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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

At least this one is in airspace reserved for training and aerobatics. Messing around in LAX's approach airspace is much worse. Frankfurt and Gatwick airports have been shut down at least once due to drone activity. Changi is shooting down drones with a microwave weapon.

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Drones need a GPS module that also reports prohibited airspace. Drones could use that to shut down if someone tried to fly them into prohibited airspace.

Unfortunately (maybe), drones aren't magical technology that you can only get from the government.

The cat is out of the bag, it's easy to make a drone at home out of generic parts. Anyone who wants to fly a drone into prohibited airspace can do it. And an even remotely-sophisticated attacker could do it with almost no chance of getting caught. That's just the world we live in now.

And an even remotely-sophisticated attacker could do it with almost no chance of getting caught.

Anti-drone technology is advancing. Chengdu airport installed what looks like a fire-finder radar, usually used to track artillery shells. Avaelliant has a drone detection system for sale, and it's in use at a few airports. Both are phased array radars, with no moving parts and flat antenna panels. Avaelliant's unit looks like a big cell phone tower antenna.

[1] https://southerncrossdrones.com/aveillant-uas-detection-syst...

These folks are working on something like that: https://www.altitudeangel.com/

This is already the case with most consumer drones. Problem is you can easily build your own and ignore all of that.

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