- 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 harder to jam and take down
If you have a drone that can’t be jammed wirelessly, then the Federal Bureau of Investigation would like to speak to you: the intelligence service has put out a request for information (RFI) for such a device, and any company that can provide one.
According to the RFI (via DroneDJ), the key element here is fiber optic control. The drones you supply to the Bureau must use old-school wired technology that keeps them connected to a ground station and controller, rather than the wireless connectivity that all the best consumer drones make use of.
As DroneDJ notes, drones in conflict zones are switching to wired operation too, particularly in Ukraine: it means they can’t be jammed wirelessly, and must be shot down instead, which is more difficult to do.
The obvious downside is that you need an awful lot of cabling to get any range on a wired drone – but these flying machines can now carry up to 50 miles of spooled cabling on them, which means they can still fly for impressive distances.
‘Any size, class, and capability’
Unsurprisingly, the FBI is being somewhat circumspect when it comes to saying what these wired drones might be used for. At the moment, the agency just wants to know which companies can potentially supply these tethered drones.
“Any size, class, and capability will be looked at,” the FBI says, but the drones put forward for consideration have to comply with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – so they need to pass the relevant security checks.
The FBI says it uses drones (or unmanned aerial systems) in “a variety of facets while responding, and on scene of, various incidents”. Right now, it seems keen to get new models that can’t be jammed wirelessly – though 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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