US airports may be just as vulnerable as London Gatwick to the kind of illegal drone incursions that shut down the UK’s second-busiest hub this week. Counter-drone technology performed so poorly in US govt tests in recent years that the systems couldn’t reliably identify rogue unmanned aircraft, casting doubts on whether there’s a viable short-term solution to the intrusions that repeatedly disrupted the London airport this week. Radars designed to track drones didn’t work when the devices hovered in place. The systems generated a large number of false sightings. And the saturation of radio broadcasts around airports blanked out some drone transmissions, making them hard to detect. The test results were contained in a letter to US airports sent in July by the FAA. <br/>
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Incoming new rules for drone operation in Canada are designed to help buck a growing global trend of incursions into space reserved for air travel, govt officials said as tens of thousands of travellers in Britain grappled with the fallout of the largest such incident to date. Govt agencies around the world, including Transport Canada, have documented a spike in the number of incidents posing a risk to aviation safety in recent years. The federal agency said tighter regulations that would impose age limits, knowledge tests and registration requirements on all drone operators are set to come into effect in 2019 and will hopefully curb the trend. Rules would be particularly stringent for those operating in urban areas, near controlled airspace or close to airports. <br/>
An officer investigating the drone chaos at Gatwick says there is no footage of the device which sparked it and it is "a possibility" there never was one. Asked about speculation there was never such a drone flown over the airport, detective chief superintendent Jason Tingley said: "Of course, that's a possibility. We are working with human beings saying they have seen something.” The incident, which was sparked by a drone sighting Wednesday at around 9pm, left planes stopped from coming to or from the airport. Some 140,000 people were affected as services were delayed or cancelled. However, Tingley also said one of the "working theories" was that a damaged drone found close to the airport in Horley was responsible for causing the disruption. <br/>