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Tokyo Police Launch Drone Designed To Take Down Other Drones

Tokyo's police drone swoops in on another drone. It is equipped with a net to entangle suspicious drones if they enter restricted airspace.
Screenshot by NPR
Tokyo's police drone swoops in on another drone. It is equipped with a net to entangle suspicious drones if they enter restricted airspace.

Drones: it takes one to catch one.

In Tokyo, police will soon deploy a drone designed to take out suspicious drones or drones that enter into restricted airspace.

"Terrorist attacks using drones carrying explosives are a possibility," a senior member of the police department's Security Bureau told the Asahi Shimbun website. "We hope to defend the nation's functions with the worst-case scenario in mind."

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Airspace restrictions were tightened on Dec. 10 when a revamped aviation law went into effect. The law addresses the increasing prevalence of drone use by the public, the site says.

It comes after an April incident in which a man, protesting Japan's nuclear energy program, landed a drone carrying radioactive material on the roof of the prime minister's residence.

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