Drones are transforming our world. We use them to deliver our medicines, clean our skyscrapers, and even fight fires. But there is a dark side to this airborne revolution. From a shocking rise in drone-plane near misses above our heads, to last year’s sustained drone disruption at Gatwick – Britain’s second largest airport – that ruined the Christmas plans of 140,000 people and cost millions.
In this documentary, part of BBC Two's long running science strand Horizon, high risk specialist and former Royal Marine Aldo Kane sets out to investigate the scale of the threat drones pose to our airports and skies - from rogue hobbyists to determined terrorist attacks, and he gets sensitive access to the technologies being developed and used by governments, the aviation industry and the military to try and keep our skies safe.
Along the way he’ll visit the UK’s leading impact test centre to fire a drone into a plane wing at 250mph, he’ll join sophisticated counter drone tests at leading UK airports and test leading military hardware, and he’ll speak to a UK fighter who fought in Syria and experienced first-hand ISIS’s use of weaponised drone attacks. To conclude his journey, Aldo travels to America to see what the future of drone technology holds – from drones that can fly without an operator to A high-powered laser defence system that can melt a threatening drone out of the sky.
| Producer & Director | Steven Grandison |
| Executive Producer | Dan Kendall |
| Producer | Rob MacAndrew |
| Editors | Chris Beresford , Graham Cox , Nadia Iqbal |
| Production Manager | Laety Ducom |
| Production Executives | Deborah Weavers , Jenny Thompson |
| Junior Production Managers | Sally Brown , Natalie Taylor |
| Production Coordinator | Bryony Smith |
| Researcher | Marissa Chazan |