Page 19 - Security Today, January/February 2020

“It is time to take a hard look at the drone security vertical to protect and safeguard your ‘friendly’ skies.”
By Ralph C. Jensen
is relatively lightweight. You have to won- der how it is fired from the defender drone while remaining intact and able to hit the target precisely. The customizable under- carriage carries at least two nets, and can be configured for more or different types of effectors such as munitions and direct- ed energy, depending on the situation and legal use. At each corner point of the net- ting, a “bullet” ensures the net stays open and focused on the malicious aircraft. The company is always testing for various sce- narios and effectors with their blue/red teams, and has over 3,650 captures.
A five-foot predator drone hunter is able to carry up to a 30 pound load, and when captured, can easily drop it to a pre- assigned location. So, how much damage mightadronebeabletoinflict?OnAug.4, 2018, two drones detonated explosives near Avenida Bolívar, Caracas, where Nicolás Maduro, the President of Venezuela, was addressing the Bolivarian National Guard in front of the Centro Simón Bolívar Tow- ers and Palacio de Justicia de Caracas. The attack was an unsuccessful assassination attempt, as the payload of C4 explosives detonated early. It does, however, give an indication of how deadly a drone attack would be if executed to precision.
The Other Issues
There are other issues to be considered that are quite unnerving. Enthusiast drones are flown on a radio frequency (RF), and there are many RF-based coun- ter drone systems that detect, identify, and even understand where the operator is. Some of these systems can jam the RF, rendering the aircraft useless and unable to reach their intended target(s).
“RF counter drone systems have a lot of limitations when rogue drones are pro- grammed to fly RF-silent which is easy to achieve,” Preece said. “The Fortem SkyDome, TrueView and DroneHunter platform is radar based with lightweight ground and airborne radar designed and networked to see all ground or airborne objects, so it can’t be spoofed or blindsid- ed by malicious drone operators. RF data
ranges from private citizens monitoring around their homes, to cities, to state offi- cials, even the FAA. The true owner hasn’t been clearly defined. Who, for example, controls the airspace above private prop- erty where privacy, safety and noise are a huge concern? One thing is certain, drones and those who engineer them mean busi- ness. Security business.
Friend or Foe
Not every drone is a friendly drone, and recent events show that bad actors can use these unmanned aircraft to do mass amounts of damage. Enter Fortem Tech- nologies, a company in the business of
rogue drone hunting. Their air security and defense platform and fleet of mali- cious drone interceptors has the ability to intercept and down a rogue drone with- in seconds.
During a routine test flight, Fortem blue team members set up a virtual fence/ no fly zone to defend a multi-million dollar moored yacht. A rogue attack drone was launched by the red team to fly around and attack the protected area. Once an incursion into that defined space was determined as a threat, the Fortem DroneHunter launched autonomously to pursue and track the rogue drone, stream- ing information from its airborne radar and optics into the SkyDome ground con- trol screen. The controller on the ground watched the SkyDome monitor as the rogue drone circled the target. Suddenly, the attack drone moved in a little too close and the defender, DroneHunter, created by Fortem, launched into attack mode au- tonomously.
It didn’t attack all at once. Imagine the attack drone is like a football player who is the running back with the ball. The defender drone, DroneHunter, is similar to the middle linebacker who is patiently waiting for the ball carrier to commit to a (wrong) direction. All this is happening at 400 feet in the air.
With the rogue attack drone advancing across the virtual no-fly zone, the Drone- Hunter, programmed to defend the no-fly zone, takes immediate action and closes in on the rogue drone, tightening the distance between them autonomously and flying in lockstep with the attack drone’s every move with fighter jet precision.
The DroneHunter closes in, and when it gets within 20 feet of the attack drone (depending on wind speed, altitude and other factors), fires a 5x5 meter net at a 1000 psi and over 80mph strangling and neutralizing the unwanted drone. The de- fender drone then carries its prey back to a predetermined location, away from popu- lation, to be examined.
One last thing about drone capture. The netting that is fired at the rogue drone
WWW.SECURITYTODAY.COM 19
Alex Yuzhakov/Shutterstock.com