Failure of anti-drone tests exposes US airport vulnerability

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/>