L10X

What's new: Defense Secretary Austin announced that #Replicator 2.0 will focus on counter-UAS. Get up to speed, quick: Check out our analysis of how, as DOD is seeing increased UAS activity, Congress is supporting significant increases to c-UAS initiatives both from a procurement and RDT&E perspective. Deep dive: Our team has tracked DOD’s budget requests across service branches for counter- #drone technologies and recent noteworthy c-UAS contracts. Plus: See how Replicator has sent a demand signal to the defense industrial base, which is spurring investment in manufacturing capacity. Michael Smitsky, Esq., Keely Griffith, David Klein, David Ambrozic, Chelsie "CJ" Jeppson

Image Processing Techniques for UAV Detection This paper explores different iterations of the state-of-the-art YOLO (You Only Look Once) object detection models, which leverage computer vision and deep learning techniques to detect small UAVs. The authors propose integrating various image-processing methods into the existing YOLO models to enhance detection accuracy, resulting in notable performance improvements. https://hubs.la/Q02P4VwZ0

Key to accelerating the US Army’s Company Level #SUAS included funding from Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and choosing systems that were already available on DIU’s “Blue UAS List.” The Blue List consists of DoD approved drones that are compliant with section 848 of the FY20 NDAA , section 817 of the FY23 NDAA, and the American Security Drone Act. “We at DIU are thrilled to support the Army on this critical initiative," said Doug Beck.? "This is a great example of DIU’s ability to bring unique capabilities and funding to bear in partnership with the Services to bring the best commercially derived technology to the warfighter, fast, and to help put our Service partners in a position to be able to scale it for strategic effect.”

Podcast: Why There Is No Silver Bullet for Countering Small UAS In the second part of the interview, O’Hara provides more perspective on how the use of directed energy, high-powered lasers, and microwaves can be improved to become more effective in countering the proliferation of small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in warfare. Technology Part 2 https://hubs.la/Q02PFkP20

Skyfire and Echelon join forces to advance AI for UAS Public safety and Department of Defense (DoD) drone programme implementation specialist, Skyfire Consulting, has announced that it will merge with Echelon AI, a provider of AI for autonomous and swarming drone technology. Together, they will form SkyfireAI, which aims to revolutionise the future of drone operations for public safety and defence. Skyfire’s founders and core team have backgrounds in law enforcement, military service, the CIA, DARPA, firefighting and EMS-first response as well as military and civil aviation. https://hubs.la/Q02PTkBY0

Drones Swarm Characterization Using RF Signals Analysis Using large numbers of drones simultaneously enhances mission reliability through redundancy, survivability, scalability, and improved performance in complex environments. This research proposes a novel approach for characterizing and detecting drone swarms by analyzing RF (radio frequency) signals combined with various machine learning techniques. Unlike existing methods focusing on single-drone detection using supervised learning, this study introduces an unsupervised approach to drone swarm characterization. https://hubs.la/Q02PPPkF0

There have been some meaningful developments in the drone industry related to spectrum rules for UAS operations. Read more about the Federal Communications Commission order to allow limited access to spectrum in the 5030-5091 MHz band for use by drones and AUVSI — Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International's ongoing advocacy to make addition progress in this area going forward. Scott Shtofman Max Rosen Michael Smitsky, Esq. Chelsie "CJ" Jeppson Anna Dietrich Sara Baxenberg Joshua Turner

Last year, Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, Pacific (NIWC PAC) partnered to proactively develop a Common Operational Database (#COD) that could enable unmanned systems to operate effectively and in concert within disconnected, denied, intermittent, and/or limited bandwidth (#DDIL) environments. In January of 2024, DIU awarded prototype agreements to three companies: Ditto, Syntiant and Harper DB. All three were successful in their proof of concept efforts to support this project. “The capability to enable scalable mission autonomy was proven in government-run test and evaluation exercises and will continue to be used and improved for the realization of the hybrid fleet,” said Mike Tall, Senior Science and Technology Manager (SSTM), Project Overmatch. DIU Program Manager and Navy Lieutenant Commander Al Williams noted that, “The combination of these capabilities will significantly improve maritime domain awareness / command & control (C2) in critical maritime DDIL environments as a key force enabler.” Read more about Project COD and its technology here: https://lnkd.in/gsMPQqDF Ditto HarperDB, Inc. Syntiant Corp. US Navy