NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland – Anti-drone technology has been high on the shopping list of public safety and military organizations at least since a drunken federal employee crashed a drone onto the White House lawn. Two companies on hand at the Navy League Sea Air Space Exposition this week had two slightly different approaches to the problem. One anti-drone device has already been deployed in the hands of federal law enforcement and the military, and a “street legal” version may be coming soon.
The drone “killer” getting the most attention at Sea Air Space was the DroneDefender, a system developed by researchers at the nonprofit research and development organization Battelle. DroneDefender is a two-pronged drone jammer—it can disrupt command-and-control signals from a remote operator or disrupt automatic GPS or GLONASS guidance, depending on which of the devices’ two triggers is pulled.
Powered by a small backpack, DroneDefender looks like some futuristic over-under, radio-frequency shotgun-grenade launcher. Targeted through a simple optical sight, the device has a range of about 400 meters. Battelle calls it a “directed RF energy weapon”—it sends out a jamming signal in the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) bands or global positioning bands in a 30-degree cone around the point of aim.
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