DronesCounter UAVs to drive enemy drones out of the sky

Published 20 November 2017

Defense drones to seek out and bring down hostile military UAVs are being developed in Australia. Military drones have changed the landscape of the modern battlefield in recent years, but the technology to counter them has not kept pace. Reacting to this gap in the market the startup is developing two models in Adelaide, South Australia. The first is a compact counter UAV drone with metal rotors that can be stored in a soldier’s pack and launched when an enemy drone is believed to be in the area.

Military drones have changed the landscape of the modern battlefield in recent years, but according to My Sky Technologies Director Steve Auch-Schwelk, the technology to counter them has not kept pace.

Reacting to this gap in the market the startup is developing two models in Adelaide, South Australia. The first is a compact counter UAV drone with metal rotors that can be stored in a soldier’s pack and launched when an enemy drone is believed to be in the area.

Using a range of sensors including RF, infrared, video and GPS, the 600-gram drone can quickly locate and reach an enemy UAV and then attack it with saw-like rotors to bring it down.

“We’ve created a man-portable, field-deployable fire-and-forget counter UAV solution,” Auch-Schwelk said.

“You can have a few of these in your pack and you pull them out, the blades snap open and it autonomously searches, classifies, tracks, engages and destroys.”

The counter-attack drone reaches speeds of up to 250kmh, can fly to an altitude of 5000m and has a range of about 8km.

“What people don’t realise is that these little walnut-sized motors on here are about as powerful as your average circular saw and we’ve got four of these so when you add metal props there are not many commercial drones it won’t cut through.”

The second model, which uses a similar suite of sensors and is just as portable, is designed to provide fast battlefield assessments.

 

“If you come under fire and you don’t know where it is coming from you can throw one of these things up into the air and it will go up about 200m to get a tactical picture of radio chatter, heat signatures and acoustic firing lines,” Auch-Schwelk said.

“If you are in a forward position, the same model can scan out a particular area and you can also strap wings to it to give it a longer range.”