Great referral @neke86_ will definitely take a listen, as a holder of DroneShield I’m very keen to hear some voices from outside of that tent.

@neke86_ did that 240 pg buyer link fail? Or is my phone playing up?

My apologies:

https://www.unmannedairspace.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Counter-UAS-directory.-April-2023.v2.pdf

Also this now:

https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/06/19/small-drones-will-soon-lose-combat-advantage-french-army-chief-says/

Note the use of combined-formation on-platform counter-drone systems. That will be the way of the future on the battlefield (the near future).

So I’ve listened to the modern war institute pod. Interesting listen! Fascinating to hear from those on the ground experiencing this first hand.

Not having much/any experience with the military and definitely not the US military I was impressed and very surprised by the nuanced view put by the guests.

takeaways for me were:

• most commonly used defeat was ballistic/missile take down
• they achieved around an 80-90% success rate of defeat prior to impact
• EW solutions (eg Droneshield’s defeat options) were not overly effective in this setting
• caveats: the setting was a stationary military base facing level 2/3 drones seemingly from Iran militia/armed forces.
• the drones sound like they were pre-programmed and possibly not being actively flown (this may have compromised the radio interference approach to defeat)
• the guest commented that he sees a near future in which instead of the 5 drones/hour they saw there will be thousands of drones at once. He reasonably surmised this might require a different approach to what they’d taken before…
• overall it certainly seemed that in this setting droneshield type defeat solutions were less effective as a class (although he didn’t say what manufacturers)
• I wondered if high numbers of class 1 drones (small commercial type) still might be more susceptible to EW than to ballistic/missile approaches…
• keen for your thoughts @neke86_

He was very careful to avoid saying all the fancy stuff didn't work, but that's definitely what he was 'saying'. They were EM spectrum heavy systems, and the 5-6 radars he mentioned were likely Raytheon and similar - I infer this because they'd be used to support the weapons platforms he DID mention.

I wouldn't take too much away from this for DroneShield, because he is talking about Type 2 and 3, rather than Type 1, which is DroneShield's target market. What you should take away from it though is how bad the fog of war and terrain around a static base impacted detection and EW interception of far more powerful systems, and how hardened most drones were.

Extrapolate this to Type 1 drones in the field and it gets worse not better. You have trees, battlefield debris, buildings, EW jamming (did you pick up how it affected their own comms?), weather, attack angles and so much more. And if you're talking swarms of Type 1, there is no need to have a human operator when you can program the swarm and send them out cold, unable to be jammed, rendering DroneShield nearly useless?

I have doubts that DroneShield solutions will ever deliver results in the field for military customers and you can already see much bigger players are in there.

Please also check out the French, who see this as a passing fad to be adapted into already.

Oleg has done an incredible job of "militarizing" a product that is only really suitable for law enforcement and airports and turning a $200m company into a multi billion dollar pump and dump that he sold into. Anyway I'm just bitter that being right about a product has once again meant absolutely nothing on the ASX, I should have just remained stupidly optimistic and eaten those management porn slides right up when I realized it was all about sexing up a capital raise not an academic military debate. Maybe next time!

I did note that EW messing up their Comms. Not a con I’d heard discussed before but makes sense.

thanks for your point of view @neke86_ its’s great to hear from a bear on DroneShield.

As a lay person, can I ask do you have a military background or connection? You seem to have insights deeper than mine that’s for sure

The other speaker (Catalano? ~39m40s) also highlighted the four weaknesses of EW that, while he was talking about countering Type 2, will apply to any level of magnitude against any drone type:

1. It doesn't work against the target
2. It interferes with your other response solutions (aka you jam yourself) "which we did see a few times"
3. It interferes with civilian infrastructure and devices (discharging 360-degree EW at an airport? reeeealllly?)
4. Long term risk of EW being extremely brittle solution, software contest

He also says quite clearly that the most effective system they used was Raytheon's KuRFS [1] which does rockets, mortars, all drone classes, and pairs with the Coyote missile and other remote firing systems like 50-caliber guns and 30 mm cannons, and directed energy weapons (this is why I hold a small amount of EOS in RL). As you can see, it is small, vehicle mounted and suits most use cases including Type 1 but pairs with all layers of defense.

My background, I'm in cybersecurity now but I was with the Department of Defense (civilian, not ADF) for several years before this :)

[1] https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-missile-defense/kurfs

I’m interested in how you conclude there is no role for EW @neke86_

in the article your posted the French army chief made this comment about effectiveness of electronic warfare

“Already today, 75% of drones on the battlefield in Ukraine are lost to electronic warfare, the general said.”

in the same article he later said that there would need to be a mix of vehicles equipped with ballistic weapons as well as EW approaches…

I’m not sure he was arguing against EW per se but more explaining that anti drone technology as a whole is likely to catch up and lessen the impact of drones over the next few years…

I suppose the other challenge for you @neke86_ is how you conclude that droneshield’s tech has no role on the battlefield when the announced contracts to US military (and use in Ukraine) suggest a role. Whilst as a holder I would like to see more large contacts announced they do seem to be getting some repeat orders for military customers…

not trying to argue for argument’s sake and with the frothy valuation I have lightened my load but I do think sales are important in the conversation. For those of us who are agnostic on which tech will play a role in the fight against drones what should we look to rather than repeat sales…?

Hey mate I just said I had doubts the DroneShield products will deliver results, by which I mean, lasting long term advantages for the user. EW is alive and well, but that's just it, it's alive and well. Someone is already selling it, it's already in the field where it has been for decades. DroneShield is not a first mover, or doing anything differentiated in ECM/EW except maybe with a big paddle gun.

Those mid-single digit contracts might be proof of more, but the US Army buys billions in tech and sometimes just for testing - that's what was happening at Al Assad Air Base for instance. I'm sure those were all paid for.

To be honest if I had real money in this I'd be getting into field interviews. Ignore the company, see if you can find someone who knows what they're talking about or find more tangential resources like the ones I supplied. Similarly, research competitors, just start typing in Google "Raytheon counter drone" or find out what that big Danish company is and what their products and customers are.

Lots of opportunity for work to be done in the space and it is most definitely not all tOp SeCrEt :)

Like this @neke86_ . Great discussing with you!

@neke86_ I think these Barn tanks are pretty clear sign that EW isn’t fully effective.

https://youtu.be/y6WhBaXctVY?si=vKyUxN47qoUxhN-n

This longer video goes a bit more into it

https://youtu.be/h_LwTgkLCSM?si=ZCszTyIUEmpwLu08

I did read that some of the barn tanks are effectively EW tanks and are driving in a column of vehicles with a key purpose of protecting them (i.e. the Tank’s EW is making a proportion of the FPV drones fail and the extra bits of tin shed are taking the hits from any that get through).

There is clearly a very technological arms race going on in this section of military expenditure which I think means tailwinds in market size. I think the question is still how strong DRO’s moat is (given the amount of backyard stuff coming out of Ukraine and presumably other conflict zones … see my previous posts) and ultimately what classes of drones its going to be able to counter. I think there is probably going to be a lot of equivalents in the drone warfare market to the Toyota technical (i.e. the DJI FPV) and the efficacy of the anti-drone will depend upon the type of conflict.

@neke86_ I think there are two things here:

It all seems to be about asymmetry in warfare at the moment (eg. Ukraine has sent a few special forces to Syria and some other African hot spot to pester Russians and make them redivert disproportional resources there and away from Ukraine).

Squillion dollar Patriot systems and other Kinetic things are massive overkill for commercial FPV drones (I know that’s an exaggeration) but eventually the the opposing force runs out of money for real military stuff when faced with an overwhelming quantity of cheap commercial things. (In Ukraine’s case this is the patience of the US taxpayer represented by Congress and their President)

If DRO can show some success in narrowing the gap in this asymmetric area i.e. a few thousand $ drone gun (aka paddle) is relatively effective (vs DJI with mortar shell) compared with the far more expensive and scarce things from the big end of the military industrial complex then there could be a good niche for them and they make themselves a possible acquisition target (still part of my original thesis).

I think you’ve touched also touched on something important here … if DRO has managed to get to profitability and scale by taking advantage of conflict circumstances and developing a “Mil-Spec” credential with NATO SKUs etc. then every Mall cop and small town police department etc is going to want some of their tech and that is their true market opportunity (not really something DRO and Oleg spend much time talking about today)

Sadly (due to recent tragedies) I saw a security guard at my local Westfield wearing body armor the other day … so I can see the potential for proliferation of this anti-drone stuff in civilian use cases as well.

DISC: Held in SM and IRL (trying to work out how much froth to blow off the top)