The Land Forces expo was packed with drones - big ones, small ones - all with different capabilities.
Where once, the rise of the drones was an issue mostly for government and the Australian Defence Force, more and more private companies are seeing that drones are an issue for them also, says DroneShield, an Australian counter-drone business.
That was made apparent through the number of prospective industry partners dropping by the DroneShield stand at Land Forces, said the company’s director of government affairs, Kacey Lam-Evans.
“There is a genuine acknowledgement that traditional platforms and broader enterprise security also requires counter-UAS,” she told ADM.
“They are wanting to understand the technology, understand what is in the market, understand how we can build interoperability and work together.”
DroneShield has developed a range of drone countermeasures, starting with a capability to detect drone radio frequency (RF) emissions and to neutralise them by jamming.
Then there’s an education command and control system which fuses data from a range of sensors (radar, RF, cameras) and presents operators with a tactical picture.
The operator can then make the best call on the most appropriate countermeasures.
That could be anything from RF jamming, gun systems to lasers, microwaves or killer drones though to big expensive missiles such as the US Patriot.
“What we worked out a long time ago is that operators didn’t want to see all the sensors giving them great and amazing information. They just wanted to see the dot on the map moving,” DroneShield commercial director, Red McClintock, said.
DroneShield has a good understanding of emerging threats because it has some 2000 counter-drone systems in use in Ukraine, with a local partner who reports back to Sydney.
One challenge in Ukraine is the growing use of drones guided solely by fibre optic cable which unspools in flight. These were initially fielded by Russia and are now used by both sides. These emit no RF and are totally immune to RF jamming.
Does that mean RF detection and countermeasures are redundant? Not at all.
“The enemy gets a vote. If you say RF is dead so no RF detection or RF jamming, guess what they are going to use. No matter what people do, people have to find a way around,” he said.
Lam-Evans said the reality was there is no silver bullet when it comes to detecting drones.
“There are various types of sensors that detect drones in very different ways. If you have a variety of different threats coming at you, you will need a number of different sensors to detect different drones.
“The future of drone detection must be AI based and it must get smarter.”
McClintock said the Australian Army gets this.
“They understand that it is an economic battle. You have to have the right tool for the right job. And if you are taking down a $20,000 drone with a $1 million missile, that is a bad equation,” he said.