WATCH: Anti-Drone Net Launcher

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As drones have become cheaper and more popular, so have the risks associated with them grown proportionally. Last year, in a second incident of its kind, a man was arrested for flying a drone outside the White House. In several incidents that made international news, drones flying too close to airports nearly caused collisions that could have had catastrophic results.

Clearly, rogue drones have become a major problem.

A startup hailing from rainy England may have come up with the coolest solution for when you might need to quickly take a drone down. OpenWorks Engineering’s SkyWall is a shoulder-mounted compressed-air projectile launcher that shoots out shells containing a net and a parachute to catch a safely land drones flying where they really shouldn’t.

The SkyWall looks like a weapon pulled straight out of a science fiction film, but this cool bit of tech is anything but fictional. To ensure best netting results, it’s armed with a holographic scope and a targeting computer to predict a drone’s flight path.

The SkyWall weigh just 10kg, uses compressed air to fire nearly soundlessly, has a range of up to 100m, and can be reloaded in about 8 seconds. None of this will do any good if the person using it can’t aim, but in the hands of trained personnel the SkyWall should pose a formidable threat to trespassing drones.

“OpenWorks Engineering believes that security enforcement authorities need a cost-effective and proportionate way of protecting the public and high-profile individuals and we wanted to put a system on the market that offered just that,” said OpenWorks Engineering managing director Chris Down.