Report: Anti-drone Industry Will Hit $1B mark by 2022

We’ve all heard about the exponential growth of the commercial drone market. But, as Newton said, every action has an equal but opposite reaction and such wisdom is especially true in the anti-drone market.

According to a new study by India-based business-intelligence firm MarketsandMarkets, the anti-drone market is expected to grow to a billion-dollar industry within six years with predicted compound annual growth rate of 23.89 percent across 2017-22.

“The huge investment from key players in electronics system-based anti-drone system, low cost of development, and easily understandable technology are the key drivers for this growth,” states a company press release, adding that military and defense sectors are expected to be the largest stakeholders.

“The use of drones for border trespassing and smuggling has increased, resulting in border security concern, and is a key driver for the anti-drone market in the military and defense segments,” the report states.

Predicted anti-drone corporate players are unsurprising – Boeing, Airbus and Lockheed Martin. At CES 2016, Airbus unveiled a new UAV defense countermeasure designed to “detect and marginalize invasive drones [with] the latest data fusion, signal analysis and jamming technologies” to spot drones from as far away as six miles and provide a threat assessment.

While North America will bag the lion’s share of the anti-drone market, the report predicts that the Asia-Pacific region will benefit with the highest growth rate.

The anti-drone sector has many moving parts – from the latest “anti-drone rifle by Batelle Innovations to the Orwellian-sounding “anti-drone death ray” Anti–AUV Defense System. And, who can forget, when the drone media world blew up a few weeks ago after Dutch company, Guard From Above, announced a partnership with the nation’s federal police force to deploy eagles and other raptors to identify and take down drones (despite cries of “fowl play” by wildlife experts.

Other examples include, DroneShield, which uses acoustic technology to detect incoming drones from up to 150 yards and sends emails or text messages to a monitoring service. Prisons have started using the product to stop drones from delivering contraband such as cell phones of drugs to prisoners.