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Small UAVs creating big problems for security officials

There's big concern about those small devices in the U.S. intelligence community.

So when a man said he was flying a drone
for fun just after 3 a.m. in downtown Washington, D.C., and had an
accidental crash-landing into a tree on the wrong side of one of the
world's most highly protected fences, he didn't merely touch the famous
property at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

He also touched a nerve.

In interviews, U.S. military officials
have expressed fear that the cheap, increasingly popular recreational
items sold at electronics stores could be used as terrorist weapons.

"It's a very insidious threat," one
high-ranking U.S. military officer told The Canadian Press in a recent
interview. "If we don't take that very seriously, it could be
dangerous…

"We have to get our brains around that."

One concern he specifically mentioned was
terrorists targeting a VIP. With a few modifications, he said, a $300
gadget used for aerial photography could be transformed into an airborne
improvised explosive device.

The military has dedicated numerous
conferences to the topic in recent years. There's also a growing body of
academic research. A study at the University of Birmingham in the U.K.
last year warned drones could be used for:

—Illicit reconnaissance missions. In one
example late last year, French authorities reported that most of the
country's 19 nuclear facilities had experienced drone flyovers in
restricted airspace over a brief period, in flights that occurred mainly
overnight and appeared to have been part of a co-ordinated effort.

—Explosions. The Birmingham study said a
small-scale blast from a toy drone could kill people, or be used to
prevent authorities from responding to a scene.

—Chemical attacks on crowds, for instance at a sporting event.

Norad, the Canada-U.S.
agency that's been monitoring the skies for aerial threats since the
Cold War, now says it's developing a policy to deal with small unmanned
aerial vehicles, in conjunction with U.S. law enforcement and the U.S.
Federal Aviation Administration, which has spent years working on
commercial regulations for drones.

Norad is already testing blimps over
Washington to detect more traditional threats like cruise missiles, and
also more modern ones like drones.

"They are becoming more and more
ubiquitous," one Norad official said recently. "If I'm a bad guy I can
go pick one up at the local toy shop and fit them with explosives or
chemicals."

He said terrorists are changing their tactics, and policy-makers have to evolve too.

But one officer at Norad said there are,
fortunately, limits to drones' illicit potential. Their size alone, he
said, reduces the potential damage one might cause.

The one that crashed Monday into the White House property was a two-foot device with four propellers.

"Most drones are small and
they don't carry a lot of payload," U.S. Army Col. Steve Sicinski said
during a tour of the Norad facility last summer.

"A drone, in and of itself, does not make a good weapon."

A Canadian military official concurred.

He said commercially available drones are
designed to carry cameras — not big payloads. So the explosions one
might produce would be much smaller than the ones from a military drone,
he said.

It's also fairly easy to jam their signals, the official added.

No date has yet been set for the release
of the commercial drone regulations in the U.S. The Federal Aviation
Administration mostly bans commercial drone flights like those
Amazon.com has famously announced it wants to test. Recreational users
are barred from flying drones higher than 122 metres, or within eight
kilometres of an airport.

The Secret Service hasn't said whether charges will be laid in the latest incident.