to ensure the safety of all.
Lax on safety? We still don't know if a drone was ever there.
- 2,659
- Knoxville, Tennessee
As an aircraft mechanic myself I will say this about that picture of the 737: Radomes are fragile. They are just strong enough to not cave in a high airspeed, and are only there for aerodynamics and to protect the radar from the elements. They are very thin honeycomb composite, fiberglass in specific, and have to be thin enough to not cause too much of a reflection on a radar. They ALWAYS get destroyed in a bird strike, and a drone would be as bad or worse depending on the size of the drone. And as strong as the windshields, engines, and other parts of the aircraft are, a large drone would hurt enough to cause a serious risk to leading edges, flaps (when deployed), and various less vital components.
Also, as an RC hobbyist, it is not difficult to jam or disrupt the signal from a drone, which usually operates at 2.4 Ghz, or if higher end, 5.2 Ghz. It also is incredibly easy to jam GPS if given a powerful enough transmitter (GPS signal is rather weak). So even if the drone doing bad acts via a pre-programed GPS route, it could still be taken down with just simple jamming. Granted, to jam a drone, you would still need to shut down air traffic as some aircraft navigation frequencies are close enough to be jammed if one were to fire up a jammer of some sort. Otherwise you could disrupt airport traffic even more, potentially causing far more damage than if the drone were to just hit an aircraft itself.
Also, as an RC hobbyist, it is not difficult to jam or disrupt the signal from a drone, which usually operates at 2.4 Ghz, or if higher end, 5.2 Ghz. It also is incredibly easy to jam GPS if given a powerful enough transmitter (GPS signal is rather weak). So even if the drone doing bad acts via a pre-programed GPS route, it could still be taken down with just simple jamming. Granted, to jam a drone, you would still need to shut down air traffic as some aircraft navigation frequencies are close enough to be jammed if one were to fire up a jammer of some sort. Otherwise you could disrupt airport traffic even more, potentially causing far more damage than if the drone were to just hit an aircraft itself.
Keef
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I know, I've spent 8 years studying and following them. It's mah job.
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- TenEightyOne
- TenEightyOne
There's a test video earlier in the thread of a small "toy" class drone hitting a Mooney wing. It causes serious damage to the spar. The scale isn't so different for an industrial drone (big clonking things) hitting a loaded 737 wing. A drone could quite easily finish that off, especially if it makes it into the tank.
There are over a hundred sightings and a report from the police that they used the Drone Dome system on one. But go sit with @Dotini at the Brave New Truth table if you like.
Dotini
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- CR80_Shifty
Source, please?
- 2,659
- Knoxville, Tennessee
Most GA aircraft though are very lightly built, and have much thinner skin and spar structure than any larger turboprop or jet. The #1 spar for example on the ERJ-145's I work on is about 3/8 of an inch thick, and behind another 3/8" of leading edge materials. A commercial drone would need to be quite large to have a chance at causing any real structural damage to any airliner. Large as in large industrial hexacopter size (around 50-ish lbs). A drone of that size costs tens of thousands of dollars, and is not something your average troublemaker could afford. The wing structure of an airliner looks like something out of a building due to how beefy the materials are. Remember, wings and the wing box are often the strongest part of an airliner. That chance of any civilian drone actually penetrating that material and causing a fuel leak or catastrophic failure is extremely slim. Unless you run into a military drone or something lol..
- 20,681
- TenEightyOne
- TenEightyOne
I'm pretty sure that 20kg to a leading edge at 140kts would be pretty significant, particularly if it hit deployed control surfaces. If a plane hit the equivalent bird (Kori Bustard, insert joke here) then the damage would be far less given the far greater rigidity of the drone. If the scenario is a targetted terror attack then money is little object and the 15kg of payload can be put to devastating use.
Oh bollocks, all the reports I've followed back to source come from The Mail or The Express, I don't trust either of those as a source. All I have is the report I posted earlier in this thread stating that police deployed the system and are now examining a damaged drone recovered from near the point of the last sighting.
Dotini
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I've read on, I think it was the The Independent, that the fallen drone had unidentifiable fingerprints on it. Obviously it would be good to see images of the damaged drone and learn of its specifications, but Sussex police are apparently holding it secret. At this point, it's conceivable it was a little entry-level toy drone that had been smushed down in the weeds for weeks or months.
Danoff
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I was talking about the primary structure of the wing, not secondary non-structural bits like flight controls or leading edge devices. Although, aircraft with fixed leading edges, the leading edge is structural. Obviously this is something that probably should be tested to greater extent, as there are not a ton of studies in the impact of common drones colliding with aircraft.
