Unauthorized drones over stadiums – Dronelife

When the invasion of drones into Surge sports, stadium operators and law enforcement agencies for Congress measures on counter-UAS measures.

Dronelife author has editor Jim Magill

It is the fourth in a series of articles that studies problems that arise in critical infrastructure and other important potential goals of invasion of drones with hostile entities. Previous installments investigated Current federal laws As for the use of a counter-anterior technology and The threats from the UAVs that prisons face And prisons and ordinary and nuclear power plants.

This article will look at what steps can be taken to limit the potential dangers from flights flying near sports stadiums.

Since the impatient fans are preparing to break into the Super Duke in New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX this Sunday, most likely more than some of them will follow the sky – scanning to see if there are some drones that wrongly invaded the airspace Near the stadium – can be ready to interrupt their satisfaction.

FAA has declared airspace within a radius of 3 sea miles of stadium as’There is no drone area‘Sunday Super Cup. The drones are also forbidden around the city center during the days leading to the event. Operators of drones who are part of limited areas without permission may face the confiscation of their drone, fines up to $ 75,000 and potential criminal prosecution.

The potential threat from UAVs – flew by operators that are careless, incomprehensible or even criminal – over the sports stadiums and their environment, has increased in exponentially over the last years. And the operators of the stadium, as well as state and local law enforcement agencies are strongly limited to the type of measures that they can take to counter threat.

Under FAA rules Flights of drones are forbidden in the airspace around the events set by the National Football League, Baseball of the Higher League, Football Ncaa Division One and Nascar Sprint, Indy -Avtomobil and Gona of Champ series, which begins one hour before, and end an hour after paid .

However, these restrictions do not restrain every UAV pilot that may not know the rules or deliberately ignore them. In January 2025 Counter-Drone Defense Deadron It was reported that last year there were 137 temporary violations of flight restrictions on events and places of the United States, the company recorded 12 624 TFR violations compared to 11 647 previous year.

The NFL itself may have more than its proportion of drone incidents. Last month, a playoff of the wild card playoff between Baltimore Raven and Pittsburgh Stillerrs was temporarily suspended when the drone was noticed near the M&S Bank stadium in the Baltimor. Last February The husband was accused of monday of illegal flight of the drone at one stadium during the AFC Championships 2024.

Public information campaigns have not been able to contain the number of cases related to drones at sports grounds. For example, in 2021, the FAA launched a campaign “Leave its drone” in cooperation with the Association of Stadium Managers (SMA).

“The impulse for the program was and is to draw public attention to flight restrictions that exist for most major stadiums during game or racing days,” said the legal adviser Mike Makkormik.

As part of the FAA campaign, he provided the stadium operators with tools consisting of posters and other materials that encourage sports fans to observe temporary flight restrictions on sports.

Congress urged to enter with a decision

In a recent statement by Katie Lanye, the Chief Director of NFL Security, cited the number of cases associated with NFL drone and called Congress to adopt legislation to help protect major sports competitions against the risk of invading drones.

“Over the past few years, more and more drones have flew into a limited airspace during NFL games,” Lanye said.

She said that the threats, cases and invasion of unauthorized drones over NFL games were jumped from ten to 2017 to more than 2800 in 2023.

In December last year, Lanye testified in writing before hearing Congress on counter-UA safety measures, in favor of the proposed legislation, which would give state and local law enforcement agencies more powers to take measures to mitigate the consequences that pose a danger to the sports community.

“Restriction of flight at the stadium and sports events is well established and geographically and temporarily restricted,” she wrote. “However, government and local law enforcement officers still do not have the authority to use ancient TFFs, taking measures against Rogue Drones.”

Over the last few years, the NFL has been united with other sports organizations – including the Baseball of the Higher League, NASCAR and NCAA – to the Lobbying Congress for several years, to accept legislation to give public, local, breeding and territorial law enforcement agencies to counteract the contract. large sports competitions and other potentially vulnerable places.

In the statement, McCormic Mas agreed that Congress is currently adopting legislation to help protect the sports grounds from unwanted drones into drones.

“SMA emphasizes the need to resolve the problem with the counter-anterus since 2016,” McCormic said. He referred to the proposed legislation that would allow the operators of critical infrastructure sites to restrict their own air space within the FAA and the rules of the Department of Internal Security.

“Unfortunately, despite the clear direction of Congress, this section was not implemented. Similarly, the most important thing is that local law enforcement agencies will be included in this decision, as they will largely make it, “he wrote.

“Summary, we believe that open -air stadiums conducting tens of thousands of fans and massive technologies are a potential target for bad actors and negligent pilots of drones.”

Want Dronelife News deliver to your mailbox every Sunday? Register here.

More:

Jim Magill writer-based in Houston, which is almost a quarter of a century of experience that covers technical and economic development in the oil and gas industry. After retirement in December 2019 as a senior editor of S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about new technologies such as artificial intelligence, work and drones, as well as how they contribute to our society. In addition to Droneelife, Jim is a participant of Forbes.com, and his work appeared in the Houston Chronicle, US news and world report and unmanned systems, publication of the Unmanned vehicle Association International systems.