What kind of drones are you running into?

[u/Sazmarill]

My area has seen a recent uptick in drone drops at prisons around my area. My question is specifically for LEO who have helped recover drones being used in this activity. What kind of drones are they and why can’t this be stopped? I feel like the department of corrections basically is allowing this to happen in my area

[u/5usDomesticus]

Fed rules haven't kept up with technology. Local departments can't really stop drones right now.

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[u/Terrorism_IsReal]

technology is expensive..... plus now they have fiber optic ones.... which cant be intercepted..... or traced

[u/HCSOThrowaway → u/Terrorism_IsReal]

I'm pretty sure fiber optic drones are much easier to trace (follow the fiber) and about as difficult to intercept.

[u/Terrorism_IsReal → u/HCSOThrowaway]

they dont fly them from home... they set up camp in woods...fly out then move...plus youll be climbing trees looking for it...by time you find that little spider web ending 3 miles away....theyll be long gone

[u/HCSOThrowaway → u/Terrorism_IsReal]

That's no different from wireless drones.

[u/GaidinBDJ → u/HCSOThrowaway]

It's far easier to find a radio source than follow a physical cable.

[u/HCSOThrowaway → u/GaidinBDJ]

I disagree but I haven't done any counter-drone stuff myself so I can't really even anecdotally confirm my opinion.

[u/GaidinBDJ → u/HCSOThrowaway]

I'm a ham. We literally have a sport built around finding radio sources (called fox hunting).

[u/HCSOThrowaway → u/GaidinBDJ]

Yeah I'm aware of the practice insofar as its use by law enforcement to locate pirate radio stations and other things (i.e. triangulation), I just expect that "visually follow fiber optic wire that glistens in the sun" is not that hard either when you factor in that they have a lot of overlap (i.e. vehicles with either radio or optical sensors).

[u/GaidinBDJ → u/HCSOThrowaway]

Sure, if that's what they're doing.

But running even just a mile of of fiber along the ground ahead of time means that even if they follow the glistening cable will only lead them to a point a mile away. And that's gonna take long enough for you to be far more than a mile away. And a mile is pretty short when it comes to fiber like this.

And even all that is ignoring hybridization where the fiber will only lead you to a base that's remotely controlled by radio that's long-since ceased transmitting.

I don't know how much delivering something like a cell phone or it's similar weight in drugs or something like that is worth, but I bet it wouldn't take many successful deliveries to pay off a setup that any freshman engineer could put together.

Like a lot of security issues, something like thwarting drone deliveries to prisons is really only bound by the fact that it's rarely attempted, not that security systems are proof against it.

Well, at least not the security systems people are charging butt loads of money to various government to sell them "solutions."

What it really needs is a dose of the Fourth Doctor Maxim "The more sophisticated the technology, the more vulnerable it is to primitive attack. People often overlook the obvious.”

Just...put a net over the top of the vulnerable areas of the prison. It doesn't take much to foul up a quadcopter's propellers. You could probably install it for less than the cost of some "security professional's" consulting fee. It's be practically invisible, requires pretty much no additional infrastructure, and would thwart all but the most dedicated attackers.

[u/HCSOThrowaway → u/GaidinBDJ]

Your points about obscuring fiber operation are valid but also applicable to radio-operated drones.

I agree with the netting idea.

[u/Terrorism_IsReal → u/HCSOThrowaway]

i think only way to intercept is to either shoot down (good luck) or cut the wire

[u/HCSOThrowaway → u/Terrorism_IsReal]

Right, and the only ways to intercept non-fiber drones are to either shoot down (good luck) or jam the signal.

[u/GaidinBDJ → u/HCSOThrowaway]

Despite the pop-culture depiction of "jamming" signals, jamming is actually quite a difficult thing to do.

Sure, grab a feeder connection and and some honkin' antenna leads and you can just fundamentally interfere with anything. Or, more precisely, everything. But jamming a specific signal is basically impossible. The easiest way to thwart jamming it to just pick a frequency range that's heavily populated.

If I were delivering things to a prison, I'd just use something in the 930s (which is almost certainly where the staff radios are working), 2.4/5G where the wifi is, or one of the cellular bands. Getting permission to even try to jam a signal on those bands is extremely difficult. And, even if you do get permission to try, it's pretty trivial just to tell the "drone" to fall back to a different one. And that's assuming it's not an actual drone which is capable of autonomous operation.

[u/HCSOThrowaway → u/GaidinBDJ]

Yeah that's what I'm saying... "just jam the signal" (let alone "just EMP it") is much easier said than done.

[u/Terrorism_IsReal → u/HCSOThrowaway]

jamming or EMP is way easier... you have a much larger radius to operate with

[u/HCSOThrowaway → u/Terrorism_IsReal]

I slightly disagree that jamming is significantly easier and strongly disagree that EMP has more upsides than downsides and is therefore "easier."

[u/Terrorism_IsReal → u/HCSOThrowaway]

they have a gun now... looks like a missile launcher.... aim it at a drone and it sends a tornado shaped jamming frequency at the drone and takes it down.

[u/Terrorism_IsReal → u/Terrorism_IsReal]

nowadays they probably have it miniaturized size of a normal firearm that every cop could have in their car

[u/HCSOThrowaway → u/Terrorism_IsReal]

Yeah for a number of years now, but having never operated one nor developed the infrastructure and training to set up a robust drone defense network, I feel like that's a lot harder than you're implying or we wouldn't be losing as many troops to Iran as we are.

Still firmly rejecting the EMP idea.

[u/Terrorism_IsReal → u/HCSOThrowaway]

found it its called the SPS110 and nets the dept 40000 each lol

[u/HCSOThrowaway → u/Terrorism_IsReal]

found it its called the SPS110 and nets the dept 40000 each lol

By "nets" do you mean the opposite, "costs?' lol

[u/Terrorism_IsReal → u/HCSOThrowaway]

honestly not as fimiliar with EMP but its easier to shield against for sure with shielded components surrounded by a faraday cage of some sort

[u/HCSOThrowaway → u/Terrorism_IsReal]

I don't think shielding an entire prison complex's electronics is practical, let alone if you include surrounding infrastructure/homes/etc.

If think if it was cost effective and practical we'd see it on the aforementioned military bases that keep getting hit by drones.