Tech aims to stop drone threats ahead of DFW World Cup matches

NBC 5 Investigates the tools available for law enforcement to detect and defend against drone threats, as attacks overseas raise concerns

Authorities protecting nine World Cup matches being played in North Texas this summer say one of the biggest potential threats isn’t on the ground, it’s in the air.

Drones used in attacks overseas are now a growing concern around crowded stadiums, driving law enforcement to develop new defenses to take down dangerous drones.

NBC 5 Investigates traveled to a counter-drone technology testing site in Oklahoma near Stillwater, where we saw the kinds of tools law enforcement could use to protect stadiums and fan events during the World Cup this summer.

Jamey Jacob, director of the Oklahoma Aerospace Institute for Research and Education (OAIRE) at Oklahoma State University, described the threat a drone could pose to a large-scale event like a World Cup match.

"It can be calamitous, right? If you think about what a drone can carry in terms of its payload," Jacob said.

That's why he and his team of OSU researchers work with private contractors and the United States military to develop technology that can detect and defend against drone threats.

Teams with Vigilant Aerospace Systems, a company that develops multi-layered drone detection systems, and OSU gave us a demonstration at their small airstrip in rural Oklahoma.

Kendyn Webster, director of operations with Vigilant Aerospace Systems, set up a geofence, an invisible digital boundary around a real-world space. In the simulation, the geofence was created around an imaginary stadium at the end of the drone airstrip. The OSU team then launched a drone that simulated a threat to the imaginary stadium.

"Let's say we're defending this airfield or a stadium," Webster said.

FAA rules require legitimate drone operators to broadcast an ID, like a digital license plate, that can be detected by an antenna and used to identify both the drone's location and the operator's identity. But bad actors don't play by the rules, and the research team at OSU showed us how the drone could be easily altered to fly without transmitting its ID. The drone could even be programmed to fly fully autonomous, to "go dark" and fly straight toward a target without anyone at the controls.

"It's the dark weapons, the dark drones that we have the most concern about because not only are they difficult to track, but they're also impossible to jam," said Jacob.

So, how do researchers plan to stop a small aircraft, trying to stay invisible? One answer is portable drone radar, which is small enough to mount on the roof of a stadium. The radar is specifically designed to see drones, even dark drones, and to predict their direction of travel.

As the research team's demonstration drone heads toward the imaginary stadium, the portable radar sees it approaching the area protected by a geofence. As soon as the drone crossed through the geofence and into the protected area, the system issued an alert that a drone had entered restricted airspace.

"So, from here, police would basically scramble their security forces to go ahead and intercept that drone," Webster said.

But intercepting a drone, they said, is often harder than detecting one.

"You can either jam the controller so that way can try to hijack the system to take control of it and if you're not able to do that you're really limited to some kind of kinetic directed energy weapon," said Jacob.

Jacob's team helped develop and test counter-drone weapons. One of them is a helicopter drone that fires a capture net to knock the drone out of the sky. Other drones can be used to intercept the intruder, using AI-powered targeting systems to crash into it and bring it down. There are even drones mounted with shotguns that fire devices that tangle a drone's props, causing it to crash.

Jacob said that officials with the U.S. military and Homeland Security also have counter-drone weapons that use microwaves and lasers to destroy drones in the air.

"It's a high-powered laser beam, and the goal there is to really burn through components on the vehicle," Jacob said.

But no system is perfect, Jacob said, and firing a weapon near a stadium crowded with people that could bring down a drone that could be carrying explosives or a dangerous substance carries its own risks.

Jacob said the best defense involved implementing a risk management framework he describes as a "Swiss cheese model", where the defense is a multi-layered approach designed to detect and defend against various threats.

"Each slice of Swiss cheese has a hole in it. You wanna make sure your holes don't line up," Jacob said.

"There might be holes in your different layers, but hopefully we have enough of those layers that we can catch everything," said AJ Burba, with OSU.

Jacob's team worries that the rise in drone attacks in the Middle East and Ukraine shows it's becoming easier for bad actors to build inexpensive drones that can inflict serious damage -- drones that cost far less than the equipment needed to protect a stadium.

"That's the real challenge," Jacob said of the financial cost of defense. "And of course, if you're trying to defend a system, you have to be perfect 100% of the time. The attacker only has to be lucky."

Arlington Police told NBC 5 Investigates that drones regularly stray into the airspace around AT&T Stadium during Dallas Cowboys games. Fortunately, so far those incidents have involved what law enforcement officials call "the careless or clueless" drone operators who may have wanted to take pictures and didn't understand the airspace restrictions.

The challenge for police is making rapid decisions about whether the drone is being operated by a careless pilot or by someone with more sinister intentions.

At AT&T Stadium in Arlington, where nine World Cup matches will be played in June and July, federal law enforcement will help lead security efforts and have access to the latest counter-drone technology.

COMING UP: At fan events and team training centers scattered across the Metroplex, there are still questions about the level of counter-drone capability local police departments will have. We'll continue the story with those details on Thursday night on NBC 5 News at 10 p.m.