Global defence has been on high alert since early 2022 with the Russia-Ukraine war and heightened tensions worldwide. Electronic warfare is evolving, and we see more frequent and increasingly sophisticated threats. While there are positive use cases for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) – like rescue and search missions – their hostile use is growing due to their flexibility, low cost and capacity to be updated.
Today, unmanned systems such as drones are considered one of the biggest threats to military coalition forces, and their use is only intensifying. Radio Controlled Improvised Explosive Devices (RCIEDs) account for most military and civilian casualties in asymmetric warfare environments.
It’s not just defence teams that are acutely aware of new threats. Security and policing are seeing more incursions across borders and threats to critical national infrastructure, where billions of dollars of services are at risk. In this context, successfully defeating any danger posed by errant, illegal or malicious UASs is becoming ever more critical for an increasingly wide range of domestic and international military and security forces.
The ability to counter threats and provide communication security is now considered among the highest global priorities, and this is where Radio Frequency (RF) plays a vital role.
Innovation in technology capabilities
UAS threats are RF-enabled, resulting in mounting demand for RF inhibitors and continued innovation in the space since the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts onwards. Technology is keeping teams ahead by offering significant defeat capabilities and sophisticated analysis, adapting at the same rapid pace as the threats themselves.
Guided by the highest industry standards, the most sophisticated RF inhibition solutions are designed for safety and reliability and are currently deployed to counter defence aircraft and unmanned systems worldwide.
Considerations to stay one step ahead
Defence and security teams need to consider if their RF inhibition technology will deliver efficient “kills” even as rapid development continues and the landscape changes. To do so, there are several considerations for defeating a hostile UAS, including mobility and range.
The threat/counter-threat cycle is speeding up as each side of the conflict iterates to thwart the other. Therefore, defence and security teams prioritise methods that help shorten the threat evolution loop and keep them one step ahead of their adversaries. Enabling updates to control mechanisms and protocol change via a controllable source helps keep pace with evading threats as they develop. For example, a UAS’s protocols are constantly changing as they hop within and across RF bands, making it harder for counter technology to track and defeat them.
A growing concern for some defence and security teams is that RF defeat can result in RF leakage, which can take out emergency services or friendly force unmanned systems and the threat itself. This “all down” strategy is increasingly risky, so they want to ensure a more targeted kill. Rather than downing everything in the sky, having directional technology ensures a clean kill of just the hostile UAS, minimising collateral impacts in complex RF operating environments.
With increasing mobility, speed and distance capabilities of unmanned devices, countermeasures require longer-range, specific frequencies, high spectral purity and directional beams to increase chances of defeat. During peacetime (before 2022), a three-kilometre range was generally sufficient to keep threats at bay. This has changed, and defence and security teams need double-digit range capabilities in every direction to succeed. They require low power consumption while still delivering extended-range performance.
RF countermeasure inhibition techniques have evolved to Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology. SDR sources enable countermeasure systems to keep pace with and defeat the ever-evolving specialised command, control and communications (C3) links in the unmanned systems domain. An advanced SDR-based technique coupled with the directional inhibition beam is the key to defeating the most advanced frequency agile and band-agile C3 links at the range required to protect against today’s long-range, fast-moving unmanned threats.
Perhaps more than ever, defence and security organisations must consider cost efficiencies, productivity and efficiency of all kit to ensure assets are maximally used. This is why multi-layered and network-enabled technologies are essential to enabling assets to appear in multiple places via multiple capabilities. For example, these organisations could seamlessly harmonise their RF inhibition system with third-party multisensory drone detection and kinetic systems, to provide ultimate operational flexibility.
Claw is critical for today’s battlespace
SPX CommTech’s Claw RF inhibitor system, developed by Enterprise Control Systems (ECS), offers a significant defeat capability to current and emerging threats and has capabilities that specifically address the above considerations. Drawing on 35 years of expertise in the defence and security space, ECS’s RF Inhibitors use software fills, which can be generic or based on a specific sophisticated threat analysis for operations in multiple electronic threat environments.
The last two years have seen a dramatic shift in the protocols used to communicate and control threats. Gone are the standard spread of bands once seen in commercial systems during peacetime. As such, and in order to have the best chance of success, jamming systems need to keep pace in matching the focused energy of the signals of interest. A simple chip change can affect this subtly or dramatically. These “software fills” ensure specific counters to threats can be optimised, but may also require conscious decision-making to be made around priorities and expected threat set. Beyond this, technology is allowing increasingly complex control and communication signals to be developed that in turn generate the need for further details to be taken into account.
Claw is designed to disrupt and neutralise the threat posed by a UAS engaged in weaponised, hostile surveillance, and other malicious acts by jamming signals. It disrupts the control, navigation, and telemetry a UAS uses and can be customised for end-user requirements. It is a secure, fully self-contained, compact system that inhibits five individually selectable command and control links between the target UAS and its operator. It requires no external signal processing or power amplification modules and is insulated from third-party interference.
Claw is accredited with over 2,000 UAS defeats in multiple conflicts, including by the US Department of Defence, since its deployment in the 2017 Battle of Mosul. Furthermore, it is currently used worldwide to counter UAS threats in conflicts and other zones.
Key features supporting teams
Due to heightened global threats, defence and security teams are using more of the Claw RF inhibitor’s capabilities, which means it can operate to even higher potential. Its key features supporting teams around the world in increasingly complex environments include:
- More range, accuracy, and agility than any other RF Inhibiting system, defeating drone attacks over greater distances, keeping critical infrastructure and people safe.
- Intelligent RF Inhibition ensures spectral cleanliness limiting collateral damage and unparalleled record for long-range drone defeat. This is partly because Claw is powered by SDR, ensuring real-time, reactive and targeted power allocation within 400MHz to 6GHz frequency range. As the RF spectrum becomes ever busier and the effects of spectrum leakage risks become ever greater, Claw inhibits waveforms in a controlled manner, with no unwanted transmissions outside of the desired target band.
- The RF inhibitor uses open technology to quickly become an effector of choice and fit within multiple architectures or deployment modes. The Claw RF inhibitor can be easily integrated into multi-layered air defence systems delivering a comprehensive RF defeat capability.
- It exists in the sweet spot as a soft kill effect, offering range over and above a lot of other solutions – for instance gun systems, cannons, or Very Short Range Air Defence System (VSHORAD). Claw’s cost per shot, or cost per kill, is cheaper and more beneficial than hard kill solutions.
- It is built explicitly for top-end, power and range. Due to heightened global threats, however, defence and security teams today use more capabilities, which means the inhibitor delivers a higher operational level to protect people, critical national infrastructure and borders.
- Recent trials confirm Claw as being ahead of many rivals as one of the most efficient directional high-powered jammers available on the market.
- It’s also easy to integrate and can be typical 240V AC or 24V DC (standard vehicle supply) and the user interface needs can be loaded onto standard available PC’s or for a deeper Command and Control (C2) integration. We see UAS utilised now in all aspects of conflict, from pure ISR missions through to complicated redirection of live fire missions to devastating effect. As such, the information including imagery gathered from the countering of these activities is of interest at every level of command and this requires linkage with multiple C2 systems to facilitate.
Extending Claw’s capabilities
SPX CommTech can integrate the Claw RF inhibitor system into multiple Counter Unmanned Aerial System (Counter-UAS) detect and track systems, such as BLACKTALON. The solution was jointly developed by SPX CommTech’s TCI and ECS, providing an effective way to integrate passive and active RF detection to locate, identify, track and defeat drones, allowing for flexibility in deployment in an ever-changing and evolving threat environment. Proven in active conflict, its SDR source generation delivers an inhibition waveform best suited for Counter-UAS. High-gain, directional antennas transmit the inhibition waveforms, ensuring the antennas illuminate the target. Furthermore, the antennas have a nominal 20° beamwidth providing the power density required at the target UAS, which allows mitigating collateral impact upon other systems and is without a doubt a key factor for using RF.
BLACKTALON is an open architecture Counter-UAS solution that also enables users to integrate their legacy or preferred sensors and to interface the system to their C2 system of choice. This allows the capability to be scaled in response to an emerging and evolving Concept of Operations (ConOps), to the Operational Environment and to the available budget. This flexibility allows for a custom solution approach that embraces established Technology Readiness Level 9 (TRL9) components into a solution for immediate operational impact whilst providing the ability to scale the sensor and effector solution in response to changing threats and ConOps in the future. The outcome is early and reliable detection, pinpoint tracking, and selective defeat options to mitigate the UAS of concern.
Looking to the future
While threats continue to evolve at high speed, so must the tools that provide teams with critical protection well before the potential threat materialises into reality. Going forward, as UAS and other unmanned attacks continue to evolve, the effectiveness of countermeasure solutions will depend to a large extent upon the ability to understand and foresee the next generation technology that is likely to be deployed to adapt countermeasure solutions rapidly on the battlefield.
Counter unmanned systems must ultimately form part of every country’s overall strategic defence capability. To ensure defence and security organisations remain ahead, SPX CommTech continues to review the threats and innovates to solve the challenges customers often don’t yet know they face. Claw will continue to become a more prevalent networked remote weapon system.
As solutions manufacturers, at SPX CommTech, our primary goal is focused on innovation and progress, but more broadly, we must continue to deliver technology like our Claw and BLACKTALON solutions that ensure a smarter, more secure future for us all.
For more information on our SPX CommTech Battlespace solutions, visit www.tcibr.com and www.enterprisecontrol.co.uk or our stand at DSEI (H2-874) from 12-15 September 2023 at ExCel London.