Anti-drone 'death ray' can blast vehicles out of the sky from a mile away 

theguardian 

People could use it to disable hobbyists’ drones but Liteye’s Anti-UAV Defense System has practical applications for law enforcement and government too

A team of British technology firms has developed a “death ray” for drones that can knock an unmanned aerial vehicle out of the sky by turning it off in midair up to a mile away.


“If I can see it, I can kill it,” said Rick Sondag, executive vice-president of Liteye Systems, which sells the device, at the Commercial Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Expo in Las Vegas this week.
Interest in drone-killers has grown as unmanned aerial vehicles have taken off. Their uses might be readily apparent to people who’ve seen hobbyist drone fliers buzzing too close to their property lines, but there are law enforcement and governmental applications too.
In July, a drone dropped heroin, marijuana and tobacco into a prison recreation yard. The following month another contraband delivery drone allegedly on its way to a prison was nabbed by cops before it got off the ground in Maryland. In the second case, local law enforcement said it wasn’t the first time they’d dealt with the problem.
There’s also the matter of airport safety and the ongoing trouble with curious drone photographers trying to get pictures of natural disasters, especially where fire department helicopters are trying to unload payloads of water or airlift out stranded victims. At the expo, the parks service had an entire booth devoted to handing out posters and leaflets with slogans such as “If You Fly, We Can’t”.
Liteye’s Anti-UAV Defense System (Auds) is a set of beige boxes atop two square posts, and looks like a particularly menacing pair of weathervanes. The drone-destroying vane has a long cylinder that sticks out like a rifle barrel and two smaller cylinders on one side.

The cylinders are a set of directional radio antennas that works like a gun. The radio spectrum allotted to drone users is fairly narrow, so a brief, focussed broadcast is enough to bring down a targeted drone without affecting “friendly” UAVs or anyone’s cellphone reception for long.
Liteye, based in Colorado, was named distributor in the US and Canada for the device earlier this year by its three manufacturers: Enterprise, Chess Systems and Blighter, which are all based in the UK. Liteye is trying to sell to airports and “the homeland security market”, according to Blighter.
It’s not the first anti-drone device to appear this year. Boeing debuted a giant laser gun last month, touting its ability to knock out drones from safe distances.
“If you were on the receiving end of laser energy, you would have no idea where it was coming from or what was happening,” explained Boeing engineer Isaac Neal in the company’s promo video.
Sondag is hopeful that his radio gun could help fend off tighter regulation of the burgeoning drone industry. “The US government, like everyone else, has critical infrastructure and if they don’t feel like they can protect it, they’ll pass laws that will hamper progress and hamper current use,” Sondag said.
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英研發「死亡射線」 專門「擊墜」無人機

ltn

 

「死亡射線」施放距離達1英哩（約1.6公里），採用高功率無線電波來干擾無人機運作，進而阻絕無人機的訊號，甚至能在半空中關閉無人機，將其「擊墜」。（圖擷取自每日郵報）

2015-10-10  10:05 〔即時新聞／綜合報導〕近來無人機的發展帶來許多便利，但也象徵新型軍事威脅出現。英國近來針對無人機帶來的威脅，研發一種名為「死亡射線」的無人機擊墜系統，可以利用無線電波「擊墜」1英哩（約1.6公里）以外的無人機。
根 據英國《每日郵報》報導，本週在美國拉斯維加斯的商業無人機博覽會上，展示了「死亡射線」系統，負責銷售這套系統的美國經銷商「Liteye 」執行副總裁宋達格（Rick Sondag）提到這套系統十分厲害，表示：「如果我看得到，我就可以摧毀它。」指出這套系統可以設置在偏遠城鎮地區，用於防止恐怖襲擊、間諜活動以及防 止基礎設施被破壞。
「死亡射線」的研究人員表示，無人機被用於恐怖攻擊的可能性越來越高，這套系統就是為了防止此類事件發生。「死亡射線」施放距離達1英哩（約1.6公里），採用高功率無線電波來干擾無人機運作，進而阻絕無人機的訊號，甚至能在半空中關閉無人機，將其「擊墜」。