A man and woman arrested in connection with drone sightings that grounded flights at Gatwick Airport have been released without charge. The 47-year-old man and 54-year-old woman, from Crawley, West Sussex, were arrested on Friday night on suspicion of "the criminal use of drones". Sussex Police said the pair were no longer suspects. A damaged drone found close to the airport on Saturday was being forensically examined, the force added. Det Ch Supt Jason Tingley said it was "a working assumption" the device could be connected to their investigation, but officers were keeping "an open mind".

The airport's only runway was reopened on Friday morning, with a range or protection and surveillance measures reportedly put in place to prevent further chaos. One of the key tools for spotting drones will be radar. "The military has a range of technologies to secure airspace against planes, helicopters and drones," Mr Gill said. "They will be able to provide military-grade radar technology in order to help detect the drones and potentially the operators." One such radar system that may be deployed at Gatwick is the Israeli-developed Drone Dome system, of which the British Army bought six earlier this year.

The airport had been closed for over a day after a drone repeatedly flew nearby. The airport had been closed for over a day after a drone repeatedly flew nearby. There's no shortage of ideas about how to stop a drone, but as the past few days at London's Gatwick Airport show, the reality is far more difficult. From Wednesday night to Friday morning, flights in and out of Gatwick were halted after a small drone, or perhaps multiple drones, were spotted over the airfield. Hundreds of flights were canceled and thousands of passengers saw their holiday travel plans grounded.

British police say two people have been arrested for suspected "criminal use of drones"' in the Gatwick Airport case that has created nightmarish holiday travel delays for tens of thousands of passengers.

New drone sightings Friday had caused fresh problems for holiday travelers at the airport, which reopened in the morning after a 36-hour shutdown only to hastily suspend flights for more than an hour in the late afternoon on one of the busiest travel days of the year. Officials said extra military capabilities allowed flights to resume after the halt.

LONDON - British police say two people were arrested early Saturday morning for suspected "criminal use of drones'" in the Gatwick Airport case that has created nightmarish travel delays for tens of thousands of holiday passengers. Sussex police did not release the age or gender of the two suspects arrested late Friday night and did not say where the arrests were made. The two have not been charged. Police Superintendent James Collis asked the public in the Gatwick area to remain vigilant. "Our investigations are still ongoing, and our activities at the airport continue to build resilience to detect and mitigate further incursions from drones by deploying a range of tactics," he said.

Two people have been arrested in connection with the "criminal use of drones" at London Gatwick Airport, police have said, after three days of disruption affected tens of thousands of passengers during the pre-Christmas getaway. Drones were first sighted hovering around Britain's second-busiest air hub on Wednesday, grinding the runway to a standstill and causing chaos for more than 120,000 people. "As part of our ongoing investigations into the criminal use of drones which has severely disrupted flights in and out of Gatwick Airport, Sussex Police made two arrests just after 10:00pm (22:00 GMT) on December 21," the force's Superintendent James Collis said. "Every line of enquiry will remain open to us until we are confident that we have mitigated further threats to the safety of passengers." Police and military experts had been deployed to search for the drone operators which appeared near the airport every time it was expected to reopen.

From computer programming and guns that fire giant nets to well-trained birds of prey, previous attempts to stop the rogue use of consumer drones have been nothing if not original. But for all that creativity, the authorities have been left behind. And on Thursday, as an unknown operator succeeded in shutting down Gatwick airport for at least 18 hours by flying drones around the airport's protected airspace, the slow pace of progress was highlighted again. Regulators, police and defence experts are hoping to close that gap as they seek to deal with the rapid proliferation of drones, which have upended conventional thinking in fields as varied as aviation, prison security, and guerrilla warfare in the Middle East. In the UK, new rules first announced in July 2017 will finally be implemented in November 2019, requiring individuals to register with the government when they purchase drones weighing more than 250g (8.8oz), and be tested on their piloting skills and knowledge of the law before they are allowed to fly the devices. Until then, the acquisition of drones, also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), remains essentially unregulated for aircraft under 20kg (44lb).

The criminal who is illegally flying a drone at Gatwick Airport is being hunted by police and military personnel using cutting-edge technology. Gatwick has been brought to a standstill in the wake of the rogue drone terrorising the airport. Several methods have been developed, including laser-laden drones, high-tech jammers and tracking the signal via triangulation, which may be used to end the fiasco. Human snipers have also been brought in to help with the pursuit of the drone. The Army has been working on a'Drone Dome' or'kill-jammer' - which can'soft kill' a drone by knocking out its communications or a'hard kill' by shooting it down with a laser from up to two miles away - and may use this prototypical technology.

The Army used a cutting-edge Israeli anti-drone system to defeat the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that brought misery to hundreds of thousands of people at Gatwick airport. The British Army bought six'Drone Dome' systems for £15.8 million in 2018 and the technology is used in Syria to destroy ISIS UAVs. Police had been seen on Thursday with an off-the-shelf DJI system that tracks drones made by that manufacturer and shows officers where the operator is (DJI is the most popular commercial drone brand.) However, the drone used at Gatwick is thought to have been either hacked or an advanced non-DJI drone, which rendered the commercial technology used by the police useless. At that point, the Army's'Drone Dome' system made by Rafael was called in.