Australian companies at forefront of tackling the UAS threat

How Australia is tackling the drone threat.

The maritime version of the EOS Slinger counter-drone system that has been sold to an undisclosed European customer.

In Ukraine, up to 70 per cent of the country’s combat losses have been due to hostile uncrewed aerial systems, or UASs, says Andreas Schwer chief executive of Canberra-based Electro Optic Systems.

“Your window of opportunity (to destroy a UAS) is three seconds. If you don’t hit with the first round, you are killed,” he says.

“We’ve decided to become an anti-drone company, simply because the battlefield situation has changed so dramatically.

“You cannot defeat 10,000 drones a month (using anti-aircraft missiles), and that’s the … quantity of drones the Ukrainians and Russians are bringing to the battlefield.”

Defence recognises the threat and is suddenly doing a lot with UASs very quickly and answering vocal critics of the ADF’s force structure.

Last year, Defence’s Advanced Strategic Capability Accelerator, (ASCA), held a competitive fly-off which resulted in the ADF acquiring five Australian-made UASs worth about $106m in all, for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), research and training. The last will be delivered later this year.

In May ASCA issued a Request for Tender (RFT) for Australian companies who could build Precision Loitering Munitions (PLM) under Mission Talon Strike. These lethal First Person View (FPV) UASs are required to go at least 100km carrying an explosive payload of up to 6kg with deliveries due to start this week.

But two of Defence’s most significant moves are its counter-UAS programs. Project LAND156, launched late last year, aims to select a Systems Integration Partner (SIP) who can deliver a Command and Control (C2) system that can spot and identify hostile drones. It must be able to work with a range of sensors and what Defence calls “effectors” – guns, electronic jammers and directed energy weapons such as High-Energy Lasers (HELs) that can disable or destroy hostile drones cheaply.

Sydney-based DroneShield, whose UAS jammers have a global reputation, is a contender and offers “a mature and proven Command and Control (C2) Mission System and a set of commercially integrated sensors and effectors to the global market,” says Terry Van Haren, the company’s vice-president for strategy.

Last month, ASCA launched Mission Syracuse, whose RFT closed this month and aims to field Australian-made effectors by 2027. They need to work against swarms of UASs weighing less than 25kg and flying at 250kt as well as UASs weighing up to 600kg but still flying at 250kt.

The news is welcomed by Australia’s growing population of counter-UAS specialists.

Claiming to be the first Australian company to develop a successful HEL, Melbourne-based AIM Defence has developed its Fractl:2 under nearly $10m-worth of Defence development contracts.

The Fractl:2’s laser is powerful enough to burn through steel, and precise enough to track and shoot down a UAS travelling at 100km/h the company says. Fusing AI-enabled tracking with a novel HEL gun, it delivers very high accuracy at a distance of 1km while being more than 10 times smaller, lighter, and safer than any current HEL systems being trialled, the company adds.

Also a contender is EOS which last year recorded sales of $176m and employs nearly 500 staff in Australia and overseas.

The company has done laser-based space debris mapping for 40 years and now also manufactures Remote Weapon Stations (RWS) for armoured vehicles and ships because of the tracking accuracy it has built up performing space work. Its RWSs are fitted with AI-enabled electro-optical and infrared trackers that follow targets automatically.

“We are probably the only weapon station company developing and producing our own sensor unit,” Schwer says. “That’s the reason why we are more accurate than anybody else.”

EOS’s Slinger counter-UAS system, launched in early 2023, is based on its R400 RWS.

Its configuration can include machine guns or 30mm cannon with a 2km range and it can incorporate its own HEL that will either permanently blind a UAS or destroy it altogether out to about 3km. And in late May, EOS announced it had made a $53m sale to an undisclosed European country of its first maritime version of Slinger.

A single “shot” with an HEL costs just $1, compared with up to $200 for a 30mm cannon round – which is still very affordable compared to a missile, Schwer adds.

Furthermore, “it’s unlimited supply, because you don’t need to replenish ammunition”.

But the procurement price of a HEL is still quite high until scale production drives costs down, he acknowledges.

The company has also developed a system that’s independent of the US State Department’s incredibly cumbersome International Trade in Arm Regulations (ITAR), so its products aren’t subject to veto or delays caused by the US government.

While most of its products incorporate US components and are subject to State Department approval, its new R500 RWS is entirely ITAR-free “by customer request,” according to Schwer: “When you participate in tenders in France or Germany, they tell you it must be US content-free.”

So the R500’s design rights are in Singapore, it is licensed to Australia for use by the ADF and can be sold and serviced worldwide without needing US government approval. And European and Middle Eastern exports really matter to high-technology companies like EOS that need to create volume, Schwer points out.