A consortium of technical partners, law enforcement bodies and infrastructure operators has developed the ALADDIN project to combat threats posed by drones.
The ALADDIN project – which stands for Advanced hoListic Adverse Drone Detection, Identification and Neutralisation – is funded by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 research funding initiative. It intends to address the growing issue of drone misuse in crime and terrorism. The consortium administering the project consists of 18 technical, law enforcement and end user infrastructure partners from nine EU Member States: France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the UK.
As production and procurement of drones has soared in recent years, so have incidents of airport disruption, threats to critical infrastructure and criminal activity involving drones. In December the UK’s Gatwick airport was shut down for two days after drone sightings, disrupting 1,000 flights; yesterday saw Heathrow – the second busiest airport in the world – shut down for an hour over drone fears. The ALADDIN project was devised to assess emerging technologies and current developments in order to formulate a comprehensive anti-drone system to detect and neutralise potential drone threats.
According to its website, the ALADDIN project will “study, design, develop, and evaluate, in series of complementary pilots, a counter UAV [unmanned air vehicle] system as a complete solution to the growing UAV threat problem, building upon a state-of-the-art system and enhancing it by researching on various detection and neutralization technologies and functionalities.”
Partners in the ALADDIN project will attend the world’s largest aerospace event, the SIAE International Paris Air Show 2019, between 17 and 22 June 2019; to perform a demonstration of the first operational version of their counter-UAV programme. Components of the system will be shown through live demonstrations and virtual simulations; and the project will be seeking feedback from users in order to improve its final version, due in 2020.
