UK mobilizes lawyers to keep report on Gatwick 'drone' chaos under wraps
Exclusive The UK's Department for Transport (DfT) is assembling government lawyers to fight the Information Commissioner's decision that it must release a document summarizing the lessons from the 2018 Gatwick drone chaos.
Government sources confirmed the development to The Register this week – the latest in a series of attempts made by the DfT to prevent the "Lessons Report" document from being released in full.
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This incident review document is likely to provide greater detail about what exactly happened during the 2018 disruption at London Gatwick Airport, which prevented around 800 flights from taking off, affecting around 120,000 passengers. Officials blamed the situation on drone sightings, although experts disagree.
The DfT has also allegedly attempted to conceal the document's existence, despite requests made under Freedom of Information laws explicitly seeking its release.
Ian Hudson is one of the few drone experts committed to uncovering further details about the Gatwick incident, and he has filed hundreds of these requests since 2018, including those that revealed the document's existence.
Hudson has fought for the document's release since May 2024. In responding to one of his requests in July 2024, Hudson believes the DfT tried to conceal the document. The response ignored parts of the request pertaining to the Lessons Report, only answering other questions by saying the information was already in the public domain.
Follow-up requests made later that year revealed that the DfT had five versions of the Lessons Report document. However, the department refused to release it based on national security grounds and upheld this decision following an internal review.
"Specifically, these documents include structures, processes, and actions taken by us as a government in response to a drone incursion at a UK airfield which, if released into the public domain, would be likely to assist an assailant in harming critical national infrastructure, possibly leading to a significant loss of life," the DfT wrote. "Thus, it has been assessed that the release of these documents poses a national security concern."
Hudson engaged the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) to fight his corner, and on October 20, 2025, the DfT released what it claimed was the document in question [PDF]. However, everything of importance, except the information already in the public domain, was completely redacted.
The ICO examined the DfT's response and published an official decision notice on February 2, 2026, ruling that the government's attempt to apply the national security exemption, preventing the document's release, was not valid, and that it must finally unredact it, for the most part.
After consulting with the DfT on the matter, John Edwards, the Information Commissioner, was ultimately unconvinced that the section 24(1) national security exemption applied, and after reviewing the redacted content, ruled that it was "unlikely" to lead to security issues.
Reporting the decision, senior case officer Samantha Coward said Edwards deemed the information "high level" and struggled to see how it would endanger the UK.
Edwards also decided that the age of the redacted information is a factor. The technology behind drones and the way in which airports and law enforcement detect them "will have significantly moved on since 2018. It is constantly evolving," he believes.
The ICO only sided with the DfT on its section 23(1) defense, and agreed that the names of three national security bodies that appear in the report must remain redacted. Everything else must be released.
Given the DfT's plans to appeal, which the ICO also told The Register was going ahead, the case will now be overseen by the Government Legal Department and head to the General Regulatory Chamber first-tier tribunal (FTT).
Neither the ICO nor DfT wished to provide any further comment.
The great drone debate
The government and airport officials have maintained that Gatwick Airport's runway was closed for 33 hours between December 19 and 21, 2018, because of multiple drone sightings, which began on the evening of the first day. The incident was named Operation Trebor.
Reports at the time suggested there were at least 50 sightings in the first 24 hours, while follow-up testimony from Sussex Police confirmed there were 109 credible sightings in total.
However, numerous sources have since cast doubt over whether there was a drone at all, and whether a drone could even be piloted in the weather conditions at the time.
Brendan Schulman, former VP of policy and legal affairs at DJI, said in 2021, amid leaving the drone maker for Boston Dynamics, that Hudson's work in uncovering piecemeal details about the incident had left him "convinced" there was never a drone near Gatwick.
"Weather conditions in the Gatwick area on the first evening of the incident were unsuitable for covert or overt operation of UAS [unmanned aircraft systems], especially given the technology available in 2018," Graham Degg, founder of drone industry trade body Unmanned Support, told The Register.
"Claims that UAS were flying in ways described on that evening were therefore extraordinary. To date, the industry has not been presented with the extraordinary evidence required to counter the official narrative.
"The CAA and other authorities have continued to reference the Gatwick incident when seeking to strengthen drone regulations. Additional regulation adds an administrative burden to all professional operators and hampers growth. Perhaps worse is the fact that the Gatwick incident is also used by regulators outside the UK to the same ends and with similar impact. Never was so much regulation caused by an incident for which so little evidence seems to exist."
Hudson, who is a contributor to the Airprox Reality Check fact-checking website, previously summarized the drone industry's concerns about the official Gatwick narrative.
Freedom of Information requests revealed that the first sightings of drones were in the hours well after sunset, at a time when rainfall was reported at the airport.
Very few drones had water resistance ratings to fly in these conditions at the time, and drone enthusiasts questioned why someone who had access to one of the few rain-resistant drones, and would not want to be caught, would fly with their lights on in such close proximity to an airport.
The Royal Air Force deployed aerospace engineering company Leonardo's Falcon Shield drone detection system at Gatwick on December 20, which remained operational between then and December 24.
Leonardo has since said that no malicious drones were detected during this time, but detected all of the friendly test drones the airport and Sussex Police sent to the skies, testing the system's efficacy.
The company's testimony conflicts with the redacted Operation Trebor debrief report [PDF], the timeline from which states that numerous drone sightings were made after Falcon Shield was deployed.
Surely there's footage?
One thing that could have settled the speculation was for the government or Sussex Police to release imagery of the drones that were sighted at Gatwick.
It wasn't until June 2023, however, that the Home Office finally revealed that images of the drone sightings existed and supplied them following Freedom of Information requests.
Before then, Giles York, Chief Constable of Sussex Police at the time, told Parliament's Defence Committee that there were 109 credible confirmed drone sightings, but said there was no footage.
"One of the most curious parts about it was that there was no filmed imaging at all of the drone, even though so many people thought they had seen it," said committee chair Dr Julian Lewis when questioning York over the lack of footage.
"Isn't it rather strange that no CCTV system and nobody with a mobile phone camera managed to pick up this device when it was causing such disruption?"
York responded by saying he was not surprised, and that because of the drones' speed and size, capturing them on any device at 0.5 miles away was "fantastically challenging."
"Should you wish to come and visit Gatwick Airport to have a look, I would welcome you there, because why it wasn't captured kind of feels obvious," said York. "Gatwick Airport – I am looking behind me – is a huge area. You try telling me what a drone half a mile away at the other end of a runway looks like from here, film it on the best phone that you have got, and show me the footage that says, 'Undoubtedly, this is what we have got.'
"This is one of the fascinating things for us. We feel that we have seen so many pictures, videos, and whatever of drones in flight, but considering the length of the runway, the width of the airport itself, and the distances concerned, personally, having been at the heart of it, I am not surprised we haven't had any."
Sussex Police previously confirmed its investigation into Operation Trebor ran up a hefty bill to the tune of £790,000 ($1.05 million). It resulted in no convictions, nor much in the way of credible evidence.
"I am hoping the Lessons Learned document captures how unreliable sightings of lights at night are, as the same pattern of airport closures without any evidence of a drone has been reported across the EU, for example, in Norway," Hudson told The Register.
"The release of EO/IR [electro-optical/infrared] cockpit video by the MoD this week from a downing of a Shahed is positive proof drones can be captured without difficulty on EO/IR, and the RAF deployed one of the best EO/IR systems in the world to Gatwick, which only evidenced a lack of any rogue drones." ®
