London cops hunt for drone pilots who tried dropping drugs into jail Cops have seized drones being used to fly drugs into London's Pentonville prison – and are now on the hunt for the people operating them. One drone crashed while flying over the all-male jail on 14 August. Another was intercepted in “mid-flight” heading towards the prison later that same day. Police did not say exactly how …
"Vertical netting can be cut or flown over. Horizontal netting can be penetrated with a weighted spike under the payload."
Thats not going to get it into the cell, vid here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-37152665
........... and I pity any unsuspecting bugger underneath!
The netting would need to be pretty small or a drone could simply fly above it and drop the package through... Even with small netting the "villains" could reduce the drug payload to wrapped pellets and rain them from above.
It would certainly stop the mobile phone drops however, and given the number of inmates who have drug dependency issues, maybe the phones are the bigger issue. I doubt the officers really have that much wish to be confronted with a whole prison going cold turkey.
"maybe the phones are the bigger issue"
The vast majority of prisoners smuggle phones into prisons to keep in contact with the families, thanks to extortionate payphone charges and difficulty of accessing same (profiteering is too kind a term).
Fix that and the powers-that-be could concentrate on crims who use phones in jail for more nefarious purposes.
As for the drugs: There's a more general problem there and the driving force behind the drugs war is "profit" - when you know that a medical knockout dose of cocaine is less than 50p but can sell on the street for upwards of 50 pounds you realise there are people willing to take risks for that kind of markup.
The vast majority of prisoners smuggle phones into prisons to keep in contact with the families, thanks to extortionate payphone charges and difficulty of accessing same (profiteering is too kind a term).
If they don't like the unfortunate restrictions on chokey, maybe they could try going straight?
Regardless of the welfare situation, the ridiculous prices for prison phone are just a giveaway to whoever gets the contract to provide them. It would be like if the prison decided soda was bad because the sugar was making prisoners violent, and they now had to pay $20 for a Pepsi. The same arguments that are made for high priced phone calls could be made for Pepsi - how prison isn't supposed to be cushy, and if the prison gets a cut of the money it could help defray what the taxpayers pay.
But when a rule causes a contraband headache those monetary savings evaporate (and then some) and you have a situation where the guys who follow the rules have the extra punishment (in the form of fewer calls with family or fewer Pepsis) and the guys who break the rules still get what they want, and the prison guards who are running the contraband or looking the other way get rich (and become subject to blackmail, leading to far worse crimes than sneaking in cell phones or soda)
For the guys who are well behaved, let them have all the time they want on the phones. Let them make a quick one minute call (or have a call in time prescheduled) and have family members call them which should cost nothing. The prison officials know the guys who are likely to be running gangs or criminal operations on the outside, and can still watch them like a hawk and listen in to their every call. But for the rest, the more connected they are to people on the outside, the more prepared they'll be to re-enter society, and the less trouble they'll be as they won't want to risk losing phone privileges. If you catch one passing a message for someone else (you still record their calls and spot check them) then they get extra time and lose the 'free callback' privilege so likely few would be willing to do so.
Regardless of the welfare situation, the ridiculous prices for prison phone are just a giveaway to whoever gets the contract to provide them
Good! The strong exploit the weak. That's what crime is. But it seems to me that you're wringing your hands that when the tables are turned, these poor lambs need to be treated with tenderness and kindness.
From my point of view, I disagree, They're in the clink to stop them committing more crime, and to restrict their liberties. If the scum don't like the conditions, maybe they should not prey on the weak in the first place. But my contempt is particularly reserved for people wringing their hands at the "ill treatment" of these felons. I WANT THEM ILL TREATED. I DON'T CARE IF THEY CAN'T PHONE THEIR MATES. Prison isn't cheap, and it doesn't reform, we all know that. So let's make sure it is punishment. I'd have the f*ckers breaking rocks for eighteen hours a day.
What was the model of quadcopter? The photo (low res unfortunately) looks like a chinese copy of the DJI Phantom... I'm thinking that if the perps spent serious money on the delivery drone, they'd be keen to get it back and would therefore hang about in the area risking capture. If it was a cheap one, they might see it as a "fire and forget" system and scarper much more quickly?
The drone in the first photo (the white one) is a DJI Phantom 4. Quite a pricey bit of kit (approx £1200 new) but mind numbingly easy to fly. As it has FPV built in, it would be easy to launch from a reasonable distance away - well out of sight - and still deliver the payload on target. The increased weight would reduce flight time but it'd only be for half the trip...
DJI do equip their drones with a "no-fly zone" geofencing system, which aims to prevent flights over sensitive areas such as airports and prisons, however it includes the ability to "unlock" the ability to ignore the restrictions by validating an account.
They wont care about the drone ..
"allegedly" , 1 ounce of "spice" , the synthetic cannabis that they are all mad about at the moment, costs around £60 outside of prison, and is worth around £1600 on the inside ..
That bundle looks like it contains around 2 ounce.
They only need one successful drop and the profits are huge - the drone will be seen as disposable
So much MORE trouble for the public at large, though. Not all drugs make you mellow, and your mileage may vary. Remember there are mellow drunks and there are MEAN drunks. Similarly, a join may make most people mellow but some drugs and some people get pretty damn dangerous (like ignores PAIN dangerous).
I'm not talking about weed alone, but, if an individual does chug on enough extremo-skunk every day they may not be physically dead, but are probably very very close to brain dead as makes no difference. But, happily, there are far more potent chemical highs available with lethal consequences in high-strength doses.
Thing is, given the average human male's weight of 80kg, and given your average joint has about 5mg of THC in it, the math seems to indicate that THC will be the least of your worries when it comes to dying on joints. Now, the impurities and so on are another matter. Plus there's always the psychotropic X-factor (which is how many stoned people tend to get into trouble--not from the joint but from the things they were doing while high).
A bunch of these, a Raspberry Pi with the appropriate sensors and actuators, plus a billion and a half thrown at BaE for software would solve that..
This over-reliance on technology to solve our problems has got to stop. Time for some tried-and-true medieval technology purpose-built to bypass high walls. Truck-mounted trebuchets would do a fine job of dropping packages into prisons, and can escape the area rapidly. With a fine ballistic arc and a high payload weight limit, they could rip or cut their way through any netting. There's no radio signal to jam, take over, or trace to give away the operator. Quadcopters make a furious whining sound and attract attention. The only sound an incoming catapult payload makes is the thud on impact.
Those who forget history and all that...
"Quadcopters make a furious whining sound and attract attention"
Yes, I've been wondering about this. Moving to ducted fans would make them much quieter and probably solve parasitic blade tip loss issues.
BTW the standard used for a military trebuchet was to throw the heads of captured soldiers back at their mates, or to toss dead/stinking carcasses into beseiged cities. Biological warfare, etc. They were never accurate enough to use as general purpose weapons.
"BTW the standard used for a military trebuchet was to throw the heads of captured soldiers back at their mates, or to toss dead/stinking carcasses into beseiged cities. Biological warfare"
Like what was done in "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" when Sauron's orcs, etc were attacking Minas Tirith. That's not biological warfare, it's psychological warfare. Biological warfare uses things like Anthrax, Potato Blight, Fowl Pest, etc. Powl Pest can wipe out Turkey populations in a very short period after being introduced to a concentrated population, like at a show.
They were never accurate enough to use as general purpose weapons.
In the first Scrapheap Challenge series, the first episode even, the teams were given the task to build a medieval siege engine; one built a ballista, the other a trebuchet. Both were not too shabby in their performance as well as their precision; after several shots the team operating the treb managed to fling a cabbage squarely at the besieged castle's occupant. Other sources too indicate that the trebuchet was sufficiently precise to hit the intended target once you've got it aimed, using calibrated munition. But if the goal is to just cause damage, lobbing a holy handgrenade a bucketful of sharp stones covered in horse piss, rotting carcases or killed defenders' heads into the besieged area doesn't require more precision than making sure it lands in the enemy compound, and not your own.
"In the first Scrapheap Challenge series, the first episode even, the teams were given the task to build a medieval siege engine; one built a ballista, the other a trebuchet. Both were not too shabby in their performance as well as their precision; after several shots the team operating the treb managed to fling a cabbage squarely at the besieged castle's occupant."
America's counterpart, Junkyard Wars, managed to show you could do similarly with a modified treb design and pumpkins. Less consistent ammo and a lack of chances to dial it in meant only one hit was scored, but the principles were still sound.
The bit about the treb being consistent is accurate, though. You needed precision when it came to siege warfare because knocking down a castle wall usually took more than just a big rock; it took a number of the things practically hammering the same spot over and over.
America's counterpart, Junkyard Wars, managed to show you could do similarly with a modified treb design and pumpkins. Less consistent ammo and a lack of chances to dial it in meant only one hit was scored, but the principles were still sound.
The trebuchet team sorted their cabbages by weight (I can't remember if the other team did too), and made minor corrections to their shots that way once they had the counterweight roughly right.
ahem. as a model aircrafft designer I can assure you that low noise is exactly high efficiency.
as rotor diamter tends to infinity rotor speed and rotor noise tends to zero and power to achieve a given thrust tends to zero.
UN fortunately where electric motors are concerned, as RPM tends to zero weight tends to infinity.
in practical terms what this means is that deep gearing and large rotors works, BUT there is added weight and losses of gearbox...
google 'man powered helicopter' to see where you have to go to achieve THAT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syJq10EQkog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emK-qIbuJ-k
Truck-mounted trebuchets would do a fine job of dropping packages into prisons,
A mortar or bombarde would be the better choice; you can hide one in a panel van, requiring only a sliding roof panel to operate. Pick a suitable location, calculate elevation and charge for the required distance and payload, go test somewhere remote, park van at location, fire, drive off.
"A mortar or bombarde would be the better choice; you can hide one in a panel van, requiring only a sliding roof panel to operate. Pick a suitable location, calculate elevation and charge for the required distance and payload, go test somewhere remote, park van at location, fire, drive off."
Trouble is, they're also pretty noisy in an area where noise is, last I checked, discouraged (many prisons are out of the way, for example). It's unavoidable due to physics. Something that compact still able to propel something a ways IS going to produce a shock wave. And prisons tend to have cameras both inside and out. End result, try this and you'll probably be caught in the act.
They know that people are trying to use the helicopters to drop stuff. How hard is it to:
1. Have low power radar to monitor things flying over?
2. Set up a few radio receivers around the prison so that they can pinpoint where the transmitter is? RC aircraft frequencies are very well known and setting up a few receivers should be child's play to monitor activity and pinpoint the transmission location....
3. After noticing the thing flying over, wait until someone picks up the package then charge them with additional counts of possession?
Seems to me that shooting down, catching or whatever it is they are doing to the drones is like the least successful way of going about stopping the practice. After all, once word gets out that you *will* be caught flying one of these things over a prison then the practice might very well stop.
1. Depending on the location, radar may not be an option because it'll interfere with other radio operations. Also, these things are pretty small and usually made of plastic with a reduced radio reflection so may not trip most radar systems without raising the risk of false positives (think of the thing going off when nearby birds fly past).
2. Programmatic one-way drone flights will leave no radio signature. And if the transmitter is on a mobile base, or multistatic, it'll be hard to pinpoint.
3. A coordinated effort can distract the guards (say start a fight) while the payload is dropped off and secreted away.
PS. To the guy who suggested a truck-mounted trebuchet, something that big will be hard to erect, take down, and/or disguise in a hurry (the moment you launched, odds are someone will notice you and jot your plate). Also, the net can be very flexible and made of strong cords that give some, allowing it to absorb impacts and render it resistant to blunt-force penetration (the whole rig would give first before it broke), leaving direct cutting or going over, both of which have countermeasures against one-shots while a drone can perform a sustained effort.
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