U.S. military forces ramping-up their counter-drone efforts to detect, destroy or disable enemy UAVs

Dec. 19, 2019
The threat seen overseas, as well as at many continental U.S. installations, is a variety of different drones, often small, difficult to detect.

WASHINGTON – The top Pentagon acquisition official says the U.S. military is ramping up its counter-drone effort as commanders continue to struggle with these small, often difficult-to-detect threats. Military.com reports. Continue reading original article

The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:

19 Dec. 2019 -- Ellen Lord, the under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, recently met with commanders in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries in the Middle East, who told her that countering unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) remains a challenge despite efforts to combat low-tech enemy drones.

For the past several years, combat units have been equipped with drone-disabling systems such as Battelle's DroneDefender, which has a range of several hundred meters against UAS such as quadcopters and hexacopters.

Defense officials are meeting with all of the services and the combatant commands about how to "qualify systems and neck down to the critical few that have the sensor [capabilities] and the actual either kinetic or [electronic warfare] type systems to neutralize incoming threats," she says.

Related: The dawn of counter-drone technologies

Related: Swarm hell: U.S. Army looks for new ways to counter hundreds of swarming drones armed with explosives

Related: Perimeter-security counter-drone system offers ability to detect and commandeer intruding UAVs

John Keller, chief editor
Military & Aerospace Electronics

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