I've been away and isolated from most of the news the last few days, but a few thoughts on the snippets of this that I ran across. You get lots of time for thought while queueing to pass a broken truck halfway up the M6 roadworks just north of Stoke.
If it is battery powered, how big must its battery be? It seems to have considerable duration.
Unless someone has actually invented perpetual motion, the thing must land to refuel/recharge. At such times, it must be trackable, and its tender findable. Or they are disposable items and there are lots of them.
I didn't hear any guesstimates about its size, or the altitude it was operating at.
When the word "drone" is used, the immediate assumption is a remote control quad (or more) copter being under radio control. Fixed wing devices have better duration. Why "must" it be RC? I am quite sure that a combination of GPS and a pre programmed on-board control could have it take off from a location, fly to its assigned area and then stooge around. Retrieving it undetected is a problem, but only if it needs to be retrieved.
Hopefully the perpetrator can be found and made to face individual civil actions from everybody whose Christmas he or she has messed up. At the very leasy put them on Santas naughty list.
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The new gear, whatever it is, can only be effective while the "drone" is operating, so hopefully it is now a target and can provide the start of a chain of evidence.