A drone expert is warning that an attack by a swarm of “dark” drones could cause carnage at a large public event or devastate critical national infrastructure.
Both Ukraine and Russia use drone swarms as huge, unmanned air forces to destroy and intimidate each other’s forces and civilian populations.
But their radio frequency signals are susceptible to being jammed, so Kyiv turned to hi-tech drones that use fibre optic cables instead, and Moscow quickly followed suit.
These drones, tethered with long, fine cables, are resistant to electronic jamming. They are dubbed “dark” because of the absence of detectable radio frequency emissions.
Mike Fraietta, a US drone pilot who has seen the development of the technology first-hand in Ukraine, says concerts, rallies, conferences and all other gatherings are now at risk from the threat of coordinated drone attacks with explosives – and says governments need to prepare their defences.
In the UK, drones using radio frequencies are already used to smuggle drugs into prisons. Police warned last year that gangs are recruiting skilled drone pilots to fly banned items including phones and even sachets of ketchup to cell windows in Amazon-style deliveries.
Tethered drones have come down in price after China ramped up their production, and now they can be bought online from about £2,000. But those with more features sell for a lot more.
Last year, China set a new world record by using 10,000 drones, controlled by one laptop, to form images in the sky in Shenzhen.
Mr Fraietta suggested terrorists could load explosives in a coordinated attack while a similar show was going on. “If somebody could get their hands on a huge quantity of them all at once, it could be absolutely devastating,” he said.
“These are not small drones either. And the payload can be as big as the drone can hold.
“Even one can cause devastation to a crowd or one could hit water supplies.”
He said after Ukraine and Russia began using tethered drones, they turned up in Myanmar and then Colombia, where drug cartels use them.
“So the rate of innovation of warfare technology usually comes years later, [but] we’re seeing it come months later, getting into the hands of criminals and accessible to average citizens within months of being developed.”
Every country will face threats, he said, but so far only Sweden and Estonia are investing in drone defence.
And he called for the US government to appoint a drone tsar to control the threat, suggesting other countries including the UK do the same.
American radar company Echodyne says most critical infrastructure sites, law enforcement agencies and public institutions are “ill-equipped to detect dark drones, let alone defend against them”.
Mr Fraietta says his drone-detection systems company, in New York, is experiencing rising demand from bosses of Fortune 100 companies.
The UK government says it constantly monitors the development of all security threats and is “well prepared” to respond.
