A team of four companies recently achieved victory in a contest organized by Special Operations Command to explore ways to counter enemy unmanned aerial systems.
Adversaries such as ISIS have been employing the technology extensively on the battlefield, raising alarm bells among Pentagon officials. For the past six months, SOCOM and other government partners have been leading an initiative looking at off-the-shelf solutions for thwarting enemy drones.
The effort, known as ThunderDrone, was sponsored by the Defense Department’s Strategic Capabilities Office, the Air Force and Special Operations Command”s SOFWERX office. It concluded in mid-June, with the winning system stemming from an industry partnership that formed over the course of the project.
“Game of Drones,” the third and final rapid prototyping event for the ThunderDrone effort, took place June 18-20 at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. A variety of companies presented their counter-UAS products in an outdoor demonstration for the chance to win prize money and expose their technologies to a wide range of military operators and other government users.
The winning team consisted of: Dedrone, a San Francisco-based airspace security company; Columbus, Ohio-based Battelle; Echodyne Corp., a Bellevue, Washington-based radar system company; and Squarehead Technologies, an Oslo, Norway-based security and surveillance company that focuses on acoustic sensing.
For more information on SOFWERX and ThunderDrone:
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