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Drone swarms

Date released
11 July 2022
Request number

202205008

Release of information under
Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)

Information requested

Please can you provide further details of the below incident in a previous FOI response: 

I can confirm that there has been one report submitted to the ONR relating to the sighting of drone swarms1 at nuclear licensed sites over the period 1 January 2014 – 31 July 2020

Without giving the time/location, please can you provide a log or report of the incident, outlining the nature of the incident and the response from the UK authorities.

I require original documents and appreciate sensitive details may be redacted. 

I also request any other reports of drone swarms in 2020, 2021 and 2022 to date.

Information released

In considering your request we feel it would initially be helpful to clarify that ‘drone swarm’ is not a term that we recognise or use at ONR, however we have considered your request in line with the description that was provided in the previous FOI response (sightings of more than one drone simultaneously at the same licensed site).

We confirm that under s.1 of the FOIA, we hold the information relevant to your request. There has been one report submitted to the ONR relating to the sighting of a drone swarm at a nuclear licensed site over the period 1 January 2014 - 31 July 2020. We have not received any further reports of drone swarms to date. However, our position has not changed since our previous response and we are therefore withholding all additional information under s.24 of the FOIA.

The exemption applies where withholding the information requested is required for the purposes of safeguarding national security. It works to protect national security, which includes protection of potential targets. It allows a public authority not to disclose information if it considers releasing the information would make the UK or its citizens more vulnerable to a national security threat.

We have made a careful and thorough assessment of your request and consider that the information falls within this category and as such is required to be exempt from disclosure for the purposes of safeguarding of national security. We understand that you will be disappointed by this decision but we hope that our explanation, as set out in the public interest test, helps set out our reasoning.

As this is a qualified exemption, we are required to balance the public interest between disclosure and non-disclosure. We have therefore applied the Public Interest Test, as set out below:

Exemptions applied

s.24

PIT (Public Interest Test) if applicable

S.24 FOIA – Safeguarding National Security

Factors for disclosure

  • ONR is committed to being an open and transparent regulator. We will use openness and transparency to achieve our objective of developing and maintaining stakeholder trust in ONR as an effective independent regulator.
  • It could provide the public with an increased amount of information (giving reassurance or otherwise) about how licensed sites are being protected, and whether or not those measures are effective and proportionate.

Factors against disclosure

  • Under s.24(1) of the FOIA, the exemption applies where withholding the information is required for the purposes of safeguarding national security, and the use of the exemption for the information in scope is deemed reasonably necessary. Releasing the information would make the UK and its citizens more vulnerable to a potential radiological emergency and national security threat.
  • Drones are known to be capable of carrying out reconnaissance flights to obtain target information for hostile actors, and it is known that drones have been used by terrorist groups to conduct hostile reconnaissance of their targets. It is reasonably necessary to withhold the information as disclosure into the public domain would assist hostile actors in better understanding the security measures in place to detect drone sightings at nuclear licensed sites, and it would be contrary to the purpose of safeguarding national security. It would help to enable them to determine when and where drone activity has been detected in the past, and to use this information for planning potential criminal activity in the future.
  • Undermining the security of a licensed nuclear site could increase the likelihood of a hostile actor attempting to steal or sabotage nuclear material. Either scenario could lead to a radiological emergency with consequences so grave for the UK and its citizens, that this weighs heavily in favour of it being in the public interest that the information is withheld.

This threat and risk of potential damage to national security is further impacted due to the specific sub-set of information that has been requested. Your request not only seeks information about sightings that have been detected, but specifically a report outlining the incident and the response from the UK authorities. Providing this specific level of detailed information could further help to enable hostile actors to identify how different activities are detected, assessed and classified in terms of their potential threat. That information could enable hostile actors to tailor their activities. Adversaries or hostile actors can be highly motivated and may go to great lengths to gather separate pieces of intelligence to attempt to expose vulnerabilities.

  • The Information Commissioner’s Office guidance makes it clear that there need be no evidence that an attack is imminent for this exemption to be applied ‘Safeguarding national security also includes protecting potential targets even if there is no evidence that an attack is imminent’.

Conclusion

After careful consideration of the factors set out above, ONR has concluded that the information should be withheld.

To release detailed security reports into any unauthorised ‘drone activity’ within the vicinity of or flying over any specific nuclear licenced site, may alone or in combination with other information potentially gained, assist a malicious actor to defeat the security measures at that specific site. The potential consequences could result in a radiological emergency so significant, that disclosure of the information requested cannot be in the public interest.

On balance, the interests of national security outweigh the need for openness in terms of the specific information that you have requested. There is a strong public interest in safeguarding national security. Therefore, it is our judgement that publication of the information requested would not be in the public interest.