UK Government Accidentally Classifies Pigeons as ‘Hostile Drones’ – Launches £87 m Pigeon Netting Program
A GCHQ AI error misclassified London's pigeons as hostile drones, leading to an £87 million government program to net the entire city.
The FY Times Staff
Published on
Read time
4 min read
Operation FEATHERSTORM
At 03:47 GMT on 14 March 2024, GCHQ’s experimental ‘SkyNet-Lite’ AI surveillance grid misclassified 1.2 million Greater London pigeons as Chinese-manufactured micro-drones after a particularly incontinent specimen defecated on a rooftop facial-recognition node calibrated to detect ‘suspicious loitering.’ The false positive triggered Operation FEATHERSTORM, a £87 million emergency programme comprising laser-guided monofilament netting, 42 pigeon-jamming towers operating at 2.4 GHz (the exact frequency of Greggs pasty warmers), and 400 newly created ‘avian compliance officers’ issued with carbon-fibre baguettes and diplomatic immunity within the M25.
Factual nugget
The Home Office did allocate £92 million in FY2024/25 for ‘urban aerial threat mitigation systems’; separate insurance data shows £4.3 million in annual pigeon-related property claims. A 2019 Ministry of Defence white paper warned of ‘bio-drones’ but explicitly referred to weaponised insects, not Columba livia.
Nonsense twist
Netting contractors draped Trafalgar Square in a glittering web that inadvertently created the world’s largest avian chessboard; pigeons responded by evolving mid-air 4D chess strategies, checkmating tourists in under seven moves. One capture, ‘Agent Coo-007,’ was found wearing a 4K GoPro streaming live to a Beijing server (later revealed to be a breadcrumb-crumb cam operated by a bored A-level student). MI5 offered full amnesty if the flock switched allegiance to spying on French croissants. Parliament’s rooftop aviary now houses 47 ‘defector’ pigeons fed fortified suet balls laced with low-level state secrets. Prime Minister Keir Starmer publicly denied knowledge of the programme while photographed feeding a pigeon he later admitted was named ‘Rishi’ and trained to deliver resignation letters. The pigeons have unionised under the banner ‘Wings Not Wires’ and are demanding collective bargaining rights plus unlimited access to the House of Commons terrace crumbs.