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Comprehensive Security During Recent FIFA Games

Dec 31, 2021

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

Stadium and large public events require special means in order to secure the masses of people attending them. The recent international football tournament games in Qatar were no exception.

Advanced counter-drone systems were deployed in Qatar during the FIFA Arab Cup 2021 competition held in November-December. The Italian Air Force deployed a counter-drone Task Group in support of the local armed forces.

The Italian Air Force deployed the fixed anti-drone system “ACUS” (AMI Counter UAS) together with portable jammer systems against “mini and micro drones”. Overall, about 30 soldiers are employed in the Task Group, which reported directly to the Italian National Contingent Command AIR (IT NCC Air)/Task Force Kuwait, according to theaviationist.com.

ACUS fights drone threats using radiofrequency and GPS jamming. To detect, track and identify drones, the system relies on a radiofrequency detector, which senses commands being issued to a drone by its operator, as well as radar and electro-optical sensors. The system is built with open, modular and scalable architecture to allow plug-in solutions, according to defensenews.com.

In general, currently available counter-drone (C-UAS) systems provide early detection, analysis and identification, alerting and termination of the threatening drones by means of portable or highly mobile solutions (even though there are also C-UAS systems in fixed configuration). The drone is usually disabled by means of EW (Electronic Warfare), by disrupting multiple RF frequency bands simultaneously denying radio signals from the controller, making Live Video Feed and GPS signal unavailable to the remote operator.

The Italian Air Force fleet supporting OIR (the multinational Operation Inherent Resolve against Daesh in Iraq and Syria) includes the Eurofighter Typhoon and Predator assets tasked with ISR (Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance) missions and KC-767A tankers providing AAR (Air-to-Air Refueling) support to the Coalition assets.