Standwell Insights
Analysis of the incidents, emerging threats and preparedness questions that matter to organisations responsible for people, critical assets and continuity. Particular focus is given to aerial threats and C-UAS, alongside protective security, resilience and crisis preparedness.
The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 is intended to improve protective security and organisational preparedness across the UK. The practical question is not whether an organisation can produce a document. It is whether arrangements are proportionate, understood and capable of working when pressure arrives. Compliance should support preparedness. It should not become a substitute for it.
For venues and organisations, that means connecting threat understanding with sensible protective measures, clear responsibilities, staff awareness, exercising and the ability to adapt as circumstances change.
Read full insight →Incident-led thinking
Not every incident is the same, and not every organisation needs the same response. These examples are useful because each exposes a different part of the risk: disruption, physical damage, attribution, continuity, preparedness and proportionality.
The Gatwick drone incident disrupted more than 100,000 passengers and became a defining UK example of how an aerial threat can impose consequences without a conventional attack. The enduring lesson is broader than detection: organisations need decision thresholds, command arrangements, communications and recovery plans as well as technology.
Read full insight → 02 · Aviation / Emerging threatDrone sightings halted take-offs and landings at Copenhagen Airport for nearly four hours. For operators, the incident reinforces a difficult reality: identification, intent and attribution may remain uncertain while operational decisions still have to be made quickly.
Read full insight → 03 · Energy / Aerial threatAttacks on Saudi Aramco facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais temporarily suspended 5.7 million barrels per day of crude production. The case remains a useful reminder that the importance of an aerial threat is determined less by platform size than by target vulnerability, consequence and the wider system around it.
Read full insight → 04 · Venues / Martyn's LawMartyn's Law brings greater structure to preparedness at qualifying premises and events. The operational challenge is keeping measures proportionate and usable: evacuation, lockdown, communications, staff action and protective measures need to make sense in the real environment, not just in a plan.
Read full insight → 05 · Mining / Remote operationsMines and remote industrial sites combine dispersed assets, difficult terrain, long supply chains and potentially limited response options. As unmanned systems become cheaper and more capable, aerial-threat assessment should sit alongside wider security and continuity planning rather than be treated as a standalone technology problem.
Read full insight → 06 · Energy / ContinuityRecent attacks on energy infrastructure have repeatedly shown that C-UAS cannot be treated as a perfect shield. Protection also depends on redundancy, hardening, emergency response, repair capacity and the ability to sustain essential operations after an impact.
Read full insight →C-UAS focus
Effective C-UAS starts with the asset, the threat and the consequence. Technology matters, but only after the organisation understands what it is trying to protect, from whom, under what constraints and what it will do when detection or defeat is imperfect.
Start with credible threat pathways, intent, capability and likely effects rather than a catalogue of systems.
Alerts need thresholds, authority, escalation, communications and operational actions attached to them.
Resilience, hardening, redundancy and recovery remain relevant even where active C-UAS measures are available.
An airport, stadium, refinery, mine and corporate estate can face the same broad threat but require very different responses.
A note on method
Standwell Insights uses public incidents to examine transferable lessons, not to imply that one event provides a template for another. Threat, legal authority, operating environment, consequence and acceptable disruption all change the answer.
Where an insight touches legislation, regulation or a live incident, primary or authoritative sources should be used alongside operational analysis.
Reference points used for this page include UK Parliament reporting on the 2018 Gatwick disruption, Saudi Aramco's account of the 2019 Abqaiq and Khurais attacks, Reuters reporting on the 2025 Copenhagen Airport disruption, and current Home Office / SIA guidance on Martyn's Law.
A practical question deserves a practical answer.
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