In the spring of 2017, the U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL) — via the Defense Department’s Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) — engaged in a one-year prototype contract with Sensofusion to develop a ground-based mobile counter-UAS solution stemming from Sensofusion’s pre-existing core product AIRFENCE.
Sensofusion acted as lead integrator and further advanced AIRFENCE to integrate radar and optics systems on board vehicles enabling all systems to work in unison, with AIRFENCE being the core counter-UAS solution by means of RF detection and transmission.
The DIUx project has been active for more than 12 months, growing and expanding since its’ late March 2017 launch. AIRFENCE is now fully ruggedized, meeting IP67 ruggedization requirements. Furthermore, AIRFENCE has outperformed all tests for range of detection and counterattack capabilities and has also greatly increased the number of drones within its library it can detect, track and defeat yielding zero false positives. The system has outperformed range testing at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia.
In addition, AIRFENCE exceeded expectations against a large variety of small UAVs — including fixed wings and rotorcrafts — while Marines operated the technology under extreme weather conditions in Arizona at YUMA Proving Grounds. YPG is the largest U.S. military installation in the world and is known for being a key site for testing military equipment dating as far back as World War II.
Through its work with the U.S. Marine Corps, Sensofusion has brought its’ system to a single sensor solution, which is extremely beneficial for tactical use in a mobile convoy scenario. AIRFENCE is also easily used for fixed installations when protecting areas such as military bases, airports, prisons, oil refineries and pipelines, nuclear power plants, power plants, government buildings and border walls. Sensofusion has made major leaps in its’ ability to detect and defeat rogue drones by means of protocol demodulation and manipulation.
“Our work in the past year with the Marines enables us to meet production readiness with our flagship counter-UAS solution, AIRFENCE, and are now prepping for production with the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security,” said Sensofusion Vice President Kaveh Mahdavi. “We’re now at a point where DoD, DHS — really, any government organization — can order our standardized counter-UAS platform, AIRFENCE, in large quantities. This is a significant advancement within our developing drone defense industry and will act as the benchmark for all future solutions.”
UPDATE: Extension to Sensofusion-U.S. DoD contract signed
As Sensofusion ramps up production for AIRFENCE across government agencies in America, it continues to align with MCWL, signing a one-year extension to the agreement with the DoD to innovate and implement new capabilities within signal intelligence.
Source: Press Release