Police in the Netherlands, concerned about the security threat posed by unmanned aerial drones, have turned to a rather unusual ally for help.

Specially-trained anti-drone attack eagles are trained to seek out and attack drones in mid-air at the behest of their police handlers.

The Dutch National Police Force announced over the weekend that they’ve partnered with Danish company Guard from Above to train the birds, which they hope will be an effective, low-cost solution to ridding the skies of unwanted or potentially criminal drone activity.

“There are situations in which drones are not allowed to fly. This has almost always to do with security,” Mark Wiebe, innovation manager of the National Police, said in a press release.

Wiebe said the security threats posed by drones and drone traffic go beyond what most people would consider to be normal criminal or mischievous behavior.

“There is a case where an air ambulance [wants to land] but could not because someone out there flew a drone,” Wiebe said. “You can also imagine that people want to create beautiful images of an event and a drone to fly above the crowd. If the drone that falls from the sky, [it] can be dangerous for the people. ”

The National Police held a demonstration last Friday, during which one of their birds successfully tracked and brought down a standard commercial drone within moments of it’s taking off.

The program is part of a National Police program on how best to address the issue of drones. Another idea currently being discussed is that of using counter-drones equipped with nets to bring down the offending drone.

However, such a countermeasure runs the risk of one or both drones losing control and falling from the skies, potentially on to people or property below.

Such a risk is mitigated by the use of eagles, natural hunters trained to strike struggling prey in mid-air.

“The bird sees the drone as prey and takes it to a safe area, a place where he does not suffer from other birds or humans,” Wiebe said. “We use in this project.”

Tests will continue with the anti-drone attack eagles before they are introduced into official police use in the Netherlands.
http://www.engadget.com/2016/02/01/eagles-vs-drones/

I wonder how many more of these threads we are going to see.

Wonder what they will do with the eagle with no feet.

hummingbird.uav Posted at 2016-2-2 07:55
Wonder what they will do with the eagle with no feet.

Yes, next they will fit the eagles with steel covers on their feet, or then maybe have them drop a net over the drone, or perhaps arm the eagles with 45 cal pistols to shoot it down, or maybe laser cannons.....

Idiots.

Can't believe they would consider using one of natures wonders to try to down a drone., if the drone had Carbon Fiber props or worse that bird will be damaged for life,
What a bunch of f'ing retards! Someone needs to fight this, it is just wrong....

So let me get this straight, an eagle attacks a drone over people, likely suffers broken bones from the carbon fiber props, as well as knocking it out of the sky to fall on the crowd of people.  And this is somehow better then just letting it leave in a few minutes due to low batteries?

I laughed out loud to this

It reminds me of the time, long, long ago when I was a junior radio tech. We had a transmitting station that fed the antennas with open transmission lines. Crows used to land on the lines and the RF energy used to heat up their knee joints and they would explode. We had heaps of lower legs clasped around the lines and legless crows flying around. So - is there a welfare fund for legless eagles?

Wonder if we could arm our Drones with Rubber band guns to scare off the birds before they get hurt.

Can't believe those morons would consider using one of natures wonders to try to down a drone., if the drone had Carbon Fiber props or worse that bird will be damaged for life,
What a bunch of f'ing retards! Someone needs to fight this, it is just wrong....
How can you possibly put as beautiful an animal as this in harms way...
There are numerous other ways to down the drones, they really need to reconsider as this is just wrong...
Those idiots are worth less than the square of this earth that their worthless corpse occupy...
Shame on You!!!
The manufacturers of the Drones need to be accountable as auto manufacturers have become, ie. your seat belt, air bag etc. are a prerequisite nowadays, so maybe this is what the whole GeoFence crap is all about, airports around the world will have a kill witch at their beckon call...
Tower or incoming or outbound aircraft report an unidentified flying object...
Project Geo is induced for that particular zone...
Hopefully all unidentified objects fall from sky...
That simple...
Maybe Geo makes sense after all!

The eagle probably can catch a phantom, but inspire or bigger aircraft definitely would be a difficult aim