The police in Tokyo are getting ready to launch a drone squad for the purpose of detecting and in some instances, capturing nuisance drones being flown by the public.
The police will specially focus the drone squad around important buildings, including the prime minister’s office. Should a suspicious unmanned aerial vehicle be detected, its operator will be warned via loudspeakers on the ground. If he / she fail to respond, police will launch a team of drones, armed with nets, to capture the device and bring it back down to the ground.
“Terrorist attacks using drones carrying explosives are a possibility,” a senior member of the police department's security bureau told the Asahi Shimbun website. “We hope to defend the nation's functions with the worst-case scenario in mind.”
While the decision to launch a drone squad might seem a bit excessive, it’s actually in response to an incident that occurred earlier in the year. Back in April, a drone carrying a small amount of radioactive material landed on top of the prime minister’s office. There were no injuries, and an arrest was made, but the instance demonstrated a new form of criminal activity, one that the Tokyo police force felt was enough of a real-world threat that a formal response procedure needed to be set up right away.
Check out a demonstration of the drone capturing squad below:
For those curious, Japanese law governing the use of unmanned aerial vehicles is similar to that which is in place in the US and elsewhere. It is illegal to fly over areas like airports and power plants, roads, and above a height of 150 meters. While the country does not yet have in place a drone register like what the US has, which lists device owners across the nation, some Japanese cities, including Tokyo and Osaka, have gone so far as to outright make it illegal to fly drones in public places like parks.
Via the BBC
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