Alpine Eagle Unveils World’s First Drone-Based Counter-UAS Swarm System

Germany’s Sentinel Platform Redefines Aerial Defense with Radar-Carrying Drones and Interceptor Missiles

by DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magil

As rapid advances in UAS technology are increasing opportunities for the military use or drones, countries around the world are looking to employ the same technological tools to develop counter-drone systems.

Alpine Eagle, a company based in Brühl, Germany, recently introduced the world’s first drone-based counter-UAS innovation, the Sentinel system.

In an interview at the recent Xponential 2025 conference in Houston, Benji Pauly, Alpine Eagle’s business development manager, said the company’s technology enables drones to carry radar systems to detect, and weapons to destroy, adversary drones.

The system overcomes the issues associated with the current state-of-the-art methods of conducting counter-UAS operations, Pauly said.

“Big ground-based active radars are really good at detecting flying objects, all types of objects actually, but they have some limitations, mainly being that you are limited by terrain. If you have a hill or trees in the way, you’re no longer going to get any radar detections,” he said.

 

In addition, ground-based radar systems are easy for an opposing force to detect and counter. Alpine Eagle came up with a solution to this problem: “Why not use a drone to counter another drone?” Pauly asked. “That means that if someone wants to detect that radar, by the time they’ve detected it, that drone is long gone from that location. And your operator, who is one of your most valuable assets, is also gone at that point.”

Alpine Eagle recently introduced its Sentinel suite of products to a number of customers, including the Bundeswehr, the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. Taken together, Sentinel products comprise an adaptable counter-UAS ecosystem, unified and powered by Sentinel OS, the company’s intelligent, hardware-agnostic software backbone.

The system is composed of off-the-shelf components produced in Western nations. The radar equipment is provided by Echodyne, a U.S.-based company, although Alpine Eagle employs its own proprietary software to operate the radar system. The fixed-wing drone that the company operates is made in the Netherlands, while the multi-rotor vehicle is made in the UK.

Pauly said because it’s radar-based, the Sentinel system does not rely on radio frequency signals or heat signatures to detect enemy drones.

Unlike with ground-based radar systems, the Sentinel system allows the operator to peer beyond the horizon to get a line-of-sight view of the skies. However, such a system mounted on a single drone offers a limited field of vision – 120 degrees from side-to-side and 80 degrees vertically – Alpine Eagle has designed the system to allow multiple radar-equipped drones to fly in a swarm configuration.

Under that system, the operator will deploy a single drone to define the mission area to be scanned. Then the other drones will join that lead UAV to autonomously arrange themselves in the proper swarm formation depending on the type of radar coverage they’re required to provide.

“So, if you want to protect a military installation, you’ll have four flying in circles to provide the protection,” Pauly said. “If you want to protect a convoy, you can fly along with the convoy. If you have a border to protect, you can just deploy more units and have them flying in a straight-line pattern or big ovals.”

When conducting counter-UAS missions, each drone is equipped with a NVIDIA Jetson computer on board that processes the radar data collected by all the drones in the swarm. The data then is relied to the operator who can then take steps to neutralize potential threats.

“By the time it reaches the operator, you have the geo-coordinate location of where the UAS is,” Pauly said.

The system can detect a small drone, the size of a DJI Mini, at a distance of about one kilometer away and a larger UAV, such as those used to conduct ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) missions from up to four kilometers away.

In addition to spotting hostile drones, the Sentinel system can be used to locate and identify other aircraft, such as fixed-wing planes and helicopters, as well as ground vehicles. A recent example of this capability was demonstrated as Alpine Eagle personnel were conducting a test exercise with the German army.

“We were all waiting for the general to come and we said, ‘Hey, the general’s coming,’” Pauly said. “We see him on the radar. We can see his car coming from the horizon.”

Armed with Interceptor

In addition to being equipped with drone-detecting radar, UAVs using the Alpine Eagle technology can also be armed with Interceptor missiles to destroy adversary drones. “It already has the radar track that you just got from the radar drone. It’s still talking to it,” Pauly said. “And then we have the camera that does the AI lock-on.” The drone can then release the weapon, will holds about 300 grams of explosives to destroy the enemy UAV.

For longer-distance missions, the Interceptor can also be mounted on a fixed-wing aircraft, which an increase its range to 270 kilometers (168 miles), compared with 5 kilometers (3 miles) with the drone-mounted version.

The Sentinel system is easily transportable, which makes it adaptable enough to be used by soldiers in the field. The drones are capable of vertical take-off and landing flights, and only require a 2-square-meter (6.6-square-foot) takeoff area.

“You also need no tools. You turn it on by plugging in the battery,” Pauly said. An entire swarm fleet of drones can be airborne within 20 minutes. The battery life allows for 72 hours of operation. When low battery is detected on one of the drones, that unit will automatically come back to land at its starting point. Once the battery is changed out, the drone can be launched again to rejoin the swarm, with all the UAVs automatically redistributing themselves to recomplete the formation.

In addition to its contracts with the German armed forces, Alpine Eagle is also conducting tests with the U.S. and UK militaries, as well as working with Ukrainian units to determine how the technology can be incorporated with that country’s existing UAS defense system in the ongoing war with Russia.

Although the company is currently focused on the defense market, Pauly said that eventually Alpine Eagle officials hope to market its technology for use in non-military applications, such as setting up drone swarms to provide counter-drone surveillance at stadiums hosting major sporting events.

“Right at the core, we are a dual-use company. We have some limitations in operating an active radar. You do need a radio license for that,” he said. “Of course, the military has a lot of easier ways to get around that.”

Read more:

• Congressional Hearing, Part 2: Counter Drone Experts Urge Decentralized Innovation, Collaboration
• White House Summit on Advanced Air Mobility Addresses Security Concerns, and the Need to Authorize cUAS Systems
• Counter UAS Update, From the Floor of National Public Safety UAS Conference

Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.