Smart Drone Defense Begins with 'Drone Intelligence'

Late last year just a few days before Christmas, traffic at Gatwick Airport -- the UK's second largest -- was abruptly stopped for three days due to a series of drone sightings. Trending right alongside #sugarcookies and #holidaymovies on social media, the widespread public interest in #GatwickDrone was far greater than the attention given to previous airport/drone episodes, including another drone event at the same airport just a year and half earlier. In fact, the UK's main air navigation service provider, NATS, made a short public service video about the 2017 incident as a warning to drone pilots of the disruptions they can inadvertently cause by flying in protected airspace. Detecting and tracking drone activity is more challenging than laypeople realize. Airports already have sophisticated radar systems in place, yet these systems are currently incapable of clearly differentiating between a drone and a bird. Relying on them for drone detection would result in far too many false alarms, even at relatively short ranges.