Drones are cheap, disruptive, and everywhere.
That’s exciting for innovation and terrifying for airport security.
In recent years, we’ve seen entire airports shut down by devices that cost a few hundred dollars. Gatwick in 2018 was the headline case: over 1,000 flights disrupted and 140,000 passengers stranded. Fast forward to 2025, and major Nordic and German airports have faced the same issue. A single drone sighting is now enough to halt operations, sometimes for hours.
The risk isn’t hypothetical anymore.
From toys to tools of terror
Modern consumer drones can lift a few hundred grams to a couple of kilograms. That’s not much...but it’s more than enough for a small kinetic payload, an explosive charge, or a chemical dispersal device.
And it’s not only militants or terrorists we need to worry about.
Teenagers, pranksters, and political activists have all shown that drones can be used to disrupt airports for attention, protest, or simply mischief. When a drone appears in controlled airspace, no pilot can take off safely. The entire airport grinds to a halt.
The anti-drone market’s hard reality
The defense industry has been chasing this problem for years. Dozens of anti-drone systems exist: radar detection, interceptors, RF jammers, counter-UAV drones, etc.
Yet three core problems remain:
Cost exchange: A $400 drone taken down by a $20,000 interceptor might sound reasonable at first, after all, you’re protecting a billion-dollar aircraft. But that math doesn’t hold in a sustained engagement. In a prolonged incident or swarm scenario, the defender’s costs scale linearly while the attacker’s barely move. Over time, the airport loses the economic battle even if it wins the tactical one.
Response time: Every second between detection and interception matters and most systems are simply too slow. In practice, it can take 20 to 30 minutes from the moment a drone is detected to the launch of most interceptor platforms. Add another 10 minutes of travel time for the interceptor to reach the opposite side of the airfield—often more than two kilometers away—and you’re easily at a 45-minute response window. That’s an eternity in operational terms, and more than enough time for an adversary to cause serious disruption or damage.
Legal and safety limits: You can’t fire munitions or deploy broad radio jammers over a passenger terminal and that constraint is generally unique to airports. Munitions-based approaches may prove the most cost-efficient option for militaries, and RF jammers are generally effective against recreational drones. But neither is viable in civilian airspace. For airports, the challenge isn’t just technological, it’s regulatory and safety-driven, forcing them to find solutions that neutralize threats without creating new ones.
What effective airport defense must balance
Real protection means integrating three core principles:
Favorable cost exchange – cheap to deploy and sustain.
Speed – detection to neutralization in seconds.
Airport-safe integration – no collateral risk to passengers or infrastructure.
You can watch the briefing on this topic here: Airport Drone Defense, Bastionne YouTube Channel
