Is an unidentified drone quickly approaching Le Bourget Airport on the screen? Don't panic, it's a simulation! To counter this threat, more and more companies are offering signal jammer, interception nets, and even drones vs. drones.
The quadcopter drone will appear on the radar screen of the CS communication system stand and walk towards the airport control tower. “The fault zone begins when it comes back,” explains AFP Egidio Cau, the company's drone countermeasures manager with sales of € 200 million.
The attack is fictitious, but the company's system, Bolead, is working well. Used specifically by the Paris Police Headquarters to protect the Presidential Gallery during the final parade on 14 July.
The airport is especially at risk. In December, London Gatwick Airport was paralyzed for 36 hours by a drone report. Heathrow (London) and Newark (New York) in January, Dubai and Dublin in February, or Frankfurt in early May were also confused to varying degrees.
-Increased incidents-
Some of the batteries are "potentially exploding," explains AFP Thomas Gueuudet, commercial director of Cerb Air, which specializes in anti-drones. If the drone is sucked into the engine of an aircraft without malicious intent, the consequences can be disastrous. "Therefore, the precautionary principle of nailing traffic to the ground."
Aéroports de Paris (ADP) launched the drone detection program Hologarde in collaboration with Thales two years ago.
According to Edward Arkwright, Executive Director of GroupeADP, the radar was installed in the tower at Charles-de-Gaulle Airport late last week. ""
"The goal is for the system to be operational by the end of 2019," he said on Tuesday, hoping that it could be sold after "the controller assigned it."
Challenges range from identifying attacks to responding. Is it a drone or a bird?
For Drone Volt CEO Olivier Gualdoni, the future lies in an artificial intelligence-backed "autonomous flight" drone. They make it even more difficult to identify the pilot.
Next is the wicked problem of interception. drone jammer are problematic in the airport environment, Gualdoni said.
Drone signal jammer
"They obscure everything. At the airport, there may be communication between the tower and the aircraft, even by phone or remote control."
-Airport: Largest Market-
Also, the targets of scrambling vary from country to country. "In the UK, no one can crawl unless there is a potential danger to people, but Germany, for example, generally allows police to do so," said the German heavyweight in the industry. Hensalt's development director, AFP Marcus Wolfe, explains.
“Even a thread thrower or interceptor drone solution is more effective,” says Egidio Cau.
For Olivier Gualdoni, the right solution is "not yet found".
In any case, the airport market is arguably the "largest market" for anti-drones, Markus Wolf said. "But structuring isn't the easiest, as there aren't any models yet to have such a system, such as air traffic control, airport operators, airport owners, and police."
A European law on the use of drones, due out in July 2020, will be issued in mid-June and, according to the Directorate General for Civil Aviation (DGAC), needs to "harmonize the European legal framework." ..
In particular, "We have a duty to install transponders on our drones, which will be a big step forward in terms of traffic management," commented Thomas Gueuudet.
But "we can't ban drones from flying unregistered malicious people who just have to remove this transponder," says Egidio Cau.