Draganfly, Radio Hill Team Up with Anti-Drone Patrol

Although the drone-mitigation sector is poised to feed a billion-dollar tech revolution, the industry faces a glaring weakness. While anti-drone devices – from radio jammers to acoustic detectors – ­­offer effective strategies for dropping errant drones out of unauthorized airspace, such solutions can often do little to trace the UAV back to its owner.

Thanks to a recent partnership with a top anti-drone firm and a veteran drone company, that’s all about to change.

Draganfly Innovations, a drone-manufacturing subsidiary of TRACE Live Network, has joined forces with Oregon-based anti-drone maker Radio Hill Technologies to detect, deter and pursue rogue drones.

Using Radio Hill’s Block 3 Dronebuster hand-held counter-drone detection and jamming system, a user can send a bad-boy drone packing while also initiating the launch of a Draganflyer drone to pursue the miscreant back to home base to capture video and photo imagery as well as GPS data that can be used later for possible prosecution.

“This innovative concept provides an affordable deterrence, pursuit, and surveillance solution,” Draganfly’s CEO, Cameron Chell said in a press release. “We are thrilled to partner with Radio Hill to get this easy-to-use technology in the hands of facility security personnel all over the world.”

The Dronebuster can detect incoming RF signals which allow it to find drones in low-visibility conditions and inform the user of the drone’s signal strength. Weighing in at just five pounds, Dronebuster jams consumer and modified UAV radios across ISM, UHF HAM and GPS bandwidths, as well as standard 2.45 and 5.8 MHz interruption frequencies.

For Radio Hill, the partnership is one more 2017 victory after the firm inked a deal last month with the U.S. Army’s Rapid Equipping Force to immediately deliver an unnamed quantity of its hand-held counter-drone detection and jamming systems. The agreement will allow the army to deploy drone jammers in places like Syria and Afghanistan where ISIS-led drone attacks are a clear and present danger to soldiers.

In 2015, Draganfly released a suite of multiple, changeable drone payload systems including, high resolution color camera systems, FLIR thermal imaging and advanced, multi-spectral data acquisition systems. In 2014, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum added the Draganflyer X4-ES to its vertical flight exhibit in commemoration of it being the first unmanned aerial helicopter responsible for saving a human life.

In 2013, a Draganfly X4-ES equipped with thermal imaging technology helped rescuers locate the critically injured driver of a car following a midnight crash. After two hours of combing the area fruitlessly, officials released the unmanned X4-ES which quickly located the victim.