The Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is viewing a steadily increasing demand for its Drone Guard detection and disruption counter unmaned aerial vehicle (UAV) system, for both military and civilian applications. The recently unveiled system has already been purchased by several customers for critical asset and personnel protection.

Numerous potential customers have already attended dedicated demonstrations of the system versus various drone threats, with more demonstrations anticipated for the coming months.

The use of small drones has increased dramatically over the years, making them a potential threat to critical infrastructures, other aircraft and homeland security (HLS), due to their small size, low speed and low flight altitude. IAI’s subsidiary and group, ELTA Systems Ltd., is offering specially designed 3-dimensional (3D) radars and existing electro-optical (EO) sensors for detection and identification, as well as dedicated electronic attack (EA) jamming systems for disrupting drone flight.

Nissim Hadas, IAI Executive Vice President and ELTA President, said: “We have managed to pack high grade military radar and jamming capabilities into a compact, effective and affordable drone protection system. Since unveiling the Drone Guard system earlier this year we are experiencing steadily growing sales and demand of the system for military, HLS and civilian protection tasks”.

To detect low signature, low-level and low-speed airborne targets, ELTA has adapted to this specific mission its 3D radars, which include the ELM-2026D, ELM-2026B and ELM-2026BF for short (10 km), medium (15 km) and long (20 km) ranges, respectively, with special drone detection and tracking algorithms, as well as adapting them with EO sensors for visual identification of the target.

In order to disrupt the hostile UAV, ELTA has developed advanced adaptive jamming systems which can be used in concert with its detection and identification sensors, or as a continuously operated stand-alone system. The jamming disrupts the drone’s flight and can either causes it to return to its point-of-origin (‘Return Home’ function) or to shut down and make a crash landing.