YEHUD, Israel \u2014 Israel, one of the pioneers of drone warfare, is now on the front lines of an arms race to protect against attacks by the unmanned aircraft.<\/p>\n
A host of Israeli companies have developed defense systems they say can detect or destroy incoming drones. But obstacles remain, particularly when operating in crowded urban airspaces.<\/p>\n
\u201cFighting these systems is really hard \u2026 not just because you need to detect them, but you also need to detect them everywhere and all the time,\u201d said Ulrike Franke, a policy fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations.<\/p>\n
Drones present unique challenges that set them apart from traditional airborne threats, such as missiles or warplanes.<\/p>\n
They can fly below standard military radar systems and use GPS technology to execute pinpoint attacks on sensitive targets for a fraction of the price of a fighter jet. They can also be deployed in \u201cswarms,\u201d which can trick or elude conventional defense systems. Even small off-the-shelf drones can be turned into weapons by rigging them with explosives or simply crashing them in crowded areas.<\/p>\n
A series of drone strikes across the Middle East, including an attack on a Saudi oil field and processing plant that jolted international markets earlier this month, have underscored the devastating effectiveness of small unmanned attack aircraft.<\/p>\n
The drone attack on Saudi energy infrastructure knocked out about half of the kingdom\u2019s oil supplies.<\/p>\n
Yemen\u2019s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels claimed the attack, but the U.S. has blamed Iran itself, which is a leading developer of drone technology and is locked in a bitter rivalry with both Saudi Arabia and Israel.<\/p>\n
Similar drone attacks on Saudi Arabia\u2019s oil industry by the Houthis a month earlier caused a \u201climited fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in the region, Israeli warplanes last month struck what Israel said was an Iranian-trained Hezbollah squad that was preparing to launch a group of drones toward Israel from Syria. A day later, Hezbollah said two Israeli drones crashed outside the group\u2019s offices in Beirut. Israeli media said the drone strike had destroyed valuable equipment used to make guided missiles.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, the Israeli military said an unmanned aircraft crossed into Israel from the Gaza Strip and dropped explosives on a military vehicle, causing minimal damage and no casualties. It was the second such attack from Gaza in the past year.<\/p>\n
These threats are not confined to the battlefield. London\u2019s Gatwick Airport shut for parts of three days, stranding over 100,000 travelers ahead of Christmas last year, after drone sightings.<\/p>\n
Israel has long been a dominant player in the military drone export business, developing small attack aircraft as well as long-range spy planes. Now, Israeli firms are at the forefront of a global industry developing means to protect against the drone threat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a lot of knowledge that was adapted from the area of unmanned aerial vehicles, which is something that the military had to deal with for a long, long time,\u201d said Ben Nassi, a researcher at Israel\u2019s Ben Gurion University specializing in drone threats.<\/p>\n
In a laboratory near Israel\u2019s main international airport, Israel Aerospace Industries offered a glance at its new optical detection system: a black cube resembling a souped-up subwoofer that it says can spot a standard commercial drone from several miles (kilometers) away.<\/p>\n
The state-owned company says the Popstar system can track and identify flying objects day or night without being detected. Developers say the system, which has already been field tested by the Israeli military, can differentiate threats from standard civilian aircraft with an advanced algorithm.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn a daily basis we see these small-scale threats, such as drones, that can tie up a whole airport and shut down the entire air traffic,\u201d said Ariel Gomez, a systems engineer at IAI who worked on the new drone detection platform.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur system can discern from several kilometers away any threat that approaches,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Popstar focuses on protecting fixed, high-value targets like airports or energy infrastructure. Experts say it is much more difficult to use the technology in crowded urban environments, where heavy air traffic and high-rise buildings can create confusion and obstacles.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the industry is actually targeting the threats in a no-fly area,\u201d said Nassi. \u201cWhen it comes to populated areas, law enforcement has much more difficulties to understand whether a drone is being used maliciously or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israeli company Vorpal says it has found a partial solution to these challenges by developing a system that can detect and track virtually all commercial UAVs in urban airspaces.<\/p>\n
Avner Turniansky, Vorpal\u2019s vice president of strategy, said the company has compiled a database of signals \u2014 what it calls the \u201csignature\u201d \u2014 emitted by 95% of drones on the market.<\/p>\n
With these signatures, it says it can identify a drone \u2014 and locate its operator \u2014 within two seconds. Customers can track these aircraft and determine whether they pose a threat.<\/p>\n
He said the system has a range of several kilometers, but still has some limitations. If an operator is flying a commercial drone whose signal hasn\u2019t been previously collected, it won\u2019t be identified. The system would also struggle to identify sophisticated drones built by hostile governments, since those signatures are likely unknown.<\/p>\n
Still, he said the system can track \u201cthe vast majority\u201d of popular drones on the market.<\/p>\n
He said the firm has conducted several successful tests with the New York Police Department and counts Israel\u2019s national police force and the Defense Ministry as customers. During this year\u2019s Eurovision song contest in Tel Aviv, he said police caught more than 20 operators who were flying drones in no-fly zones.<\/p>\n
According to Israel\u2019s Economy Ministry, UAV exports topped $4.6 billion between 2005 and 2013, around 10% of the country\u2019s defense exports.<\/p>\n
Over a dozen Israeli firms presented cutting-edge anti-drone technologies at London\u2019s DSEI exhibition this month, from defense heavyweights Elbit Systems, Raphael and Israel Aerospace Industries, to smaller start-ups like Vorpal. They are part of a booming global industry with competitors from the U.S., Europe, Singapore, and China.<\/p>\n
Anti-drone defenses fall into several categories. Detection systems usually rely on either radio or optical technology to spot incoming drones.<\/p>\n
Other systems can stop the aircraft with jammers that down aircraft by scrambling communications, kinetic systems that try to knock the craft out of the sky or systems that allow authorities to seize control of an aircraft.<\/p>\n
But for now, none of these systems can provide full protection.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a nasty target. It\u2019s a problem,\u201d said Turniansky. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be cat and mouse for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n
Associated Press writer Josef Federman contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
YEHUD, Israel \u2014 Israel, one of the pioneers of drone warfare, is now on the front lines of an arms race to protect against attacks by the unmanned aircraft.<\/p>\n
A host of Israeli companies have developed defense systems they say can detect or destroy incoming drones. But obstacles remain, particularly when operating in crowded urban airspaces.<\/p>\n
\u201cFighting these systems is really hard \u2026 not just because you need to detect them, but you also need to detect them everywhere and all the time,\u201d said Ulrike Franke, a policy fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations.<\/p>\n
Drones present unique challenges that set them apart from traditional airborne threats, such as missiles or warplanes.<\/p>\n
They can fly below standard military radar systems and use GPS technology to execute pinpoint attacks on sensitive targets for a fraction of the price of a fighter jet. They can also be deployed in \u201cswarms,\u201d which can trick or elude conventional defense systems. Even small off-the-shelf drones can be turne..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}