Using hobby drones to smuggle drugs has happened many times in many countries in the last few years.

In Australia, A ban on prison visitors caused by COVID-19 has led to inmates increasingly using drones to smuggle drugs into jails.

Corrective Services Australia made the claim after their officers intercepted an alleged aerial drop of $100,000 worth of buprenorphine strips and buprenorphine tablets, known as ‘bupe’ into a maximum-security prison in the Hunter region. “Since visits were cancelled in March, we’ve seen people increasingly using mail, drones and tennis balls in an attempt to smuggle drugs into our prisons,” Prisoners now are trying new ways. Drones, a very modern technology, are one of those ways to try to get it in.”

In NSW Australia, Officials found a drone with a line of string connected to a package in a car near Cessnock Correctional Centre. The package allegedly contained 108 buprenorphine strips and 42 buprenorphine tablets.

For privacy reasons – An increasing number of women in Port Lincoln, South Australia, have reported being woken at night by a drone spying on them in their homes. One woman was sleeping alone on her remote hobby farm when she was woken up by an object banging into her window, only to realize it was a drone with a camera attached (Reference: nypost.com). A number of enforcement agencies such as the Australian Federal Police are also using drone detection devices at major events and work with CASA to report infringements.

Drone technology is quickly becoming more sophisticated and more affordable. Now, criminals are using drones to smuggle drugs, cell phones and even weapons to inmates in prisons. Till end of 2019, many incidents happened worldwide as a result of the hobby/toy drones smuggling drugs, phones and weapons.

Some methods presently used by prison authorities to deter contraband delivery are low tech with barbed wire and nets over the perimeter fencing. These old methods are useless for countering drones. Some companies selected EO/IR devices to detect the drones. This is not effective and its efficacy is affected by the surrounding environment if the prison is near the city. These devices to shoot down the drones can interfere with surrounding ambulance or hospital medical equipment.

Team MCT Telecom designed the most effective system with a surveillance warning system and automatically intercepts all the drones near the prison without interrupting ambulance and other radio frequencies. The system can locate the drone direction, distance, and quantity in the air. It works 24/7 to automatically shoot down all the drones approaching the target. The most effective mobile counter drone device designed by Team MCT Telecom for law enforcement industry is the Portal version. It is different from the kinetic solution with weapons devices on the market.