Cops at British airports to be armed with BAZOOKAS to shoot down drones amid fears of copycat attacks
COPS at British airports will be armed with bazookas
to shoot down drones after attacks at Gatwick caused travel chaos for
thousands.
Officers at Heathrow are testing sophisticated
weapons capable of taking down a drone from up to 130 yards away using a net. The
SkyWall 100 is mounted on to the cop's shoulder with the bazooka-like mechanism
locating the drone using a smart scope.
One the flight path has been tracked, it shoots a
projectile that opens up into a net to snare the drone before floating it
safely to the ground. As the drone is not destroyed, forensics are able to come
in and investigate.
The technology has been given the green light in the
wake of the drone attack that saw 1,000 flights cancelled this week. It will be
rolled out at Britain's busiest airport Heathrow in a bid to stop copycat
attacks. SkyWall 100 was developed three years ago by UK-based OpenWorks
Engineering and is the first project to be released.
The creators say the system is cost-effective and
the projectiles can be refurbished and reused. They said: "The best way to
neutralise a drone is to physically intercept it.
"This neutralises any type of drone, whether
flown manually or autonomously. SkyWall gives you a physical barrier in the
sky.
