DroneShield July Newsletter
DroneShield has continued strong momentum on multiple fronts over last several months across working with our customers, product development, scaling-up of the team and more. This July newsletter captures a selection of some (but far from all) of these developments:
The United States Department of Defense and other U.S. government agencies:
The United States government, through a wide variety of its agencies and departments, is the largest counterdrone customer globally.
DroneShield has continued to be invited to, and participate in a number of system evaluations by a range of US Government agencies. There is no one entry point or influencer within the C-UAS market in the US. Due to the U.S. market size and the wide-ranging requirements for C-UAS, these trials and evaluations serve as pre-requisites for subsequent purchases by each primary agency.
Several purchases were completed by and delivered to US Government agencies during the quarter, mostly across the portables sector, as the vehicle/ship and fixed site products are completing product evaluations.
DroneShield has also continued to increase its presence and visibility within U.S. markets, which now includes a customer base that spans the U.S. Department of Defense, Federal and State level government, and commercial organisations and integrators.
During the quarter, DroneShield continued to expand its US operations, in its new and larger US premises in Virginia. The Company has also continued to grow its US team, now consisting of 6 full time employees and 2 contractors across Sales, Field Service Engineering and Bid Response Writing.
Image: US Department of Homeland Security DroneSentry™ trials
DroneSentry-X™ successfully completed a demonstration exercise with the U.S. Navy. The system was deployed on the Stiletto experimentation vessel for six weeks, successfully completing a range of performance and evaluation metrics.
The system demonstrated overall detection capability, detection and defeat ranges, on-the-move operation in various sea states, and effectiveness against drone swarms, involving a wide range of unmanned robotic threats.
Image: DroneSentry-X™ on the US Navy Stiletto vessel
DroneSentry-X™ is a high-performance detection and mitigation solution for a wide range of environments including ground mobility operations, maritime security and fixed-site base requirements.
DroneSentry-X™ is powered by RFAI, DroneShield’s cutting-edge AI/ML signal detection and classification engine, providing unparalleled performance in the C-UAS space. DroneSentry-X™ ’s open architecture and interoperability allows users to easily integrate DroneSentry-X™ with other solutions to further enhance existing mission systems or counter-UAS capabilities.
The successful US Navy demonstration validates other recent DroneSentry-X™ evaluations by the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and both Federal and State Law Enforcement agencies.
The Company has also continued to work with Cassidy & Associates, Inc. (“Cassidy”), a pre-eminent Washington, DC government relations firm, during the quarter, whereby Cassidy advises the Company on contracting with U.S. government agencies, contracts in connection with U.S. federal government budgetary allocations, and other U.S. federal government relations matters.
Australian Department of Defence and other government agencies
Being an Australian business, DroneShield is well positioned for work with the Australian Department of Defence and other Government agencies.
During the quarter, the Company successfully completed work on its first Electronic Warfare contract with the Australian Department of Defence.
DroneShield subsequently received a second, larger, Electronic Warfare contract with the same customer.
Electronic Warfare and Signals Intelligence is an adjacent area utilising existing DroneShield C-UAS skillset, but with much wider applications.
Australian Army has recently released images of DroneShield’s equipment in their deployment, in a mobile configuration on a vehicle.
DroneShield continues to work with Hon Christopher Pyne, the 54th Australian Defence Minister, to deepen the Company’s reach into the Australian and global defence channels.
Image: RfOne MKII™ on a mobile variant deployment demonstrated to the Australian Army
Image: Hon Christopher Pyne at Land Forces 2021 exhibition, holding DroneGun MKIII™
Europe
DroneShield continued multiple deployments and trials through Europe, participating in a number of military, airport and prison opportunities.
The United Kingdom – Partnership with BT
DroneShield continues its partnership with BT on its counterdrone pipeline.
UK Ministry of Defence (“UK MOD”) continues to be the prime focus for the partnership, along with law enforcement and airport customers.
DroneShield and BT have made substantial inroads within the UK MOD and other UK customers over the last 12 months, despite the COVID-19 slowdown.
The Company (via its UK team) and BT have now commenced extensive end user evaluations, as the UK emerges from the COVID lockdown, with trials going exceptionally well, including trials of the new DroneSentry-X™ system.
Airports
A number of airport agencies globally, including Federal Aviation Administration (“FAA”) in the US, provided updates on their C-UAS processes, showing active plans to deploy C-UAS.
DroneShield expects to be included in every major airport procurement process, with a number of its products ideally suited for airport environments, due to their passive (non-emitting) nature, world leading detection range and low false alarm rate, ability to identify and track both the drone and its pilot, an extensive software suite that can be easily integrated with existing airport systems, and exceptional value for money.
The U.S. Air Force Grand Forks base install provides an existing reference case for a military airport, alongside DroneShield’s Altenrhein (Switzerland) civilian airport reference.
Company Developments & Achievements
Team and Operations
DroneShield has completed its near-term hiring plan, with the team comprising of 50 staff - substantially engineers, sales and field support, and production technicians. The Company is continuing to recruit in its Australian and US offices, on an opportunistic basis.
Image: Mino Bucci, RF AI Team Lead, with Tharshini Gunendradasan, AI Engineer
Image: DroneShield Software team in meeting
Image: DroneShield team at a test site
Manufacturing & Production
Continued outsourcing of larger production runs to an experienced defence manufacturing contractor in Adelaide (a fully Australian owned and operated medium size specialised electronics manufacturer).
The manufacturer has completed initial large production runs (50-100 units), successfully working through the scalability considerations (the earlier production runs were of 10-20 units quantity).
DroneShield continues to do its own manufacturing of smaller batches of its products (co-located with its main R&D premises in Sydney, enabling agile product refinement).
Image: Radar Breakout Box Units following final QC testing
Image: RfPatrol MKII™ units following final QC testing
Image: DroneSentry-X™heatsinks during the manufacturing process
Image: RfOne MKII™ units undergoing final QC testing
Image: RfOne MKII™ units prepared for shipment
Image: DroneSentry-XTM prepared for shipment by the DroneShield team
Industry & Events
Industry Events
While most trade shows continue to be postponed or held virtually due to COVID during the quarter, DroneShield participated in events which continued to go ahead, directly or via partners.
This included the Australian Army Robotics Exposition (ARX) which was held in Brisbane on 20 April, and the Land Forces Expo, also in Brisbane, held 1-3 June, where the Company exhibited both in its own stand, and at the stands of its exhibiting partners.
Image: DroneShield CEO Oleg Vornik and Sales Director Red McClintock, with Hon Stuart Ayres, Minister for Jobs, Investment, Tourism and Western Sydney of New South Wales, at Land Forces 2021
Image: DroneShield’s DroneSentry-XTM system on an Unmanned Ground Vehicle, and the DroneShield stand, at the Australian Army’s Robotics Expo (ARX)
Images: DroneShield participating in West Virginia Mock Prison Riot event
DroneShield plans to participate in major defence and security shows going ahead in second half of 2021, directly or via its partners, such as Sea-Air-Space in the US, MILIPOL in France and DSEI in the UK.
DroneShield continued marketing via an extensive in-country demonstration program via its on-the-ground local partner network.
Image: DroneShield product demonstration in France via an in-country partner, during the quarter
Industry Recognition and Awards
Australian Defence Sales 2021 Catalogue
DroneShield was included, for another consecutive year, in the Australian Defence Sales catalogue, unveiled by Hon Melissa Price, Australian Defence Industry Minister, in May 2021. The Catalogue is a key brief by the Australian Government for foreign defence purchasers looking for Australian capability providers.
Image: Front cover of the 2021 Australian Defence Sales Catalogue, including DroneShield
NSW Premier’s NSW Resilient Export Award
DroneShield won the 2020 NSW Premier’s NSW Resilient Export Award
Image: NSW Government promotional feature of recognising DroneShield’s performance through the recent period
2021 Women in Defence Awards
Carla Balanco, DroneShield’s CFO and Company Secretary, was recognised as a finalist in the ADM Women in Defence Awards:
Image: DroneShield CFO Carla Balanco recognised as a finalist in ADM’s Women in Defence Awards during the 2Q21 quarter
2021 NSW iAwards
DroneOptID™ Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning computer vision software won two awards at the 2021 NSW iAwards - the Australian Information Industry Association’s awards program that celebrates excellence in Australian Innovation. DroneOptIDT™ was developed with the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) under the Defence Innovation Network (DIN) grant scheme.
Image: DroneShield engineer Guillaume Jounel winning the 2021 iAwards, for the DroneOptID computer vision AI project, developed in conjunction with UTS under a defence grant
Image: DroneShield CEO Oleg Vornik and Optical AI Lead Guillaume Jounel, with Dr Nabin Sharma of UTS
Video Releases
DroneShield 2021 Corporate Video Release
DroneShield’s new corporate video released in late June can be viewed here:
Video: DroneShield corporate video June 2021
Partnerships
Zenith Aerospace
DroneShield expanded into counterdrone capabilities through tethered aerial vehicles in a partnership with Zenith AeroTech.
Zenith AeroTech is a US-based leading developer of customisable, heavy-lift tethered aerial vehicles ("TAVs"). Zenith AeroTech deployed DroneShield's DroneSentry-C2™ command-and-control system into its own family of TAVs, along with a miniaturised radar.
Partnership between the two companies enables significantly improved and longer-range drone detection (due to reduced clutter), combined with modular countermeasures.
Zenith AeroTech offers three different TAV platforms: Hexa, Quad 8, and Quadro. In contrast to standard drones, these three TAVs can stay aloft for hours, even days, due to Zenith's Ground Power-Tether Management System, which converts 120 or 240-volt AC power from a generator (or another source) into high-voltage DC, powering both platform and payload. The platforms themselves can carry 5-15kg of payload.
In addition to a capable drone-detection solution, Zenith AeroTech will be offering (where lawful) DroneShield's electronic countermeasure solutions, to be used by personnel on the ground. Since the drones are detected from further away, it provides personnel on the ground more time to respond to drone threats.
There are many potential markets for TAVs with counterdrone capabilities, including the military protecting forward operating bases; civilian security managers flying over sensitive facilities, and law enforcement safeguarding well-attended public events.
Trakka Systems
Trakka Systems, with whom DroneShield entered into a partnership in 1Q21, released a promotional video of the combined offering of the two companies. Trakka and DroneShield undertook a significant amount of joint marketing to US Government customers during the 2Q21 quarter.
DroneShield and Trakka Systems TIPS-C Promotional Video (May 2021):
Trakka Systems, with whom DroneShield entered into a partnership in 1Q21, released a promotional video of the combined offering of the two companies. Trakka and DroneShield undertook a significant amount of joint marketing to US Government customers during the 2Q21 quarter.
Trakka's Interceptor Package Solution for Counter Terror (TIPS-C) is a new breed of mobile, total mission management for the rapidly evolving threat of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS).
The TIPS-C utilizes and enhances Trakka's TrakkaCam and DroneShield's RadarZero sensors and DroneOptID optical AI/ML software, effectively combined to create an exceptional joint-capability drone detection and tracking system. DroneShield has provided the DroneSentry-C2 Command and Control software platform for the TIPS-C, integrating a common operating picture for drone detection and tracking within the immediate airspace, as well as providing an extensive reporting suite.
Product Development
Immediate Response Kit (IRK)
In June, DroneShield announced the release of Immediate Response Kit (IRK™ ), a rapidly deployable C-UAS detection and defeat kit.
IRKTM consists of an RfPatrol MKII™ portable (1.2kg incl battery) detection device and a DroneGun MKIII™ (2.1kg incl. battery) defeat device, in a single rugged carry case.
The kit is now available to approved purchasers. IRK™ was introduced in response to substantial interest from several end users.
Image: Immediate Response Kit (IRK)
Secure Software Portal
As the Company’s recurring Software as a Service (“SaaS”) business is continuing to grow with an increasing number of deployed devices on subscription plans, DroneShield has launched a secure portal, providing a scalable way for its customers to access periodic software updates.
Image: DroneShield’s secure software portal
DroneOptIDTM 2.0
In May 2021, DroneShield announced the release of DroneOptID™ 2.0, the second-generation version of its optical Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning based software.
The original DroneOptID™ system, developed in collaboration with the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) under a Defence Innovation Network grant from the Australian Government, has paved the way into a sophisticated AI-based software engine to detect, classify and track small, rapidly moving UAS, as well as their payloads.
The updates include a substantial overall enhancement of the engine, effectiveness in a wider range of environments including night-time via thermal sensors, improved detection and classification of UAS payloads and cutting-edge technology estimating the target distance and altitude from the sensor.
The update is provided as part of the overall DroneSentry-C2™ command-and-control ecosystem. The software processes imagery from a number of third-party camera hardware partners, including Trakka cameras, as part of their on-vehicle TIPS-C solution.
DroneShield utilises its proprietary techniques in signal processing and Machine Learning/AI to do near-real time detection and identification of unmanned robotic systems (UAVs, UGVs and USVs). Its DroneOptID™ the optical sensor stream works in parallel with RFAI cutting edge software engine in the radiofrequency spectrum sensing space.
In addition to enabling a variety of cameras substantially enhanced capabilities of target tracking via a layer of software, DroneOptID™ also opens the door to a variety of sophisticated target tracking applications on battlefield, cluttered urban and other complex environments, for a variety of threats, which is of interest to the Company’s existing and prospective Government and military customer base.
Image: DroneOptIDTM module within the DroneSentry-C2TM system