Raytheon [RTN] on Tuesday said it has teamed with counter-drone technology supplier Black Sage to provide an integrated solution to mitigate threats from unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) for civil, critical infrastructure and military applications worldwide.
Raytheon also made two additional counter-UAS announcements related to U.S. Army needs. The Army’s Howler, C-UAS, which consists of Raytheon’s Ku band radio frequency multi-mission simultaneous (KuRFS) radar and Coyote UAS system, achieved initial operational capability (IOC).
The Army has also begun retrofits of Raytheon’s Stinger missile with proximity fuzes, which broaden the array of threats the weapons can take on, including enemy drones. The company said the fuzes allow the Stingers to be detonated near the target.
Qualification testing on the new fuzes is complete and the deliveries of the enhanced Stingers to soldiers will begin later this year.
“The Stinger enhancement gives our troops exactly what they need, an affordable and effective way to defeat the growing number of enemy UAS targets in the skies above the battlefield,” Sam Deneke, vice president for Raytheon Land Warfare Systems, said in a statement. “The counter-UAS mission is so critical, several allied nations are interested in this upgraded Stinger.”
Under the teaming arrangement with Black Sage, Raytheon will provide its Windshear command and control system and integrate in Black Sage’s sensors, artificial intelligence and radio frequency jammers, creating a system a single operator can use to “safely and quickly track, take over or land drones flying where they shouldn’t,” Raytheon said.
Civil authorities and owners and operators of critical infrastructures such as airports worldwide are interested in C-UAS systems that can detect, track and mitigate potential drone threats without interfering with other electronic systems nearby or impacting nearby populations and physical infrastructure.
“As we saw at Gatwick and Heathrow airports, drones operating inside commercial air corridors are posing a real challenge,” Todd Probert, vice president of Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services, said in a statement. “And though Raytheon has developed a range of counter-drone systems, from missiles to lasers to high-powered microwaves, authorities also need a system that can safely stop and land a drone where it may not be safe to shoot them down. That’s why we’ve teamed with Black Sage on a solution safe enough to operate in a populated area.”
Raytheon said the Windshear-based C-UAS system is rugged enough to operate at remote military bases.
The Howler system that has achieved IOC with the Army was developed and fielded in 17 months. The Coyote UAS uses the KuRFS radar to acquire and track UAS threats of all sizes and then moves to engage a target and destroy it.
“Test after test proves that our Coyote is an integral solution for defeating the growing number of enemy drones in the skies above the battlefield, Deneke said.
Raytheon said its suite of sensors and threat interdiction technologies that include kinetic and non-kinetic “effectors” that are integrated into a command and control system provide capability across the entire C-UAS kill chain.