AUDS counter-drone system upgraded

Sept. 8 (UPI) -- The AUDS counter-drone system has been enhanced for deployment on vehicles and features new technology to defeat swarm attacks.

The AUDS system was first deployed in 2015 by a consortium of British companies -- Blighter Surveillance Systems, Chess Dynamics and Enterprise Control Systems. It uses an intuitive interface to detect, track, identify and defeat a drone in about 15 seconds at a range of up to six miles.

"We have continued to refine our advanced RF inhibition capabilities to meet identified changes in the threat, enabling additional attributes designed to engage with some of the longer range fixed-winged drones that have appeared over the last 12 months," Colin Bullock, chief executive officer of Enterprise Control Systems, said in a press release. "Our specialist RF engineers have also further fine-tuned some advanced techniques to even more effectively defeat coordinated multi-drone swarm attacks made up of mixed drone types approaching in complex mission scenarios."

The AUDS system gets its effectiveness against multi-mode swarm attacks through a multi-band radio frequency inhibitor that simultaneously targets a drone's communications bands to defeat its command-and-control links.

AUDS detects a drone using an electronic scanning micro-Doppler radar, tracks it using a precision controlled infrared and daylight camera system incorporating advanced video tracking software, and then uses a non-kinetic radio frequency inhibitor to defeat the drone.

AUDS has been optimized and ruggedized for deployment on a vehicle, delivering 'on-the-pause' counter-drone capability to protect a base or infrastructure, a mobile force, or convoy, according to Blighter Surveillance Systems.