Tag: Droneshield

Dronegun is yet another broadband jammer with a yagi antenna

There’s more and more companies trying to get into the business of getting drones out of the sky. Consumer models, to be precise – because military UAV with satcom links can not be affected by this.

In essence, Dronegun is yet another GPS+2.4GHz+5.8GHz jammer with a Yagi antenna. The company behind this product, Droneshield, is offering solutions for detection and classification of UAS. They claim that Dronegun will “make the drone land or return home”, and that drones forced to land will remain intact for investigation.

The fact of the matter is that these devices are highly illegal and in many ways more dangerous than the drones they are supposed to protect airports from. Even though the Yagi antennas used are highly directional, the fact that they jam both the usual ISM bands as well as GPS means that this is a severe risk to the operation of a multitude of systems and even aircraft. While it’s true that GPS is not approved for primary navigation, the fact of the matter is that it has become an indispensable part of air navigation, and willful disruptions of GPS may end up at the start of a chain of events that lead to loss of life.

The other problem is that targeted UAVs won’t just land or even return home. In most cases they will veer out of control and/or crash. In essence, using such a device WILL cause accidents, not make the drone land as they show in that video. The only question is whether luck has it that nobody is harmed, or there’s damage to property or loss of life. It is a classic case of “they didn’t think this one through”.

Droneshield is run by former US military and government members, including the former Deputy National Security Advistor for Vice President Dick Cheney.

The hungarian military was known to purposefully jam the 30MHz band to cause RC models to crash, which caused the death of two people. Jamming makes accidents a certainty, and selling such products as a solution to the problem of unauthorized operation of UAVs is questionable.

 

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