Shieldbreaker: Tube Launched sensor package and Collaborative Drone Swarm Software suite for Situational Awareness

The team is developing and demonstrating a next generation tube-launched UAS sensor package for real-time threat monitoring, site investigation and situational awareness against aerial threats including missiles and protection for mobile units. Project shieldbreaker (1st generation prototype developed by the U.S. Naval research laboratory) is an efficient rotary-wing, tube-launched, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platform, which carries a wide array of sensor packages for increased situational awareness in variable conditions. A final demonstration of a 2nd generation variant of the system will be performed during this project.ĀAddressing needs for Operational Imperative 04: Tactile Air Dominance and Imperative 05: Resilient Basing, the proposed system provides significant improvement over current technologies for detection and protection against adversary threats. Relative to other tube-launched equivalent fixed-wing options, the (shieldbreaker) hardware platform has more payload volume, ability to hover and track relative to slow-moving targets, and the ability to point independent of vehicle velocity. Additionally, the hardware platform utilizes a fully built in sensor package including bio/chemical threat detection, EO/IR camera feeds, and RF detection sensors. Additionally, the new fully integrated swarm-based operating system enables a single operator to simultaneously monitor, launch and operator multiple platform, for increased manned-unmanned teaming operations.