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DroneShield Releases 4Q24 Firmware Updates

Tuesday, November 26th, 2024

DroneShield (“DroneShield” or “the Company”) is pleased to announce it has released the latest update to its full range of Radio Frequency (RF) sensors including the RfPatrol, DroneSentry-X and RfOne models.

This update adds new drone models and communication protocols which can be identified by RFAI, including new types of home-made or non-commercial UxS. RF devices operate with greater stability and accuracy resulting in faster, more reliable drone detection.

New features include:

Faster Scanning with AI: Detection scans are now 17% faster, so users are notified of drones sooner and kept up to date in near-real-time. Settings can be configured to further optimise scan time based on mission requirements

New Drone Types: RFAI drone library has been expanded to recognise more signals which are used in custom and aftermarket drones

Growing API: Each device’s inbuilt gRPC API extends to cover greater control of positioning systems. Disruption protocols are faster and more regular, providing dependability when it matters most

Cybersecurity Resilience: Onboard firmware has seen a slew of security improvements in line with expectations from leading defence clients

AI & Software Improvements: Increased accuracy in direction-finding calculations, as well as future-proofing features for upcoming performance improvements in 2025

Angus Bean, DroneShield Chief Technology Officer, commented, “DroneShield always aims to provide our customers with industry-leading technology so they can maintain the highest degree of safety and security in the face of an evolving drone threat.”

For more information on product capabilities, visit www.droneshield.com.

Posted in Press Release, Tac Apps, UAS | No Comments »

Biomonitoring: New Partnership Between Rheinmetall and QUS Ensures Tactical Information Superiority

Monday, June 17th, 2024

Rheinmetall has set new standards with its innovative and powerful Gladius 2.0 soldier system. With its open, modular, scalable architecture, the system is unrivalled worldwide for a user-centric soldier system solution. An up-to-date situational awareness with a consistent, stable communication infrastructure enables operational sensor-to-shooter networks. Gladius 2.0 guarantees a decisive advantage on the digital battlefield under even the most challenging of conditions.

Rheinmetall continues to improve its systems and has now entered a partnership with QUS in vital data tracking to jointly develop a solution in this area. Live tracking of vital data allows training units to be adjusted during training to ensure optimal fitness development. During operations, current information on the physical condition of individual soldiers or the entire unit is available, which is important for further tactical decisions. This is particularly crucial for soldiers in current complex operational scenarios under difficult conditions.

Modern Equipment Supports Mission Fulfillment
QUS, with its established system, already meets many requirements relevant for successful integration into soldier systems. Therefore, it can be easily integrated and significantly expands the capabilities of soldier systems. 

“We are very pleased about the new partnership with Rheinmetall. Together, we will develop a system that seamlessly integrates into Rheinmetall’s battlefield management system, creating additional value in this area. Knowing and assessing the vital data of soldiers at any time is very important for performance,” says Hannes Steiner, QUS CEO & Founder.
Timo Haas, Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of Rheinmetall AG and Managing Director of Rheinmetall Electronics GmbH: “Biomonitoring, as we know it from competitive sports, will also play an important role for soldiers in the future to optimize operational readiness. For us as a system provider, QUS’s solution offers an additional component in our modular soldier system. And with a view to digitization, AI-supported data can make an important contribution to tactical decisions at higher command levels.”

The joint solution of QUS and Rheinmetall within the partnership will combine everything related to body data and fully exploit its potential. The ability to combine already proven sensors (heart rate, respiratory rate) with other external sensors (such as temperature, etc.) enables a new basis for tactical decisions based on the knowledge of the current condition of the soldiers. 

The fusion of this data with tactical information represents a new dimension of information superiority regarding one’s own troops and will not only improve the performance of soldiers but also the command process.

Credo of the New Partnership: Protecting Those Who Protect Us

Hannes Steiner: “The joint solution with Rheinmetall combines the best of both worlds and primarily protects those who protect us. The vital data tracking using textile sensors integrated into the equipment offers an important additional benefit and supports the way to becoming the infantryman of the future.”

At EUROSATORY, Rheinmetall and QUS are looking forward to welcoming interested guests to their stand E115/F115 on the outdoor area of the Paris exhibition center from June 17 to 21, 2024.

Posted in International, Press Release, Tac Apps, TAK | Comments Off on Biomonitoring: New Partnership Between Rheinmetall and QUS Ensures Tactical Information Superiority

Inspiring Story: Tactical NAV Helps Ukrainian Man Save His Family

Tuesday, April 30th, 2024

The Tactical NAV app was created by a US Army fire support officer to help simplify MGRS-based navigation and map use on an iPhone. The app is available via the App Store.

The creator, Jon Springer, received this email and passed it on to me. I agree with Jon that it’s worth a share.

Apparently, some of Roman’s family not only used Tactical NAV to get to safety in Poland, but others are using it in combat in Ukraine.

Posted in Tac Apps | 4 Comments »

USARCENT Tests Phone App That Detects Unmanned Aerial Systems

Friday, July 28th, 2023

SHAW AIR FORCE BASE, S.C. — U.S. Army Central’s Task Force 39, the team dedicated to developing innovative ideas throughout USARCENT, facilitated a test of CARPE Dronvm at McEntire Joint National Guard Base and Poinsett Range on July 18, 2023.

CARPE Dronvm is a DoD funded application developed by MITRE Corporation that uses crowd-sourced information to detect unmanned aerial systems, or UAS. This test used a version of the application on cell phones to detect a UAS. Maj. Travis Valley, the Task Force 39 operations officer, said the potential for crowd-sourced UAS detection increases force protection capabilities.

“The CARPE Dronvm experiment, or proof of principle, was a huge success for ARCENT.” said Valley. “This was the largest experiment ARCENT has conducted to date. We expanded the experiment footprint, covering 50 kilometers, with multiple individuals in the area using the CARPE Dronvm app. This was all to prove the CARPE Dronvm app works. It did, in fact it exceeded my expectations on the simplicity of use and the program’s drone detection ability. This has the potential as a force protection multiplier, adding another tool to help protect Soldiers in a deployed environment.”

During the test, Soldiers used government provided cellular devices to test the functionality and capability of the application by capturing images of a UAS. The UAS used in the test flew from McEntire JNGB to Poinsett Range to provide the maximum amount of testing space available.

CARPE Dronvm is the result of a U.S. Air Forces Central initiative to develop systems to detect UAS. U.S. Army Central is testing the ability to operate this application at the Soldier level.

“Countering the drone threat in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility is essential to keeping our personnel, aircraft and equipment safe,” said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Steven Norris, AFCENT counter-UAS cell chief. “Our MITRE partners have been helping make CARPE Dronvm a reality since 2019. Every single warfighter can help sense and warn, creating a comprehensive layered defense that will tie into our existing command and control architecture and increase awareness of threats in the region.”

In recent years, the threat posed by UAS increased as malign regional actors continue to use and experiment with this relatively cheap weapons system. Due to its low cost to entry, it is becoming the weapon of choice for potential adversaries resulting in rapid technology proliferation and increased employment. Lt. Gen. Patrick Frank, the USARCENT commanding general said his command is focused on developing technologies to counter this threat.

“The UAS threat is a shared security challenge for the U.S. and our regional partners,” said Frank. “To combat this threat, CENTCOM and USARCENT will test and field counter-UAS systems. The advanced measures we intend to pursue regarding innovation and experimentation will provide critical, real-time data to inform Army and defense decisions on counter-UAS technologies.”

United States Army Central is the U.S. Army service component command for United States Central Command and is responsible to the Secretary of the Army for the support and administration of more than 12,000 Soldiers, including those assigned to joint task forces and embassies, across the 21 countries in the CENTCOM area of responsibility.

Story by CPT Richard Moore

Photos by SFC Michael Behlin, SSG Leo Jenkins, and SGT Amber Cobena

Posted in Army, Digitization, Guest Post, Tac Apps, UAS | Comments Off on USARCENT Tests Phone App That Detects Unmanned Aerial Systems

DroneOptID Firmware Update for Enhanced Drone Detection, ID and Tracking

Tuesday, February 28th, 2023

DroneShield is pleased to announce the release of the latest update for its DroneOptID platform.

DroneOptID is a computer vision-based system used to control various thermal and optical sensors, detect, classify and track small drones or UAV targets.

Customers enrolled in DroneShield’s DroneSentry-C2 with DroneOptID software subscription, receive quarterly updates to the proprietary DroneOptID classification engine. DroneOptID is a camera agnostic software solution and DroneShield offers multiple camera options along with it to support various customer use cases, performance and budget requirements.

Major upgrades include:

• Improved Scan Pattern Performance: Major performance improvement to the optical scan pattern algorithm for faster target acquisition from radar and RF detections.

• Improved Object Size Estimation: Significant improvement to the passive optical object size estimation, enabling dynamic optical distance estimation adjustments when distance was previously acquired by other sensors.

• Deep DroneOpt2 Integration: Full featured integration of the DroneOpt2 model supporting both thermal and optical feeds with DroneOptID classification.

• AI Model Optimisation: Detection model optimisation for faster acquisition and improved high-speed target optical tracking.

• Integration for Sensor Fusion Applications: DroneOptID provides data stream designed to integrate with Sensor Fusion based systems such as DroneSentry-C2.

• Reduced Optical False Detections: Expansion of the DroneOptID data sets, reducing false detection probability.


DroneShield DroneSentry-C2 Command-and-Control System with DroneOptID module

Angus Bean, DroneShield Chief Technology Officer, commented, “As the counterdrone industry matures and our end user community begin taking back control of their low altitude airspace, the use of electronic countermeasures becomes a vital part of the response action. Our partners often require visual confirmation of target prior to the use of such countermeasures. This DroneOptID quarterly firmware release expands the reliability, accuracy, and functionality of a critical piece of technology.”

Posted in Press Release, Tac Apps, UAS | Comments Off on DroneOptID Firmware Update for Enhanced Drone Detection, ID and Tracking

Army Software Factory, USAREUR-AF Partner on Tech Modernization

Tuesday, February 28th, 2023

GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, many organizations strive to stay ahead of the curve in terms of technology and innovation. The Department of the Army is no exception, and its efforts to modernize and streamline its operations have recently taken a leap forward due to the agile software development processes of the Army Software Factory, or ASF.

The ASF is a significant step forward in the modernization of military operations. By streamlining an agile software development cycle, minimizing the need for external acquisition and promoting collaboration, the ASF is positioned to deliver innovative solutions to the military.

“The idea here is that we’re trying to meet Soldiers where they are at,” said 1st Lt. Aanand Shah, a software engineer for ASF. “What that means here in Europe is we are able to develop solutions that can work across multiple networks with Allies, partner countries and nations as well as internally within theater.”

During a recent interoperability exercise at 7th Army Training Command the Soldier-led ASF, in collaboration with U.S. Army Europe and Africa Mission Command Support Branch, developed new solutions directly addressing issues that in the past created challenges for U.S. and NATO allied system interoperability.

“My developer initially wrote an application that would bridge data between U.S. and NATO systems from the Army Tactical Assault Kit,” said Martin Christian Dudel, a civilian senior software engineer with USAREUR-AF. “The Army Software Factory came to Europe and helped us modernize the code and take it from a standalone application that must run on a server, into a container that can operate in a cloud native environment on the tactical edge bridging U.S. and NATO systems. This is a capability that we didn’t have before.”

The solution opens an entirely new range of possibilities as now essentially any application can be developed, deployed and seamlessly interact with the data of a partner nation’s application operating at the tactical edge.

“We’ve developed a path to production where apps go from origin to security scanning to deployment into Kubernetes clusters that will run on a TSI stack here on the edge of the battlefield,” said Sgt. 1st Class Joshua Millett, a platform engineer with ASF.

At the heart of ASF is a commitment to continuous improvement and a focus on collaboration. Teams within the ASF are encouraged to work together and closely with their end users to cultivate user stories, share ideas, determine best practices and learn from each other. This helps foster a culture of innovation and ensures that everyone is working toward a common goal of delivering high-quality software solutions to meet the needs of the military.

“It’s incredibly rewarding for our Soldiers to assist USAREUR-AF in accomplishing its challenging mission while we help Army Futures Command design the Army of 2040,” said Col. Vito Errico, director of ASF. “The Army has exceptionally talented Soldiers who can help lead us through digital transformation at the lowest levels.”

Upon meeting with representatives from the 7th Army Training Command’s public affairs team, Col. Michael Kaloostian, a senior leader and decision maker with USAREUR-AF’s G-6 division, confirmed the ongoing collaboration and solutions from ASF’s efforts.

“Our relationship with the Army Software Factory is essential to the command’s digital transformation,” said Col. Kaloostian. “The European theater’s digital landscape is complicated, and it’s our responsibility to simplify it by innovating software-based solutions that are shareable with our mission partners at the speed of conflict. Incorporating a DevSecOps model into our cloud environment assures that we can rapidly meet the command’s operational priorities and truly become data-centric.”

One of 7th Army Training Command’s core missions is to lead the Army in developing Allied and partner nation interoperability by providing the Army with an active learning, near-peer environment to press modernization initiatives. Working with ASF to furnish a realistic operational training environment for U.S., NATO, Allied and partner nations to introduce solutions to the military’s modern challenges is one of the ways 7th ATC works toward accomplishing that mission.

Story by CPT Darryl Padgett

Photos by SSG Ashley Low

Posted in Army, Digitization, Guest Post, Tac Apps | Comments Off on Army Software Factory, USAREUR-AF Partner on Tech Modernization

ATAK 4.7 Available Now

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2022

Android Team Awareness Kit (ATAK-CIV) is an open source app providing mission planning, geospatial, Full Motion Video (FMV), and system administrator tools that reduces the operational footprint from a tactical laptop, to a commercial mobile device. The geospatial engine and communications component support Department of Defense (DoD) and commercial sector standards. Extensibility of the core platform is supported by the Software Development Kit (https://takmaps.com/), which enables any partner to develop mission-specific capability or contribute to the advancement of the baseline. Data can be pre-loaded into ATAK or downloaded from the network when available.

Civil use capabilities of ATAK-CIV include:

• Online and offline mapping (most standard formats), with a blazing fast rendering engine

• Support for very high-resolution imagery (sub 1 cm resolution)

• Collaborative mapping, including points, drawings, locations of interest

• Extensive and customizable set of Icons

• Overlay Manager which allows the Import and display of KML, KMZ, GPX overlays, maps and imagery including both online and offline sources with adjustable transparency. These overlays can be treated as Gridded Refrence Gaphics.

• Location marking, sharing, history

• Chat, file sharing, photo sharing, video sharing, streaming

• Navigation-walking/hiking, driving, also useful flying and air-ground coordination

• Elevation Tools, heat maps, computed contour maps, viewsheds, routes w/DTED, SRTM, including dynamic profiling

• Hashtags and Sticky tags

• Center on Self, Center on other objects (e.g. another person in the network)

• Range, bearing, and other measurement tools

• Network-aware geofences with triggers

• “Bloodhound” destination tracking, including on moving objects

• Team Emergency Beacons

• Customizable Toolbar

• Radio controls and Integration

• Photo to map capability (aka Rubber Sheeting)

• Casualty evacuation tool

• Icon support for a wide variety of First Responder missions with further extensible Icons

• 3D perspective and ability to display 3D geospatial models

• Useful for First Responders, Hunting, fishing, ornithology, wildlife site survey

Get it here.?

Posted in Tac Apps, TAK | 1 Comment »

Software Factory Helps Transform Army from Industrial to Information Age

Thursday, June 2nd, 2022

REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. — Anyone can submit a problem to the Army Software Factory.

To be clear, that is not just anyone at the factory, or in the formation, or anyone of a certain rank or office. Anyone in the U.S. Army can submit a problem to the Army Software Factory. It is an innovative concept but one that fulfills the promise of Army Futures Command.

When AFC was stood up in 2018, it was understood that it would not be business as usual. And when AFC opened the Army Software Factory in 2021, it was making good on that promise. The first-of-its-kind factory brings in rotating groups of Soldiers and Army civilians through a highly competitive application process and trains them in modern agile software development. Joshua Farrington of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center, or AvMC, is one of those civilians chosen for a prestigious factory rotation. Farrington is currently in a three-year assignment at the factory located in Austin, Texas.

“Employees that accept a rotation with the Army Software Factory bring their unique perspectives and capabilities from their home organizations and share those ideas into our ecosystem which further widens our vision of what is possible,” said Maj. Christopher Bennett, product manager at the Army Software Factory. “In addition to building their collaboration skills, rotations of employees that come through the Software Factory will encourage innovation through context-sharing on problems and products. When more people see a greater variety of problems and pains solved by software across the Army, it helps build a repository of ideas more easily shared across teams to reference.”

The program starts with a 16-week boot camp. There are four different tracks — platform engineer, software developer, product manager and designer. Farrington is on the software development track.

When a problem is submitted, the factory has a team to vet it. They do interviews, an initial scoping, and then decide whether to accept the problem. Once a problem is accepted, the assigned team works with partners to build a web application to address the problem — providing the collaboration that Army Futures Command is striving to foster Army-wide. Currently, Farrington is working on an application that will assist the 101st Airborne Division in their air assault mission planning process.

Another innovative aspect of the factory is that it is “rank agnostic” with Soldiers solving problems for Soldiers — an experience that Farrington said has been personally beneficial.

“It has been impactful for me — working directly with a lot of Soldiers,” Farrington shared. “At AvMC, we were doing things for the Warfighter but I was not around the Warfighter. Now, here, I am on a team with three other Soldiers who have directly dealt with the problem we are trying to solve. My impact for the Warfighter feels a lot more tangible.

“I was a civilian at AvMC writing Army-related software and I just wouldn’t have the context on what the app was actually doing because I had never flown a helicopter. So a Soldier who actually understands the context of how an app is actually going to be used – it just makes it so much easier to make decisions. I think having more Soldiers writing software will be a huge asset to the Army.”

In the Army’s continuing mission to transform itself from the industrial age to the information age, the Army Software Factory is a key player in the future fight — one that will be as much in the virtual cloud as it is in the physical ones.

“One of the big purposes of the Software Factory is to increase the software that is in the Army’s technical capabilities,” Farrington said. “The talent is already there, the Software Factory is finding a way to make the most of it.”

By Katie Davis Skelley, DEVCOM Aviation & Missile Center Public Affairs

Posted in Army, Guest Post, Tac Apps | Comments Off on Software Factory Helps Transform Army from Industrial to Information Age

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