Can a Tiny Drone Take Down an Airliner?

How dangerous is the consumer drone threat to aircraft in flight? Governments, industry, and pilots take it very seriously. On October 18, The Verge reported that the UK’s Department of Transport commissioned a series of test crashes between drones and planes, to find out what sort of damage would occur should the two collide.

In April, a British Airways pilot reported that an object—possibly a drone—struck his Airbus A320. The subsequent investigation determined a drone wasn’t involved. An FAA report, leaked to the Washington Post, however, states that there have been hundreds of close calls between drones and other aircraft, although the Academy of Model Aircraft disputes this in their own study.

There are key differences between drone and bird strikes. Consumer drones are constructed of metal and plastic, materials more likely to inflict damage on aircraft than the feathers and lightweight bones of birds. And while the FAA undertakes wildlife mitigation efforts around airports, birds can’t be taught not to fly in the path of aircraft, and technological solutions can’t completely eliminate the threat. Drone pilots, however, can follow general safety rules that—in theory—will greatly reduce the odds of consumer drones hitting manned aircraft. We can also increase safety through a variety of “deconfliction” mechanisms.  

Despite education and technology, could a “dronestrike” involving a consumer drone, weighing as little as just a pound or two, down a large airliner? Very likely it could. Because doubling the closing speed of an impact of a given drone with other aircraft quadruples the kinetic energy imparted, and because tripling the closing speed multiplies it by nearly ten-fold, a small drone flying high enough to hit an airliner traveling hundreds of miles per hour could potentially cause enough damage to send it uncontrollably out of the sky. 

Ed Darack | | READ MORE

Air & Space/Smithsonian contributing editor Ed Darack is the author of The Warriors of Anbar; War Moments; The Final Mission of Extortion 17; Victory Point; and three other books. He is the founder of Darack Research, a company that innovates unmanned systems, which grew out of his July 2014 Air & Space article Build Your Own Drone.