Newark Liberty International Airport, one of the nation’s 15 busiest airports, closed for more than an hour last Tuesday night after an unauthorized drone entered its airspace. This incident occurred less than 30 days after London’s Gatwick airport drone incursion, which closed that airport for 17 hours and cost airlines $65 million in delay and re-routing costs.
While these incidents garnered media attention, they are just the latest in a string of collisions and near-misses that correlate to a rise in civilian drone use — including a 2017 drone collision with a Skyjet aircraft on final descent to Quebec City, and a possible drone collision with an Aeromexico 737 near Tijuana in December. Beyond aviation, drones were used in a 2018 attempt to assassinate Venezuela’s president and to attack coalition forces in Iraq and Syria, and even may have aided in the brazen prison escape of one of France’s most notorious gangsters …
The Hill | Jan. 29, 2019
