- The FBI wants to hear from you if you make wired drones
- An official request for information has been issued
- Drones connected by cables are more difficult to jam and take down
If you have a drone that can’t be wirelessly jammed, the Federal Bureau of Investigation wants to talk to you: The Secret Service has issued a Request for Information (RFI) for such a device, and any company that can provide one.
According to RFI (via DroneDJ), the key element here is fiber optic control. The drones you supply to the Bureau must use old-fashioned wired technology that keeps them connected to a ground station and controller, rather than the wireless connection that all the best consumer drones use.
As DroneDJ notes, drones in conflict zones are also switching to wired operation, especially in Ukraine: This means they can’t be jammed wirelessly and have to be shot down instead, which is harder to do.
The obvious downside is that you need an awful lot of cables to get any range on a wired drone – but these flying machines can now carry up to 50 miles of coiled cables on them, meaning they can still fly impressive distances.
“Any size, class and capacity”
Not surprisingly, the FBI is somewhat cautious when it comes to saying what these wired drones might be used for. For now, the agency just wants to know which companies could potentially provide these connected drones.
“Any size, class and capability will be looked at,” the FBI says, but the drones submitted for consideration must comply with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) — so they must pass the appropriate security checks.
The FBI says it uses drones (or unmanned aerial systems) in “a number of facets while responding to and at the scene of various incidents”. Right now it seems intent on getting new models that can’t be jammed wirelessly – although of course they could still be taken down by cutting their cables.
The role of drone technology in warfare and law enforcement continues to expand: We recently saw a Chinese study outlining how a fleet of thousands of drones could block satellite access for a small country.
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