The intrusion by a recreational drone early Monday onto the White
House lawn exposed a security gap at the compound that the Secret Service
has spent years studying but has so far been unable to fix, according to
several officials familiar with the concern.
The episode came just four days after lawmakers examining
White House security had been warned by a panel of experts that the Secret
Service’s inability to identify and disable drones remained one of the leading
vulnerabilities at the complex, according to two people with knowledge of the
discussions.
Just after 3 a.m. Monday, the drone flew at a low altitude
over the south grounds of the White House without setting off alarms and was
spotted by a Secret Service officer standing guard.
The “quadcopter” device, approximately two feet in diameter,
then crashed on the southeast corner of the property, prompting a lockdown at
the complex until the device was examined and determined not to pose a danger.
Officers and agents with flashlights scoured the complex and surrounding area
for clues.
A man called authorities roughly six hours later to report
that he was a recreational operator and had mistakenly crashed the drone. He
said he did not mean to fly it onto the White House grounds, according to the
Secret Service.
Monday’s incident was believed to be the first time that a
drone had penetrated the White House perimeter, an especially sensitive
threshold that immediately caught the attention of lawmakers and
counterterrorism officials.
The incident brought public attention to what has been an
ongoing source of anxiety within the agency tasked with protecting the White
House and, more broadly, among government officials in charge of protecting
nuclear power plants, military bases and other sensitive areas seen as
vulnerable to potential attack from drones.
Most recreational drones, like the one that crashed Monday,
weigh only a few pounds and lack the power to do much harm. But Department
of Homeland Security and Secret Service officials have studied the potential
that these devices, which can be purchased cheaply and easily, could be
modified to carry explosives or weaponry.
Larger models that can carry payloads of up to 30 pounds are
available on the market and are expected to become more common.
Small drones have violated the highly restricted airspace
near the White House and the Capitol before without attracting public
attention.
According to Federal Aviation Administration records,
authorities arrested an unidentified man on Aug. 19 after he crashed a
drone into a tree in Freedom Plaza, just east of the White House. On July 3, a
Secret Service patrol detained a person who was flying a quadcopter about one
block from the White House grounds. People have also been nabbed in recent
months for flying drones near the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial.
At the White House, a proposal for a higher fence, along
with already added surveillance cameras and sophisticated environmental
sensors, has been aimed at making the presidential residence more secure in the
wake of a series of security lapses that have proved embarrassing for the
Secret Service, including an intruder
making it deep into the house in September. And antiaircraft missiles have
been in place for years to guard against airplane attacks.
But officials said the Secret Service does not have the
ability to easily identify and stop a typical drone.
Most models are too small to appear on radar and are not
equipped with electronic transmitters that broadcast their location.
Also, federal law prohibits the use of any device that could
be used to jam or interfere with the GPS signals that drones rely on for
navigation.
Unlike regular aircraft, drones used for noncommercial
purposes are not affixed with registration numbers and pilots are not required
to obtain a license. As a result, it is extremely difficult to track down the
owner of a rogue drone unless the operator is fiddling with the remote controls
in plain sight.
One official familiar with internal discussions said the
Secret Service is “still trying to work through this, how to defend against
them.”
Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary declined to comment.
Tracking drones
Frederick F. Roggero, a retired Air Force major general who
heads an aviation safety and risk-management consulting firm, Resilient
Solutions, said his company has been in talks with several government agencies
about finding ways to track rogue drones.
He said commercial technology is available that can use a
combination of sensitive radar and acoustic trackers to detect small drones,
though coming up with an effective way to stop them has been more elusive.
“To do something about the problem, you have to find it, you
have to track it, you have to identify it and you have to decide what to do
with it,” Roggero said. “But especially in an urban environment, it would be
tough to detect and tough to defeat kinetically without shooting it down and
causing collateral damage.”
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he has repeatedly asked
the Secret Service whether it has deployed the most cutting-edge technology in
its efforts to safeguard the president and its other protectees. Cummings
pointed to the mobile air-defense system erected by Israel to intercept and
shoot down enemy missiles before they strike targets in the country.
“Just like our friends in Israel feel comfortable with that
‘Iron Dome,’ I want the people in the White House to feel comfortable, too, and
I want the people who are trying to do us harm to know they cannot penetrate
that sky over the White House,” Cummings said.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the Oversight
Committee, said Monday morning’s incident is “deeply concerning” because it
lays bare the chink in the White House armor that drones can get past.
“These kinds of threats are not going away,” Chaffetz said,
adding that he believes the Secret Service is working hard on the problem and
is “on top of it.”
Rapid technological advances have made small drones
increasingly affordable, easy to fly and popular. By some estimates,
manufacturers are selling as many as 15,000 consumer models each month in the
United States. Developing reliable defenses to protect sensitive areas from
drones, however, has posed a challenge.
Brian Hearing, co-founder of Drone Shield, a
Washington-based company that helps private clients detect the presence of
drones, said many people in the industry had been bracing for an event like
Monday’s.
We always suspected that a high-profile
event like this at the White House would occur and have been a little surprised
that some protest group hadn’t already done something like it,” he said.
The flood of inexpensive surveillance
drones on the market has already spurred demand for countermeasures from people
worried about their privacy. Drone Shield, founded 18 months ago, has built a
thriving business by providing detection systems to clients, including
Hollywood celebrities looking to fend off paparazzi stalking them with
camera-equipped drones.
“That’s our bread and butter,” said
Hearing, Drone Shield’s co-founder. “There’s been a higher demand than we
anticipated, but nobody could have anticipated how quickly the drone industry
would have expanded.”
Hearing said his firm’s technology can
detect drones and their flight path by sensing their acoustic signature. An
alert or alarm is sounded to make clients aware of the presence of a drone and
give them time to scurry indoors. The system, however, cannot do anything to
stop a drone in midair.
Terrorism fears
U.S. counterterrorism officials have
long worried about the potential that terrorists might use small drones in an
attack.
In 2012, a Massachusetts man received a
17-year prison sentence after he pleaded guilty in a plot to attack the Capitol
and the Pentagon with drones carrying plastic explosives.
Rezwan Ferdaus, who studied physics at
Northeastern University in Boston, built detonators that he planned to trigger
with cellphones, according to federal prosecutors.
In November, French security officials
reported a spate of incidents in which small drones were seen conducting surveillance
over 13 nuclear power plants. Fighters with the Islamic State have also used
commercially available drones to conduct surveillance of Syrian military
targets and have posted some videos of their efforts on the Internet.
On Jan. 16, officials from the
Department of Homeland Security sponsored an invitation-only conference in
Northern Virginia to discuss the potential threats that drones pose to
sensitive public installations. According to participants at the conference,
officials from DHS, the Defense Department, the FAA and the National
Counterterrorism Center all gave presentations on an array of federal efforts
underway to counter threats from small drones.
The FAA imposes strict safety regulations on
drones flown by government agencies or anyone who operates them for commercial
purposes. In contrast, hardly any rules apply to people who fly drones as a
hobby, other than FAA guidelines that advise them to keep the aircraft below
400 feet and five miles from an airport.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Monday’s incident at
the White House should spur safety rules for drone operators.
“With the discovery of an unauthorized drone on the White
House lawn, the eagle has crash-landed in Washington; there is no stronger sign
that clear FAA guidelines for drones are needed,” he said in a statement.
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