Incidents with drones are increasingly frequent, and authorities are looking for a kind of "balance" between personal rights and security that leaves all parties satisfied, but what at first glance seems to be a civil problem now receives a military solution with the SkyWall 100 system, a bazooka equipped with a smart sight that can capture drones in the air using a net, and "bring them down" safely thanks to the parachutes on its projectiles.
The drone is a perfectly valid form of entertainment, but just like other options, it requires a certain degree of responsibility that many of its pilots decide to ignore. At the same time, several incidents with malicious intentions have been recorded, including the "visit" of a drone loaded with radioactive sand to the office of the Japanese prime minister in April of last year. These incidents gave rise to a series of projects such as drone-catching drones, and trained eagles with the same goal. What we have here today is a more advanced vision in drone capture, and I would almost dare to say "very American", if it were not for the detail that its origin is actually the United Kingdom: The SkyWall 100 bazooka.
In essence, the SkyWall 100 bazooka fires a special ammunition equipped with a net designed to neutralize the drone, and a parachute that enables a controlled descent, both of the drone itself and of the capsule that holds the net. The presence of such a parachute solves two fundamental problems in the "traditional" interception of drones, which are turning the target into a projectile, and destroying it in such a way that its forensic processing is compromised. The bazooka also has a smart sight that assists the user at the moment of firing, calculating factors such as the vector and distance of the drone.
The gas-based launcher of the SkyWall 100 allows its projectiles to intercept drones at a distance of one hundred meters, and its fast reload system gives the user the possibility to take down several drones in a short time. Its developing company, OpenWorks Engineering, has not yet published the price of the bazooka, but it did confirm the launch of a semi-permanent version, the SkyWall 200 (which uses a tripod), and the SkyWall 300 in turret format. The product will be available before the end of the year.
