The Feds Are Arming Themselves to Drive Drones Out of Airports

When an unidentified object hit a British Airways A320 on the nose on its approach to Heathrow last month, the encounter was widely believed the fault of some dope who had flown his drone into busy airspace, endangering the lives of the 137 people aboard the jet. "It was bound to happen," the British Airline Pilots Association said. This time, the errant "drone" was actually a plastic bag, but the FAA isn't sitting around, waiting for a next time. This month, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it's expanding its Pathfinder Program, which it created to detect and identify drones flying too close to airports. To make that happen, the agency's conducting joint research with a number of companies to identify the technology that might be used to spot, block, and drop the unwanted unmanned aircraft systems.