Future of warfare: new tech helps better detect drones

It's been called'the future of warfare'. Off-the-shelf unmanned aerial systems (UAS), carrying a'payload' of explosives or biological material, flown by terrorists or enemy armed forces into a crowded building or military base. Now the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and Sydney ASX-listed defence tech company DroneShield have produced next-generation drone technology to better identify threats from these aggressive UAS. In a partnership funded by the NSW and Australian Governments, UTS and DroneShield – an Australian developer of counter-UAS solutions – have produced an optical system for detection, identification and tracking of fast-moving threats such as nefarious UAS, comprised of a camera and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). UTS and DroneShield began working together in October 2019 – just a month after one of the most recent examples of aggressive use of drones when the oil facilities at Abqaiq–Khurais in Saudi Arabia were attacked by a swarm of UAS.