By akademiotoelektronik, 03/09/2022

An attempted attack thanks to a drone against a power plant in the United States

Drones flying over nuclear power plants, drones disturbing air traffic.And now drones falling on power plants.Not by accident but by willingness to harm and cause damage.This is what happened in Pennsylvania, the United States, July 16, 2020.In this case, the drone missed its target and crashed without collateral damage or victim.

The event is reported in the Joint Intelligence Bulletin dated October 28, 2021, a common newsletter in the Department of Internal Security, the FBI and at the National Counter-Terrorism Center.The news was revealed on November 5 by the Information Division of the ABC channel, which provided the document.

The facts reported are succinct, the investigators having eliminated the details to identify the referral installation and its location.But the story is quite clear, with the beginning of reconstruction of the events.Thus, a Dji Mavic 2 quadricopter drone was found on the roof of a building of the power plant in question.A copper cable was hung by each of its ends with two nylon strings themselves connected to the arms of two rotors.

An impossible identification of operators

The cable therefore hung from rotor in flight, which makes investigators suppose that the machine was intended to fall on electrical installations to cause a short circuit with the end of metal, damage the transformers and disturb the power supply to electricity.

Additional proof of the harmful intention, everything that would have made it possible to identify the drone, and therefore to possibly go back to its pilots, was withdrawn: references registered on the machine, memory card and on -board camera by default.The aircraft would have missed its target because it no longer had its camera.The operators must have guided it from afar, with a naked eye, and no longer via a visual return - on a smartphone or tablet - of the optical cell giving the point of view of the drone.They would have misused the place where to bring it down.

This is the first time that such an attack has been documented, but it is not necessarily a big surprise.The use of drone in Kamikaze mode is already noted on certain battlefields (in the High Karabagh in autumn 2020 for example) and is among the recommendations of the drones report in the armed forces submitted to the Senate last June.

The possibility of a terrorist attack, that the cost and maneuverability of small aircraft sold in the trade, is also mentioned in this report.“No terrorist attack by means of drones has been noted on the national territory but there is no shortage of potential targets: SEVESO type industrial installations, essential infrastructure and distribution networks, places of power or large rallies...”We are warned.