Liteye To Manufacture And Develop Counter-UAV System For Blighter Surveillance In North America

Blighter Surveillance Systems’ AUDS (Anti-UAV Defence System) team, a counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) has extended its partnership agreement with Liteye Systems for sales to include local manufacturing as well as local development and customisation of the AUDS platform in North America.

Liteye Systems’ role as integration and support partner will include local manufacturing as well as development and customisation of the AUDS counter-UAS platform; AUDS mobile trailer platform developed by Liteye for rapid deployment purposes to support national security applications, the company said in a statement Tuesday.

However, as interest in the AUDS system has grown, and following multiple government-sponsored trials, the partnership agreement has now been extended to include local manufacturing as well as local development and customisation of the AUDS platform.

Liteye will be responsible for manufacturing and supporting major components of AUDS including the radar, turret, thermal camera system, inhibitor and command and control (C2) system. Liteye will also be involved in designing and manufacturing the various platforms necessary to support a diverse range of end-users within the North American market. This will include the military, critical infrastructure providers such as airport operators, and other government agencies. 

“Liteye is already providing development effort for US-specific C-UAS programs allowing us to integrate AUDS into and alongside other military and government assets,” said Mark Radford, spokesperson for AUDS team.  “We have also worked with their engineers to enhance our system’s detect-track-disrupt-defeat capabilities by integrating a new ‘friendly asset’ into the platform. This allows us to use a drone as part of the AUDS remote observation and enforcement capabilities providing the ability to search out enemy UAS operators.”

Thomas Scott, president of Liteye Systems, said: “Our new AUDS mobile trailer platform – an example of our integration capabilities - was developed and built at our Colorado site for rapid deployment purposes in national security applications and is already receiving much interest.

” Liteye’s ‘AUDS 360 Trailer’ system features a fully integrated AUDS system comprising Blighter Surveillance Systems’ 360° fully electronically-scanned A400 radar system, Chess Dynamics’ precision turret with thermal camera system, and Enterprise Control Systems’ directional multiband RF inhibitor system. This is a robust, go-anywhere rapid deployment system typically of the type used by the military. Other configurations of AUDS include a portable, quad-pod mounted rapid-deployment package and a fixed system that is compact enough to be installed on rooftop locations, remote masts or even on the ground,” he added.

The AUDS counter-UAS system was developed by a trio of British companies including Blighter Surveillance Systems, Chess Dynamics and Enterprise Control Systems. AUDS can detect a drone six miles (10km) away using electronic scanning radar, track it using precision infrared and daylight cameras and specialist video tracking software before disrupting the flight using an inhibitor to block the radio signals that control it. This detect, track, disrupt, defeat process is very quick and typically takes 8-15 secs. Using AUDS, the operator can effectively take control of a drone and force a safe landing or send it back home.