Eye on the Sky: Preventing Collisions and Disturbances at Airports
For airports, drones aren’t just a nuisance. They are a rapidly proliferating safety threat. A single drone in the hands of a negligent owner can bring airports to a standstill, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars every few minutes, or worse, causing a catastrophe that may risk lives.
Prominent recent examples of collisions between planes and drones were reported to have occurred in France as a commercial Emirates aircraft was heading to land in Nice, and in South Africa where a light aircraft pilot was forced to perform a precautionary landing. Near collisions are less uncommon – in December, a Virgin Atlantic plane came close to crashing with a drone shortly after take-off.
As drones – or Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) – become more advanced and consumer sales climb around the world, these incidents will become frequent. In Australia, where remote pilot licenses increased by 187 per cent from fiscal 2018 to 2023, there has been a 16.3 per cent rise in average daily drone flights. When you add to the mix the potential for criminal or terrorist use of UAS, it’s abundantly clear antidrone strategies to improve airspace security are critical.
Creating an Antidrone Airport
To protect airports from drone threats is to improve airspace security using counterdrone measures. That requires counter-UAS (C-UAS) systems, and integrating AI into C-UAS systems to give airports the provisions to track multiple drones at a time, including ‘silent’ or hidden ones, and deal with the issue at speed before an incident occurs.
C-UAS systems detect drone presence and disruption of threats with modules deployed around site perimeters, supplemented with easy-to-use, hand-held antidrone guns to neutralise drones safely and effectively.
DroneShield C-UAS Solutions for Airport Security
DroneShield helps create antidrone airports with world-leading C-UAS technologies with AI engines to accurately detect, identify and track targets. RfOne MkII sensors can be installed with up to 8km of detection range and track multiple drones or ‘silent’ UAS via the data streams they return to the pilot.
DroneShield systems are also able to record, ID, and track targets for evidence, as well as disrupting drones by forcing them to ground or returning them to their operators, the locations of whom are also detected and indicated.
System integration, staff training, customer support, and regular updates are also included in the DroneShield C-UAS airport service.
To learn more about DroneShield counter-drone technology for protecting airports, click below: https://www.droneshield.com/airports