Meet The New Drone Killers

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

The more drones enter our lives, the louder the calls for anti-drone technology. At the recent US Navy League Sea Air Space Exposition two companies showcased their very promising solutions to this problem.

One is the DroneDefender from nonprofit research and development organisation. DroneDefender carries two punches with two triggers. One jams the signal from a the drone’s command and control systems, thereby preventing the remote operator from controlling the drone. The other trigger disrupts the drone’s GPS or GLONASS autonomous guidance system, making it unable to get wherever it was headed.

DroneDefender looks like a futuristic shotgun, but this backpack-powered gun shoots nothing but “directed RF energy” in the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) bands or global positioning bands. With a 400m range and an optical sight it’s a real nonlethal drone killer.

The other hot item at the expo was the Dronebuster from Flex Force. The California-based company set out to create a drone-disabling tool for law enforcement and first responders after “drones interfered with with firefighters in California last year,” Ars Technica reports. And it’s already doing the job it was created for.

Several federal agencies are already trialling the Dronebuster, which works like the DroneDefender by jamming the signal used to control the drone. The major difference is that the Dronebuster is significantly smaller, making it easier to use out in the field.

Dronebuster can be aimed with an optical sight like the DroneDefender, but also comes with an integrated radio frequency power meter and signal analyser. Someone trained on the device can apparently distinguish the type of signal the drone is emitting – whether telemetry or control.