USVs trial counter-UAS equipment package in open-water demonstration
Arlington, Virginia-based defence technology company Leonardo DRS has completed its first series of open-water demonstrations of its advanced maritime mission equipment package (MEP) for counter‑unmanned aerial system (C‑UAS) naval fleet protection.
The DRS maritime MEP is a scalable C-UAS system based on DRS’s proven land-based mobile short-range air defense and C-UAS systems.
DRS said this system is designed to be mounted on a range of small uncrewed surface vessels (USVs), thus providing remote ship protection at varying distances.
The company added that the system could provide a practical solution for the US Navy as it looks to autonomous surface vessels to protect ships from air and surface threats.
The initial demonstrations were conducted under realistic sea conditions and demonstrated the MEP’s core integrated systems performance – the detection, identification and tracking of a UAS threat and counter-surface ship tracking.
The MEP used in the demonstration included a suite of DRS sensors and command-and-control technologies including a passive radio frequency (RF) detection system, an electro-optic/infrared (EO/IR) gimbal with advanced thermal cameras, and a tactical data management system using DRS’s sensor fusion operating system and AI to support fusion and target recognition using RF and optical modalities.
"By leveraging our proven expertise in mobile ground-based counter-UAS and short-range air defence systems, we have rapidly developed and demonstrated a maritime force protection capability that provides sailors with full-spectrum situational awareness and the tools to detect, track, and defeat threats at the tactical edge," said Cari Ossenfort, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Leonardo DRS Naval Electronics business unit.
The DRS Maritime MEP is designed for mission-flexibility through modularity and platform agnosticism. It is able to integrate advanced active and passive RF, EO/IR sensors, 4G/5G electronic‑warfare systems, and scalable kinetic or non‑kinetic effectors using its open system architecture embedded in the Leonardo DRS operating system.