Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart – Eco extremists have openly admitted plans to shut down Heathrow by flying drones in controlled airspace, to terrorise authorities into suspending flight operations.
Exclusive: How Extinction Rebellion Plans To Shut Heathrow Airport Down
Document reveals how climate change activists will use drones to organise mass disruption lasting up to 16 days later this year.
By George Bowden
04/07/2019 12:12 BST | Updated 04/07/2019 13:10 BSTMillions of passengers could face travel turmoil at Heathrow this autumn as Extinction Rebellion plans mass disruptions using drones, according to a new detailed proposal seen by HuffPost UK.
The climate activist group will organise “day after day” of chaos across two weeks at the west London airport in a bid to stop flights, the leaked document reveals.
The group – which shut down large parts of central London in April to raise awareness of climate change – is pushing forward with a revised strategy at Heathrow despite reports of unease among some activists.
“There is the opportunity to transform the humble drone into a David which allows us to stop the Goliath of Heathrow and the global aviation industry from destroying us,” the document states.In the new plans, drones would be flown no higher than 6 feet, weigh less than 7kg, and be kept away from Heathrow’s designated flight paths, in a bid to ensure “non-violent action”. Activists would also have an open “hotline” to police and would provide two months’ notice.
Extinction Rebellion confirmed the document was real and told HuffPost it had reflected on feedback from its initial plans to shut down Heathrow, and that its new proposals included measures to minimise disruption for travellers.
…
Read more: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/extinction-rebellion-heathrow-drone-plans_uk_5d1da527e4b04c48140ef43c
As a recreational pilot I am horrified at this threat.
Deliberately flying a drone near an airport, even if the intention is to avoid flight paths, is a grave threat to life. What if a drone accidentally strays into a flight path, and a startled pilot makes a wrong move and crashes an airplane full of passengers?
Large airplanes create massive wake turbulence which extends for miles around and behind the path of the aircraft, powerful air currents which could easily cause drone pilots to lose control of their drones.
Flying drones in the vicinity of an airport with the intention of causing disruption in my opinion is just as reprehensible as planting a bomb, then phoning ahead to warn authorities to clear the area.
Sure the terrorists in both cases probably don’t want people to die, but the risk to life of such irresponsibility is utterly unacceptable. One slip-up and the lives of hundreds could be in peril.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The XR morons have blocked the streets twice this year in my town. They had a secondary protest at a junction which is on my way home from work, and the police were doing a good job of keeping them off the street and on the pavement. I decided to try and have a chat with them, and approached the chap who was handing out leaflets. He probably thought I was a greenie/hippy as I’m a cyclist with dirty bike, and shabby old well-worn cycling gear. “Are you interested in the climate?” came the question. I let him start his pitch, but he got agitated when I started refuting his claims. Eventually he said that he wasn’t interested in talking to me and walked off, presumably to find some easier meat. They certainly don’t appear to like being challenged.
If you have the stomach for it, have a look at their web-site. Very depressing. There’s a section called ‘The Truth’, where they claim “We are facing an unprecedented global emergency. Life on Earth is in crisis: scientists agree we have entered a period of abrupt climate breakdown, and we are in the midst of a mass extinction of our own making”.
I do challenge these people whenever I meet them, but the rot goes deep.
The company I work for ( a large corporate) , has a ‘No Planet B’ initiative. I have so far resisted writing the career-shortening email that pops into my mind when the weekly newsletter arrives in my inbox…..
Can’t you just mark it, “SPAM – Return to sender”?
An attack on the vital infra-structure of a country is an act of war. It should be dealt with as such.
If moved to a Scottish island, the XR group surely would be happy to be herded by the sheep…
On occasion some have tried their luck with Cumulonimbus and brought down heavily hail beaten airframes. Sadly, bird strikes happen too.
However… Brutally loosing engine(s) at takeoff or early climb might not be exactly what crews and airspace are prepared to handle within a few seconds of reaction time.
Liners loaded not even close to MTOW are extremely sluggish to turn around close to ground without lots of power.
Equally, a sudden engine issue while in full reverse might prove incompatible with the routine…
So yes, engines are the most if not the only vulnerable parts. Now what are the chances of a flock of drones to hide undetected then suddenly group attack and actually hit ?
As remote as wining a lottery since Heathrow is at capacity and wake turbulences quite a permanent deal.
And drones endurance decreases sharply in windy systems.
Objectively, the risk factor of drones is not that high but it exists. However in aviation this goes beyond criminality.
Passengers trust their lives in our hands. Only deeply deranged inhumane creatures can willingly disrupt this process.
Over EU they routinely clog the emergency frequency with “Emergency, go (expletive) crash and save the earth !” alike slogans and other animal noises.
And now they step-up to the possibility of physical interaction.
More than time to realize, greens are not human but sort of biological robots with exclusively hate based instincts.
Would their be anyway to de-focus a laser beam so that it’s effective range is reduced to a few dozen yards?
Stopping holidaymakers from enjoying their well-earned breaks is a sure fire way to alienate people from their cause.
This threat is clearly an act of terrorism and should be treated as such.
This plan is based on a previous event, a few months back, that disrupted operations at Gatwick for hours at a time over several days. Wouldn’t surprise me if that was these extinction rebellion shites testing the idea out.
The BBC, for once, had a balanced program about the risk from drones.
There are countermeasures that seem to be able to deal with the problem but they are very expensive. They also need special authorisation as firing a high power laser into the air has its own risks.
However given the risks to Heathrow it would seem to be worth the expense.
As for the perpetrators……..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0006h51/britains-next-air-disaster-drones
The Orkney Islands are far too good for them. See these wonderful images of Orkney.
https://ca.images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=Awr9J.gG1CFdM3YAkAzrFAx.;_ylu=X3oDMTE0cmhzZm92BGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQjY1NzBfMQRzZWMDcGl2cw–?p=orkney+scotland+images&fr2=piv-web&fr=mcafee
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/02/12/arctic-chill-at-85f-below-zero-so-cold-eskimos-advised-to-stay-inside/comment-page-1/#comment-2742696
Pause and think about the Inuit and the northern explorers like my kinsman John Rae (from Orkney), who discovered the Northwest Passage. These men traveled outdoors for months in the dead of winter – they survived by hunting and created their own shelter by building igloos. These were real men, incredibly tough and self-reliant.
I was raised by such men – gentle and kind, but tough as nails – “the Greatest Generation”. My Uncle Don, who was the only surviving officer of the Essex Scottish Regiment at Dieppe in 1942 and rescued most of the surviving men, and my dad, who ran half of the largest explosives plant in the British Empire during WW2, who had 3000 men reporting to him when he was only 26 years of age, and did not lose a man during the entire war. Real men – incredibly talented, tough, and kind.
It is difficult to reconcile their remarkably hardy achievements with the uber-delicate “snowflakes” of today, who are deeply traumatized by the slightest slight, and claim PTSD when their cappuccino is delivered at less-than-perfect temperature.
“In the new plans, drones would be flown no higher than 6 feet, weigh less than 7kg, and be kept away from Heathrow’s designated flight paths, in a bid to ensure “non-violent action”.”
So the COWARDS are sending in drones because they are nonthing but whiney crybabies in Mom’s basement, right?
I see a couple of commenters above have anticipated my comment, but I’ll make it anyway: Post a few duck hunters with shotguns around the airport and let them hone their skeet shooting skills. : > )
How do you defeat drones? A 12 gauge loaded with 3 inch shells packed with #4 shot and a person that knows how to use it….. “Pull!”
Will they refrain when warmists are flocking to the next save-the-planet conference in Bali or Kathmandu?
I’ve seen videos of these awesome space marine looking anti-drone signal jamming guns taking out drones with ease on YouTube. I’m sure airport security and the Met have a few. If these idiots have the return-to-home feature active it could even lead law enforcement directly to where they’re flying from. Just another example of how ass-backwards most leftists apply the scientific method to their crackpot ideas LOL
There is more to this story than recent press suggests. Earlier this year Extinction Rebellion threatened to fly drones around Heathrow Airport for two weeks in July. The leaders, and they were well known, should have been immediately arrested for conspiracy to commit terrorist acts.
They were not. At around the same time they were playing silly beggers by bring central London to a standstill for eight days.
Nevertheless they were given the fright of their lives and came up with a plan to fly lightweight “pink” drones at head height away from direct flight paths. In addition they said they would give two months’ notice of their actions for airlines to make alternative arrangements.
If you fly a lightweight drone around head height you are mainly a danger to low flying bees. It is unlikely that planes would need to file alternative flight plans unless they had been intending to fly 24 inches above Hounslow.
This latest scare was little more than a diversionary and face saving ploy from our so far unindicted terror conspirators.
ALMOST UNBELIEVABLE FACT: The antics of this group directly led the British Parliament to recently declare a “climate emergency”.
Much like the tree huggers here in British Columbia who spiked trees to intentionally injure forest workers and hurled their own feces when they were approached by people trying to remove them, these useful idiots show their dangerous lunacy to the public and lose credibility quickly.
Yes, and those same tree huggers that tried so hard to shut down our softwood lumber industry demand increasing amounts from government for their particular environmental issues while ignoring the obvious reality that government revenues came from resource exploitation.
The stock for falconers just went way up 🙂
Every time I hear about groups and individuals such as the Extinction Rebellion, I remind myself to ALWAYS
follow the money. So before these people are sent off to their Ideal Island to practice their propaganda and preach their fearful ways, let’s find out where these people get their money and financial support, or their supplies. Those drones are not cheap.
Also the last time I heard about the “founders” of these groups they had been previously unemployable. With all these environmental groups springing up in the world and noting that they have become virulently hateful of humanity, don’t you think that it’s high time that their support infrastructure be found out and revealed for all to see? Who ever it is, has access to vast supplies of money and are well practiced it warping minds with propaganda.
I say that it is time to go hunting. How about you? It’s time to keep our eyes and ears open and take note. This would be a good community to begin to collect the information. WUWT readers have great skills of observation for the most part and tend to be well practiced in logic and reason as well as research.
These are completely irresponsible idiots who will, hopefully, get what’s coming to them, if they really move forward with their plans.
https://www.uasvision.com/2019/03/19/uk-expands-no-fly-zone-to-5-kms-around-airports/
One solution might be to put all known members of Extinction Rebellion on an immediate and mandatory 12 year ‘no-fly’ list. The media luvvies first. No more flying for them. No more international awards ceremonies.
Let them lower their ‘carbon footprints’ first. Because isn’t that what they really want?
I have a feeling if the drones did bring down a passenger aircraft and killed all aboard Extinction Rebellion would see that as a plus.
Drones available to the public work on a limited number of frequencies which can be jammed —- and will be.
Put one or two of these jerks in prison for life and see if that has any impact on further such conduct.
“Sure the terrorists in both cases probably don’t want people to die…”
Why would you write that, though I love your qualifier, “probably”? They ACT as if they would rather people die than that their precious feelings be hurt.
People aren’t what they say, they are wat they do. If they do this, they want people to die.
I notice none ever even contemplate going to court to prove their claims about fossil fuel causing the climate changes. Surely the first step before civil disobedience should be to prove the case in court. Since the claim is that it is proved beyond question the court requires only beyond reasonable doubt so it should be simple.
many of us would be far more amenable to listening to claims tested in open court with a legal requirement to reveal any information the prosecution has that could be used for defence.
We’ve already had one big airport shutdown in the UK due to drones. The astonishing thing was that the authorities had no clear plan in place for something that people had openly talked about for years.
Heads should have rolled then. If it is allowed to happen again then they surely will.