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Comment by kijin | Hacker News Reader

I'm kinda surprised that after three days of disruption, the British authorities still haven't found a way to shoot down the drones. It was just a DoS this time, but there could very well be an explosive payload the next time. Drones could enter secure facilities, take pictures, infiltrate or exfiltrate various objects, and even press buttons using 3D-printed appendages. Criminals of the future won't even need to be on the same continent to get past physical security.

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Possibly did not want the risk of littering bullets on the runway as well; it’s actually impressive the amount of effort that goes into keeping a runway free of small metal objects: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_object_damage

Unless the drone is really large, you don't need to shoot actual bullets at it. Strings, fishing nets, plastic bags, water cannons, or anything else that can mess up the propellers for a few seconds would be enough to crash them.

That's a good point. We haven't actually seen what a full response from the authorities would be. I would imagine if there was actual imminent danger they would not hesitate to begin shooting down the drones and using more disruptive countermeasures.

I actually kinda wonder if you can train any birds of prey to go after drones. Airports already use some so keep birds away from runways, but that's still mostly the birds doing what birds do.

This has already been shown to be possible. Example from the Netherlands police:

https://youtu.be/b5DEg2qZzkU

In the meantime it's been found to be impractical https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/12/16767000/police-netherla...

Seems dangerous for the birds.

Maybe attack drones that can shoot string - since practically every drone uses rotors.

Dragging a net has been tried:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/01/21/tokyo-poli...

The UK is much more gun-averse than anywhere else I’ve been. Even the police are not routinely armed with only a few exceptions (airports being one, but the point is about the attitude).

I think over the course of three days, they could have someone drive down to the station and pick up the guns.

As pointed out by others, there's concern about the bullets causing FOD, or potentially hitting people.

Shotgun shot has none of those issues. Has no one on HN been around firearms?

Someone above suggested the drones were at 10,000 ft. That is way out of shotgun effective range.

Heard on the news that they did not want to shoot it down to avoid collateral damage from bullets falling around.

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