Dutch police are using eagles to catch drones

by Nathaniel Astudillo

As flying drones grows as a hobby, law enforcement around the world is looking for ways to combat unauthorised flight. In the Netherlands, police are exploring the possibility of using eagles. As birds of prey, they have sharp eyesight and even sharper talons. Paired with their innate aptitude for snatching things out of the sky, they’re ideal candidates for drone retrieval.

According to the company currently training the eagles for police use, getting the birds to attack the drones is the easy part, but retrieval is harder. To get the eagles to bring the drones in, the trainers had to reward the birds with some tasty meat, B.F. Skinner style.

Their conditioning has been successful, and there’s video footage of the birds in action inside a training ground. They take off from their handler’s arm, zip over and grab hold of the drone and drag it  to the ground.

Not surprisingly, the drones are pierced by the eagle’s talons and destroyed in the process,. Sjoerd Hoogendoorn of Guard from Above said, “It’s a major cost of testing.”

Costly as the drones may be, other methods of drone control have even higher price tags. A company by the name of Liteye uses directional radio antennae. Aircraft giant Boeing uses a laser. Japanese police use a larger drone carrying a net.

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