Disabling the Drones

摘要

Over three days in December 2018, around a thousand flights were cancelled and 140,000 people inconvenienced by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, that were spotted flying around Gatwick Airport in London. Previously, non-military UAVs had been employed to significant effect by so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq, but their use in the West had been, up until that point, largely recreational. In the year since the Gatwick incident, commercial UAVs have affected flights at airports in Germany, Singapore,Ireland, the United Arab Emirates and Spain to name but a few. Yemen's Houthi rebels used armed UAVs to attack several airports in Saudi Arabia and it appears Iran supported the Houthis' September 2019 UAV and cruise missile attacks on Saudi oil facilities that temporarily knocked out half the country's crude oil production (6% of global supply) and sent the oil price rocketing.