Makers of White House drone offer fix to bar Phantom menace from no-fly zones
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Version 0 of 1. Drone enthusiasts near the seat of American government have rarely let that government deter them, despite a ban on flights over large swaths of Washington and new federal guidelines due any day now. But after an incident involving a “quadcopter” and a possibly drunken government employee sent the White House into lockdown and DC into a tizzy this week, at least one unmanned vehicle company is preparing to assist the feds. Amateur drone pilots have flown over the Washington Mall, surveyed the metropolis, and crashed back on to the pavement of that city. Sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning one of these hobbyists lost control over the 2ft-by-2ft drone in his possession, which promptly whizzed over the White House grounds, past secret service radar, and then plopped down near the presidential mansion. Secret service agents scoured the grounds, emergency vehicles hovered nearby, and on Monday morning the penitent employee came forward and confessed his fault, with unnamed officials telling the press that the case of the White House drone had been closed. By Tuesday, Barack Obama was fielding questions about DC drone security from India. Word was also surfacing that the employee, who works for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (a satellite reconnaissance arm of the Defense Department), admitted he had enjoyed his off-duty hours by getting drunk and controlling a small DJI Phantom drone from an apartment near the White House. On Wednesday, SZ DJI Technology, the Chinese company responsible for the popular DJI Phantom drones that online retailers sell for less than $500, announced that it had prepared a downloadable firmware update for next week that will prevent drones from taking off in restricted zones and prevent flight into those zones. Michael Perry, a spokesman for DJI, told the Guardian that GPS locating made such an update possible: “We have been restricting flight near airports for almost a year.” “The compass can tell when it is near a no-fly zone,” Perry said. “If, for some reason, a pilot is able to fly into a restricted zone and then the GPS senses it’s in a no-fly zone, the system will automatically land itself.” DJI’s new Phantom drones will ship with the update installed, and owners of older devices will have to download it in order to receive future updates. The no-fly zone over the capital will extend for a 15.5-mile radius. A drone pilot with programming facility and the will to do so could, however, probably re-engineer the firmware and GPS function. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) technically bans virtually all private drone flight, and has struggled to write new rules that companies and Congress have urged for years. The FAA is expected to release its guidelines for how to integrate smaller drones – like the one that landed on the White House lawn – into national airspace. For Washington DC, national parks and other areas of concern, there are extra rules in place that the government has taken extra care to enforce. Just as the FAA has grappled with the balance between commercial drone interests and the imperatives of privacy and public safety, so have security agencies found drones a mixed bag. While the military and counter-terrorism operations use drones for surveillance and strikes, their accessibility, wide range and many functions could pose a difficult threat to counter. The first problem is one of detection. Most radar systems are set to look for large threats, like missiles and planes; systems sensitive enough to detect drones as tiny as the DJI Phantom, whose wingspan (so to speak) is about half that of a red-tailed hawk, would ping at animals and objects constantly. Systems are sold to detect drones and alert security of them however, and a good shot could bring down a drone with a gun, rubber bullets or even an anti-drone net. More sophisticated means include “GPS spoofing”, by which authorities can hack into a drone’s controls and seize it from its original pilot. There is also and largely illegal jamming technology that could stop a drone in its path, whether it was controlled manually or not. As for that employee, he admits to losing control of the device, perhaps due to a breeze, a tree or droning under the influence, and texted his friends about his concerns about a drone lost so close to the president’s home. A secret service agent on the grounds reported the Phantom menace but was unable to stop it. When the employee heard the morning news, the secret service said in a statement, he turned himself in. |