How should law enforcement officers take down a rogue drone?
If you ask the Dutch company Guard From Above, bird is the word. The firm claims to be “the first company in the world to use birds of prey to intercept hostile drones.”
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At the end of Jan., Guard From Above released a video in which one of its trained assassins incapacitates a quadcopter in mid-air. The raptor swings up, clenches the hapless, sputtering robot in its talons, and plants the device on a ledge—in what looks to be the avian equivalent of a choke-hold.
The company says it works “mainly for national and international governmental security agencies,” including a test partnership with the Dutch National Police. (The police department has apparently asked a Dutch scientific research organization to make sure no birds are harmed on the job.)
On the Dutch National Police website, the force’s innovation manager Mark Wiebe offered a few examples of how the creatures could be used to protect the populace . “There are situations in which drones are not allowed to fly,” he said (via Google translate). “This has almost always to do with security.”
Killer eagles are not totally unexpected. At the end of 2014, Fortune predicted that drone hunting would become a sport. And from a counter-terrorism point of view, if we already use canines to sniff out drugs and bombs, why not use raptors to tackle drones?
Of course, raptors aren’t the only anti-drone technology in town. Last month the Tokyo police piloted a net-equipped drone to demonstrate how the technology could be used to capture unauthorized unmanned aerial vehicles. You can watch a clip of that here.
For more drone on drone action, watch:
