Airbus Develops Counter-Drone System To Detect Intrusions

Airbus has developed a Counter-UAV System to detect illicit intrusions over critical areas at long ranges and offers electronic countermeasures minimizing the risk of collateral damage.

“All over the world, incidents with universally available small drones have revealed a security gap with regards to critical installations such as military barracks, airports or nuclear plants,” Thomas Müller, head of the electronics business line at Airbus Defense and Space said in a statement Thursday.

“We have all the technologies in our portfolio and the integration knowledge which are needed to set up a quick-response protection system with extremely low false alarm rates,” he said.

The system offers effectiveness by combining sensor data from different sources with latest data fusion, signal analysis and jamming technologies. It uses operational radars, infrared cameras and direction finders from Airbus’ portfolio to identify the drone and assess its threat potential at ranges between five and 10 kilometres. Based on an extensive threat library and real time analysis of control signals a jammer then interrupts the link between drone and pilot and/or its navigation.

Furthermore, the direction finder tracks the position of the pilot who subsequently can be arrested. Due to the Smart Responsive Jamming Technology developed by Airbus, the jamming signals are blocking only the relevant frequencies used to operate the drone while other frequencies in the vicinity remain operational. Since the jamming technology contains versatile receiving and transmitting capabilities, more sophisticated measures like remote control classification and GPS spoofing can be utilized as well. This allows effective and specific jamming and also a controlled takeover of the UAV.