War on terror

Drones 'could be used as flying bombs for terror attack on passenger jet'

Terrorists could "with impunity" fly multiple drones to take out passenger aircraft, a leading expert warns, following report into 'near-miss' at Heathrow Airport

A MQ-1 Predator drone Photo: REUTERS/U.S. Air Force/Lt Col Leslie Pratt

By Tom Brooks-Pollock

3:10PM GMT 12 Dec 2014

Drones could be used as flying bombs by terrorists to take down a passenger aircraft, according to a leading expert, who called for improved security measures to deal with the “gaping hole” in the national defences.

Prof David H Dunn, of the University of Birmingham, said that jihadis could “with impunity” fly multiple remote-controlled unmanned aircraft into the engines of a jumbo jet, causing it crash.

Prof Dunn was speaking after it emerged that a drone flew within 20ft of an Airbus A320 as it landed at Heathrow Airport in July.

An official report into the near-miss, or ‘airprox’, found that the mobile helicopter narrowly avoided colliding with the passenger jet, 700ft above the runway, on July 22 of this year.

The drone was not picked up on radar, and the operator of the drone could not be traced according to the report, by the UK Airprox Board (Ukab).

Prof Dunn - the co-author, with Sir David Omand, the former head of GCHQ, of a recent Birmingham University report on drones that called for “urgent” measures to protect British aerospace from attack - said: "Chances are this was a civilian drone that got lost by an operator who lost sight of it.

“But what if that was a terrorist that had bought several drones on the internet? They could surround the aircraft with multiple drones at 200ft after take-off and take out the engines and leave it with nowhere else to go."

“It would be the equivalent of an aerial truck bomb, like a suicide bomb only the terrorist could fly it remotely, with impunity. These drones can be bought anonymously online, piloted anonymously and the attacker would be untraceable because they are completely unlicensed."

This amounted to a "gaping hole" in the country's national defences, Prof Dunn said, despite the fact it is already illegal to fly drones into flight paths.

An unmanned drone attack would have “huge symbolic value” to Al Qaeda because of their use by the US in countries such as Pakistan, Prof Dunn said.

Terrorists might also use drones to fire chemical weapons or flammable liquids on large crowds of people at events such as football matches, the professor said.

The Government should consider bolstering the country’s military defences along the lines of the temporary measures taken during the London 2012 Olympic, Prof Dunn added.

During the games, a Royal Navy aircraft carrier docked on the Thames, RAF Typhoon Eurofighters and security drones patrolled the skies, to prevent a terrorist strike.

Prof Dunn said the British Government should “look at” introducing such measures – or something similar to the laser drone defence system developed by the Chinese government – as a matter of course.

The Ukab report found that the model helicopter passed dangerously close to the Airbus A320, 700ft above Heathrow.

It was the second recorded near-miss, or 'airprox', between a commercial passenger flight and a drone in Britain, and the first at Heathrow, while two others.

Crew on board the passenger flight had seen the drone, which flew 20ft over the A320's wing, the report said. It was not picked up on radar, probably because of its small size.

It added: "That the dangers associated with flying such a model in close proximity to a Commercial Air Transport aircraft in the final stages of landing were not self-evident was a cause for considerable concern."

The Civil Aviation Authority can prosecute people who fly drones to aircraft, crowds or buildings. Earlier this year Robert Knowles, 46, was ordered to pay £4,340 in fines and costs after his drone crashed in a no-fly zone near a BAE Systems shipyard in Cumbria that builds nuclear submarines.

But critics, such as the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa), have called for police and the CAA to better enforce the law, and have said that larger, commercial drones should be as tightly regulated as manned aircraft.

Jim McAuslan, Balpa's general secretary, said some form of registration and licensing scheme for drones and their owners - along the lines of the system already in place for model aircraft or motorised gliders - was "something that is going to have to be done" because so many people were buying drones.

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11290086/Drones-could-be-used-as-flying-bombs-for-terror-attack-on-passenger-jet.html