With the rapidly increasing use of RPAS, there is an associated increase in how to counter their inappropriate use. UAS can pose a significant defence threat and thus there is clear defence interest in approaches to mitigating it. UAS can also be used for criminal purposes and several sectors have an interest in preventing their criminal use. There are also civil law concerns about their inappropriate use.
At this stage, this site will not deal with specific counter-UAS technologies (possibly in future in the Technical section). A high level operational view of how to counter UAS includes physical attack (eg shooting them down or disabling them in flight (eg use of trained eagles to seize small RPA)), disabling their flight control communications (not effective against pre-programmed RPA which do not require flight control communications), use of electromagnetic pulses to disable their on-board electronics (in very limited situations) and the use of physical obstacles to prevent RPA access (eg use of nets in prisons to prevent RPA delivering prohibited items and substances).
Further Reading
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