Droning On - the MOD and the Battle of the Gatwick Drone...

The year may be ending, but the demands on the British Armed Forces remain as high as ever. The last few days have seen two separate incidents happen which highlight the critical importance played by the Military in supporting the Civil Authorities, although with very different reactions.

The closure of Gatwick Airport due the presence of at least one drone repeatedly entering the area, making it too dangerous to conduct normal flying dominated headline news. This marked the first time a major British airport was closed due to the presence of drones, causing immense disruption to tens of thousands of travellers.

As the incident wore on, there was increasing frustration in some quarters that nothing seemed to be being done to solve the problem. People didn’t understand why a tiny drone could close an entire airport, while others wanted to know why the Armed Forces couldn’t intervene.

One well known national broadcaster attracted widespread ridicule for comments slating the defence budget and wanting to know why if in WW2 RAF aircraft could crash V1 ‘flying bombs’, the same could not happen today. Apparently this represented a failure by the MOD. Other complaints followed later that when the Army was called in, it had taken far too long to do, and that it was simply not acceptable in this day and age.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

The proliferation of small drones is a major issue because at present anyone can purchase them. Even with so-called ‘geofencing’ (technology to prevent the drone entering certain areas) they still pose a challenge – for example in taking overhead photos of areas that people would prefer not to have images of.

Handling the challenge of drones in the domestic airspace is a real issue, and one that requires a lot of thinking. The presence of a flying aircraft in airspace that you cannot control, and have no means of predicting where it will move to makes it risky in the extreme to conduct flying operations – bird strikes have caused planes to crash in the past, so a drone colliding with an aircraft, intentionally or otherwise, has the potential to cause a significant aviation disaster. In an industry where safety comes above all else, needlessly risking a hugely expensive aircraft and hundreds of passenger’s lives with the risk of a drone collision is simply not going to happen. Closing the airport was absolutely the right thing to do.

While there were snide comments about the lack of an ability to shoot drones down, it is worth asking what the benefit would have been. What goes up must come down, and firing sniper rifles at drones that may not necessarily hit the target (assuming the drone moves unexpectedly) raises risks for others. If the Police had fired at the drones, how could they be certain that their shot would hit and not kill innocent people by accident?

Similarly there was a  sense of the mildly surreal in some media commentators expecting the RAF to tip the drone over –thinking that it is possible to get a fighter jet to fly slowly enough to be able to ‘tip’ the drone into the ground without having a collision or crashing is stunningly foolish. There is a vast difference between WW2 when fighter aircraft and V1s were a similar size, and todays incredible disparity between drones and jets. Presumably had it gone wrong and the jet crashed, the same commentators would have been attacking the MOD for its recklessness?

Battle of the Drone

There is a much wider question on the role that the armed forces play in policing UK domestic airspace. While the RAF has for decades launched quick reaction alert fighters to respond to challenges with unidentified or unfriendly aircraft approaching UK airspace, they have no played a part in tackling the issue of drones yet.

Some people complained that it took a long time to call in the Armed Forces, but to Humphrey the timing seemed reasonable. The role of the military in the UK is to support the Civil Power, not to immediately be the go to solution for every problem that emerges.

What happened at Gatwick was that there was an initial sighting, followed by more the next day – it takes time to confirm these sightings and be certain this is not a one off ‘stupid act’ and was actually something more malign. At this point the situation remained fundamentally an issue for the Police to deal with -a criminal act had been committed – it was not yet a military matter.

The request for Military support usually comes about when it is clear that the authorities are unable to resolve the incident without access to specialist resources. For instance bomb disposal, certain counter terrorism issues and various other niche tasks are usually very quickly handed to the MOD to resolve through a well tried and test chain.

Other tasks may take a little longer to work out what the actual request is, whether the MOD can fix it and what the response should be. In this case it seems that about 18hrs elapsed between the first sighting and the arrival of niche military capability – which given this was the first time this has happened, doesn’t seem unreasonable.

People would rightly complain and be worried if the military became the ‘go to’ for every civil task. It is absolutely right and proper that where possible matters involving law enforcement issues be dealt with via the Police and not by putting the Armed Forces on the streets. There is also no certainty that the military have the ability to necessarily do anything.  The Armed Forces have a range of capabilities, but they are often committed to tasks, held at readiness for other contingencies or simply not available for contingencies no one held likely to see happen.

In the longer-term people have been asking what the role is of the Armed Forces in keeping our airports open against this threat. Hopefully the answer is ‘practically nothing’. The role of the Armed Forces should not be to keep airports safe on a routine basis from drone overflights – the capabilities required to do this could, and should, rest with either the Police or the Private Sector. This is not fundamentally a long-term military task to resolve.

There is a sense that somehow people have failed here – Humphrey would disagree. It seems that a very determined group managed to pull something off that would have taken any national government by surprise – drones have proliferated worldwide in recent years, yet this is, to the authors knowledge, the first time that an airport was shut for so long as a result of drone activity.  The first time something happens always causes chaos and confusion, but this is quickly overcome and mitigation measures put in place. Humphrey will go out on a limb and say that his personal prediction is that a disruption of this size and scale is unlikely to occur again.

The incident though is a timely reminder of the flexibility and capability of the British Armed Forces, and the strength of the wider Governments crisis response architecture. To be able to ensure that an effective response was in place to a complex challenge in under 24hrs indicates a flexible decision making/taking process. That the Police, Civil Authorities and Military were able to convene and effectively decide what to do, deploy the capability and bring the incident to a close highlight one of the often forgotten strengths of the British system – namely the ability for all parts of Government to work well together in a crisis situation.

Many Governments have deeply challenging silos, with Ministries not communicating well together, or proving able to operate effectively on the ground. This incident was a timely reminder of the strength of the UK system in getting the right people, empowered to take a decision, to work together at the same time. This should not be taken for granted, and many countries could not do this.

The effectiveness of this system was tested a second time overnight on Fri 21 Dec when the SBS reportedly boarded a merchant ship experiencing difficulties with stowaways onboard trying to take control. For obvious reasons much of the detail of the operation remains sketchy, but reports indicate the SBS fast roped onto the vessel from an RN Merlin helicopter before taking control of the vessel.

This incident again highlights the flexibility of the UK governments crisis management system, whereby in a very short space of time specialist assets were made available to the Civil Authorities to stage an intervention and resolve the situation.

It also highlights the ability of the UK to pull together a potentially high risk operation at very short notice, relying on a wide range of actors and organisations from the Police, Armed Force and wider Government agencies to plan and deliver this operation. No matter how low threat the situation may sound, conducting a boarding operation onto a vessel that has experienced problems is not easy. To conduct this operation effectively during the start of a leave period reminds us not only of the sheer number of military personnel on constant readiness to keep the UK safe, but also how capable they are at doing difficult jobs quickly.

As we enter the leave season and the end of the year, with readiness levels at probably their lowest ebb as the hardworking men and women of the MOD Civil Service and the Armed Forces, plus the wider national security community take well deserved leave, it is a timely reminder of their ability to quickly respond to two very diverse military challenges in under 24hrs while still meeting their normal operational duties.

Roughly 10% of the Naval Service are deployed this Christmas across the globe from Antarctica to the Caribbean to the Black Sea and Gulf through the Pacific Ocean. There is probably not an ocean on the planet this Christmas Day that will not see a White Ensign flying proudly. That is a remarkable accomplishment and one that only a tiny handful of nations can do at the best of times, let alone over Christmas.

More widely the RAF and Army are deployed in a wide variety of difficult and challenging operational theatres including North Africa, the Gulf, Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan and beyond. Their work is risky and at times very dangerous, but the job continues regardless of the time of year. This Christmas also sees for the 50^th year in a row, a Royal Navy ballistic missile submarine at sea providing a continuous silent deterrent as the ultimate guarantor of our national safety and security.

This Christmas Day, thousands of people, Service Personnel and Civil Servants alike, will be away from home and families, deployed around the world helping make the UK and its allies a safer place. It is a good time to reflect on this as we look to a short period of rest and reflection ahead of a new year that has the potential to prove to be ‘interesting times’.