Australian company DroneShield has given the internet a closer look at its new portable anti-drone weapon, or "tactical drone jammer.".
Designed as a countermeasure against drones flying where they shouldn't, the DroneGun claims it won't crush the drone. Instead, according to the product brochure, it aims to force it into a vertical landing or send it back to its starting point.
The nearly six-kilogram weapon can target at a range of up to two kilometers, using a variety of jamming measures. These measures include jamming of 2.4 gigahertz and 5.8 gigahertz frequency bands, as well as GPS and GLONASS (the Russian satellite navigation system) jamming. battery lasts up to two hours.
The DroneGun is part of the DroneShield line, though it's one of the few that can actually disable a drone. Recently, the company has focused on detecting drones through acoustic sensing, recording the usual sounds of an area, isolating them with the help of technology, and identifying the sound of aircraft.
In addition to DroneGun, however, there are other similar tools, such as Battelle's DroneDefender, which promises to use radio control frequency disruption to jam an unmanned aircraft and bring it to the ground, as well as OpenWorks Engineering's SkyWall, which captures them with a net.
These measures, however, have a long way to go before they are freely available to the general public. As DroneShield's website notes, DroneGun cannot be used or sold in the US, except by the government and its agencies.
This is because the Federal Communications Commission “prohibits the operation, marketing, or sale of any type of electronic jamming equipment.”
In Australia, it is also illegal for citizens to use such technologies.
