Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) and its partners, Ascent Vision and RADA Technologies, will participate in the SOFWERX ThunderDrone Rapid Prototyping Event (RPE) III demonstration at Nellis Air Force Base next month, according to a company press release. SOFWERX is a Partnership Intermediary Agreement between Doolittle Institute and the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), created to investigate new technology in an effort to put the most advanced capabilities into warfighters’ hands.
SNC and its partners will participate in the demo, also being called “Game of Drones,” using X-MADIS (eXpeditionary Mobile Aerial Defense Integrated System), which is a self-contained, fully mobile and integrated counter-unmanned aerial systems (C-UAS) capability. The C-UAS, radar and Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) equipment is integrated into a commercial off-road vehicle that can detect, locate, identify, track, exploit and defeat an enemy UAS (also known as drone) to protect airports, no-fly zones and other high-value infrastructure.
The SOFWERX RPE demonstration events began in June 2017 and have evaluated more than 450 technological capabilities aimed at bringing sea-, land-, and air-based UAS, tactical swarms, payloads (kinetic/non-kinetic/sensors), and their associated data science applications to the Special Operations Community. ThunderDrone RPE III is the culmination of the events, and X-MADIS is one of just 30 remaining entrants. Only warfighters, interagency partners, and select contributors from industry and academia may participate in RPEs, which are formally evaluated by a government assessment team.
