On June 1st, Ukraine launched “Operation Spiderweb.” That’s when a fleet of small drones took out billions of dollars worth of Russian bombers. Experts say the attack may go down as a turning point in 21st-century warfare. Even beyond the battlefield, though, Operation Spiderweb — and the lessons it taught observers about the inadequacies of air defense — will be felt for decades to come.
The realities of the modern world mean almost anyone can get access to a drone. If they have ill intent, it could be hard to stop nefarious actors from doing nefarious things with drones.
How many drones are flying in the United States?
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says more than one million small drones are flying in the skies over the United States. Some are registered, some aren’t.
With the dawn of the drone age now squarely upon us, wouldn’t it be nice if the public could track what’s flying over their heads? Because the uncertainty and fear caused by unknown drones flying overhead isn’t just a thought exercise. That fear and uncertainty carries real-world consequences.
Florida man doesn’t like drones
Dennis Winn and his story serve as a model case for examination. Winn was a 72-year-old Florida retiree cleaning out his pool in June 2024. That’s when Winn said he saw a drone flying over his house. Walmart owned the drone and was participating in a trial run delivery program, facts not known to Winn.
After observing the drone for several minutes, Winn told officers he tried to “shew” it away, but to no avail. Fearing for his safety and privacy, Winn went inside, retrieved his 9mm pistol from a gun safe, and took aim at the drone.
“I fired one round at it. They say I hit it. So I must be a good shot, or else it’s not that far away,” Winn said while being arrested. His interaction with local police was caught on body cameras. “They say there’s $10,000 in damages to the drone and all sorts of stuff. So, I’m going to wind up having to find a real good defense lawyer.”
Mr. Winn did get a lawyer. He ultimately accepted a plea deal, and the charges were dropped. However, Mr. Winn’s story highlights the need for greater public awareness about the various drones flying above people.
Let loose the Gargoyles
It’s a problem Mike Fraietta and his company, Gargoyle Systems, are trying to address.
“We’re building a decentralized system,” Fraietta said during an interview with SAN. “A drone intelligence network to detect all the friendly drones. There’s a lot of friendly drones — deliveries, life-saving things. We’re pro-drone. But there’s also the nefarious side as well. And so we want to be able to capture that. That’s what led us to, well, we want to capture the good drones, but we also want to cover the dark drones.”
Fraietta said he got the idea after a friend’s house was burglarized. The criminals apparently used a drone as a lookout to make sure the friend or the police weren’t coming to the house.
“And so that got me thinking, ‘Hey, is there like a Ring or Nest or these kinds of things — ADT for drones?’ And apparently, there’s not. So, if your thesis is there are going to be more unmanned and autonomous vehicles out there, then we’re going to need essentially an air traffic control for our urban environments, right?”
How does the Gargoyle work?
While still in the developmental stages, Fraietta said a Gargoyle system would operate similarly to decentralized cellphone networks. Individuals will be incentivized to install a drone-detecting unit, called a Gargoyle, on their roof, tower, or church steeple, essentially anywhere with some height. The Gargoyle unit tracks RF signals and acoustic waves to identify drones in a 1,000-foot sphere. That data is then shared with subscribers.
Registered drones in the U.S. are required to have remote IDs. Think of these as digital license plates. So, the Gargoyle will be able to tap into those registrations in real time. In the instance of dark drones, basically anything unregistered that may or may not have nefarious intentions, the Gargoyle system would rely on acoustics to track a drone’s potential point of origin.
Fraietta said the concept is already proving itself in Ukraine, where he’s been working with the country’s drone experts on the frontlines in the war against Russia. Fraietta said that experience solidified in his mind the pressing need for the systems back home.
“We need to do this immediately,” Fraietta said. “We need to know what’s happening, what’s flying around us.”
The argument for decentralized systems
Fraietta said a decentralized system based on nodes is the fastest way to roll out a nationwide drone air traffic control system. And in this regard, speed could save lives — or at least money and headaches.
As SAN previously reported, in 2022, a string of attacks occurred on electrical power stations in Oregon and Washington. The FBI investigated and discovered that two men wanted to knock out power at a nearby business so they could rob it. If those same men had used a drone laden with explosives, the outcome could have been very different.
“It’s really important that we cover our assets and our people,” Fraietta explained, “and it keeps me from sleeping at night, just knowing how vulnerable we are. We need to do this yesterday — out of patriotic duty, out of human duty. We really need to get this kind of stuff up and running.”
Gargoyle Systems is currently working with a university system to install the tech and provide the data to its student body. Fraietta said he’s also in talks with a couple of municipalities that are interested in hiring some Gargoyles to monitor their airspace.
