Super Bowl fans warned to keep drones at home with flights banned over big game

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As fans from astir the state descend connected California to ticker the New England Patriots instrumentality connected the Seattle Seahawks successful Sunday's Super Bowl, officials are telling them to permission their drones astatine home.

The constabulary main successful Santa Clara, wherever this year's large crippled volition beryllium played, said authorities are prepared to sprout down a drone, if necessary.

Unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known arsenic drones, tin beryllium easy purchased online and are progressively fashionable with hobbyist drone pilots, including sports fans who privation to movie their favourite events.

But the risks posed by drones are real, whether a hobbyist drone malfunctions and falls into the stands oregon a atrocious histrion uses a drone to driblet thing into the stadium.

Retired Army Col. Bill Edwards, who runs counter-drone grooming astatine Washington, D.C.-based tech institution ENSCO, expects radical volition effort to alert drones astatine the large game.

"We person to expect it astatine each large lawsuit that's happening successful the country," Edwards said successful an interview.

The presumption from the 50-yard enactment is seen wrong Levi's Stadium up of Super Bowl LX connected Feb. 4, 2026, successful Santa Clara, California.

To get up of the issue, the Federal Aviation Administration has issued a prohibition connected each drone flights implicit the Super Bowl, which has been classified by the national authorities arsenic a apical peculiar lawsuit that merits extended interagency support.

The FAA says it is collaborating with the FBI to detect, way and measure unauthorized drone activity, and drone operators who alert them successful restricted airspace without authorization look fines of up to $75,000, confiscation of their drone and national transgression charges.

Law enforcement agencies moving connected Super Bowl information usage layers of responses and mitigation efforts for drones.

"Everything from crushed intercept teams to interaction the aviator connected the crushed to redirecting it, landing it oregon adjacent shooting it down depending connected the circumstances," Santa Clara Police Chief Cory Morgan said.

Technological advancements to drones made overseas during the Russia-Ukraine warfare and conflicts successful the Middle East airs caller challenges to instrumentality enforcement.

Edwards, who trains specified constabulary departments arsenic the New York Police Department connected drone menace mitigation, points to fiber-optic drones that tin evade detection by radar systems arsenic a peculiar concern.

"It's promulgating the technology's capableness 20 years into the aboriginal — now," helium said. He besides said, "The menace level has accrued a hundredfold."

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