Drones can be annoying. In the neighborhood, over cities, at parks — yeah, irritating. Sure, the footage they dispense can be eye-opening and utterly magnificent, but is it really worth the headache of worrying about some flying robot bug hovering around and possibly snooping into our business?
No. And sure, you can use this deal at Bodybuilding.com to bulk up and punch the darn things out of the sky, or these savings at Dell to buy a bunch of computers and construct some kind of Weird Science style experiment that will hunt the robot birds wherever they may lurk OR you can do what the military is doing.
And get one of these hellish-looking big dang bulky anti-drone guns — which are made by a company named Battelle and officially slugged the “DroneDefender” (eventually, they’re not available quite yet commercially):
But don’t let looks deceive you. It probably doesn’t operate in the way you’re guessing it does.
This from Foxtrot Alpha:
The DroneDefender is designed to jam electromagnetic waves, causing the drone pilot on the ground to lose control of their UAV. And with a range of about 400 meters (roughly four football fields), it can even reach your neighbors on the other side of the tracks.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense reportedly already have about 100 of these things. But the DroneDefender will no doubt face plenty of resistance when it comes to being commercially available to the public—most especially from the FCC.
If we were drones (which we can assure you we’re not) just the sight of that thing would make us leak nuts and bolts. Don’t think it works like that but it doesn’t really matter because drones will be zapped before the whole self-awareness thing occurs.