A motorist has claimed he saw the Gatwick drone culprit packing up his unmanned aircraft and cycling away, as the suspect remained at large tonight despite a two-day manhunt.
Paul Motts, 52, said he had seen a man in his 30s, wearing hi-vis clothing, crouching over a drone in a country lane near the West Sussex airport.
He said the suspicious man had been trying to 'get away as fast as he could' as Sussex Police combed the countryside to find the drone pilot, The Sun reported.
Police have looked into theories that a 'lone wolf' eco-warrior or group of activists could be behind the drone mayhem but have yet to make any arrests.
Paul Motts, pictured, said he had seen a man in his 30s, wearing hi-vis clothing, crouching over a drone in a country lane near the West Sussex airport
Mr Motts told the newspaper: 'I was delivering a parcel and drove past a suspicious man in fluorescent cycling gear crouching over a large drone which was all lit up.
'It looked like he was packing the drones away. Two minutes later we turned around and came across him cycling away.
'I expect he wanted to disassemble the drone as quickly as possible and get away as fast as he could.'
The man had been standing over one 4ft drone and another 2ft device, Mr Motts reported.
Police investigating the attack do not think it is terror related but Transport Secretary Chris Grayling today refused to rule out it being the actions of a foreign state.
A lone wolf eco-warrior or a group of climate change activists are also speculated to be behind the most damaging drone assault on a UK airport in history.
Airports are prime targets for environmental demonstrators angry about climate change, who have chained themselves to aircraft, invaded runways and blocked access roads in recent years.
The sabotage which grounded hundreds of flights and left thousands stranded is believed to have been 'targeted' and the sophistication of the equipment involved suggests it was well-planned and financed.
Gatwick is also currently at the centre of a bitter row over pollution fears around plans to use its emergency runway to bring in more than 100,000 additional flights a year.
Climate action movement Extinction Rebellion have staged a series of stunts in recent months, including this 'die-in' at a Cambridge shopping centre
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the drones, suggesting it is more likely to be a 'lone wolf' activist. Pictured: Extinction Rebellion action in London
Asked if it was possible the drone was being operated by an agent of a foreign government, Mr Grayling told BBC Breakfast: 'I don't want to speculate on that, we genuinely don't know who it is or what the motivation was.'
'I think it's unlikely to be, but at the moment I'm not ruling out anything', he added.
The Cabinet minister also said that whoever the perpetrator or perpetrators were, they needed to 'go to jail for a long time'.
If no foreign agent was involved, that suggests three possibilities are among potential suspects; an organised campaign group, a lone eco-extremist or an anarchic hobbyist looking to cause carnage.
Other, less likely theories put forward include a local angry about aircraft noise, immigration activists or an extortionist trying to get money out of a business linked to the airport.
The most high-profile 'direct action' groups in the UK include Extinction Rebellion, who shut down central London in anti-traffic protests last month, and Plane Stupid, whose members chained themselves to Heathrow's runway in 2015.
Meanwhile 15 activists are facing jail after storming into Stansted Airport and grounding a Home Office deportation plane heading to Africa in March 2017.
The group caused chaos using bolt cutters on the perimeter fence and chained themselves to a 767 chartered to transport detainees from UK detention centres back to Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone. They will be sentenced on February 4.
But nobody has yet claimed responsibility for this week's action, raising suspicions that it a saboteur acting alone.
The drone's pilot may have been operating from a moving location, a car or a van, navigating the gadget using an mobile phone or tablet, an expert has said.
Former army major Robert Garbett, a government adviser, said the pilot would not need to have direct sight of the drone, explaining why the flying device was able to land and disappear as soon as a police helicopter began searching the area.
The aeronautical engineer told MailOnline: 'It is very hard for the police to detect that as sophisticated equipment is needed and that is why the army has been brought in.'
Police are still hunting the person or gang flying the unmanned aircraft (pictured) - but do not believe the sabotage is terror-related with eco-warriors the prime suspects
Passengers are forced to sleep in departure lounges at Gatwick Airport today after the drone was spotted more than 50 times over the runway in West Sussex
Mr Garbett, chairman of the British Standards Institution committee for UK drones, founded the Drone Major group in 2017 to offer specialist advice on technology to governments and companies.
He said it was unlikely the operator who has caused such disruption would be sitting in a hotel room or hidden away.
'This is all about the C2 signal, the command and control signal. The operator has to have a strong signal to fly the drone from a distance.
'That is illegal, but the person doing this is not worried about any of the restrictions that have been put in place for drone operators.'
The operator would be able to pre-programme it to fly for a certain period of time and land at a pre-selected location where the batteries could be changed.
'He would be able to launch the drone from one place, and while it is airborne drive to another location and pick it up,' said Garbett.
He said commercial drones allow for designated routes to be loaded into the GPS system and controlled automatically rather like an autopilot on a passenger jet.
Sussex Police, in charge of patrolling the airport, today revealed that Scotland Yard and officers from neighbouring Surrey Police have joined the manhunt.
Steve Coulson, managing director of drone detection firm Coptrz, said it appeared to be a 'targeted attack' that could have originated abroad.
He told the Times: 'The operator may not even be in the country. You can have a secure internet link from China or Russia and control it remotely, just like we control drones remotely from Arizona and fly them over Afghanistan.
'I'm surprised how brazen this is. I thought we might get some low-level stuff this year but somebody or some group are pushing the envelope.'
Some 350,000 people face having their Christmas plans ruined as disruption continued at Gatwick today.
Drone expert Carys Kaiser told MailOnline: 'It's definitely not a hobbyist who's thinking I'll get some extra footage from a YouTube channel.
'It is definitely something that is more organised in some capacity because obviously the drones that I fly and the drones that most people fly in the UK have this geofencing and we can't get them to take off that close to an airport.
'So this is somebody that has possibly hacked their software or possibly modified their drone in some way.'
Ms Kaiser added: '[The manufacturers] have all developed this software to ensure that people can't just take a drone near an airport and take off.
'You get lock zones, so you'll get a yellow zone that could be a stately home or a football ground - it will say to you do you have permission, and you have to put in details and the manufacturer knows who it is, and if there was an incident they could trace it.
'When you get an airport that's a red zone, and you can't unlock it unless you get written permission from an airport. You have to submit documentation, wait for five days and then you get an unlock code so you can fly.
'As with anything that's malicious, people will hack the software, modify the drones to get around all of that. If you've got malicious intent, you've got a malicious mind, you don't abide by the rules.'
A former Army captain told The Sun that the attacker had showed 'some serious capability' and could be a 'genius' with a PhD.
Richard Gill said: 'Perhaps we are dealing with a person who just wants to do it to show how clever they are.
'He or she is just causing hell because they can and they want to test their limits. It's the thrill of getting away with it.'
No person or group has yet claimed responsibility for the sabotage, but officials are said to be working on the theory the saboteur could be an 'eco-warrior'.
A Whitehall source told the Daily Telegraph that an eco-protest was a 'definite line of inquiry'.
Environmental activist groups have previously targeted airports, in particular to protest the proposed expansion of Heathrow.
When asked why someone would want to disrupt the airport, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said: 'There's no sense of motive - there's no suggestion that this is a terrorist act.
'The counter-terrorist police have been very clear that they've seen no evidence that this is intended to be a terrorist act. It's clearly someone who wants to disrupt Gatwick Airport and there's an intense police operation.
'We've got two police forces in Surrey and Sussex working together to try and catch the perpetrator, supported by the Met, supported by the counter-terrorism police and no evidence of a terrorist link at the moment.'
Sussex Police also said that 'our assessment, based upon the information that we have available to us, is that this incident is not terrorism-related'.
The runway has been closed almost constantly since two drones were spotted being flown inside Gatwick's perimeter at 9pm on Wednesday.
It was reopened at 3am on Thursday but was closed 45 minutes later after the drones re-emerged.
Chris Woodroofe said 120,000 passengers' flights had been disrupted and the drone that has plagued the airport since Wednesday evening is still in the air.
Night-flight restrictions will be lifted at other airports - probably those which serve London - so that 'more planes can get in to and out of the country', Mr Grayling said.
'Apologies for the residents affected, but it's right and proper that we try and sort people's Christmases out,' he said.
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News Pictures Hunt to find who is behind the drone chaos
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