DroneShield Goes Mobile with Counter-Drone Partnership

If you’re reading this, chances are excellent you love drones. And, chances are even better that you hate rogue drones – the unmanned villains that fly into places they have no business flying, creating dangerous skies while also giving the entire industry a PR black eye. So, imagine a security vehicle that could drive into a no-drone area, find, zap and drop drones behaving badly.

Australian counter-drone firm DroneShield is partnering with a domestic security company to do just that.

The company announced this week a collaboration that will marry the company’s anti-drone products with Rapid Scout HQ, a tactical security vehicle produced by Melbourne-based Intelligent Security Integration Aust and designed for non-military agencies.

“The partnership with an on-vehicle surveillance market leader ISI allows DroneShield to enter the vehicle-based law enforcement, security and military market, using a proven vehicle platform that ISI provides,” DroneShield CEO Oleg Vornik said. “There is a considerable interest in the market today for on-vehicle counter-drone products, which Rapid Scout is well placed to meet using DroneShield’s capability.”

The Rapid Scout will incorporate a suite of DroneShield solutions including RadarZero, a portable drone detection radar; RfOne, a drone detection device using an RF direction finder; and DroneCannon; a rifle-like counter-drone jammer. “The resulting product is believed to be a first of its kind — a non-military vehicle with a suite of counter-drone, multi-sensor, detect-and-defeat solutions,” a company press release states.

“We are excited about this partnership and believe our vehicle-based surveillance capabilities combined with DroneShield’s counter-drone sector leadership enable this market leading product to meet customer requirements in the counter-drone space,” ISI Managing Director Stephen Bell said.

For DroneShield, the partnership cements the company’s reputation as an anti-drone player on the rise.

Currently, DroneShield provides detection coverage for the Boston Marathon. The company also scored a major European victory last year, protecting the Davos Economic Forum in Switzerland.

DroneShield manufactures DroneSentinel and DroneSentry.

• DroneSentinel is a multi-prone detection product designed to locate rogue drones. The solution is aimed at customers unable to deploy jamming because of regulatory or operational restrictions.
• DroneSentry detects and neutralizes unmanned aerial bandits using jamming technology. The product is geared toward foreign clients – the product has not been authorized by the FCC and may not be sold or leased in the U.S. because it jams radio signals.

A recent study predicts the drone mitigation (or anti-drone) market will to grow to a billion-dollar industry within six years with predicted compound annual growth rate of 23.89 percent across 2018-22.