The UK’s Royal Air Force (RAF) is currently considering developing a centre of excellence for C-UAS expertise, where experts from throughout the service and even industry partners and academia could work collaboratively, according to Squadron Leader Dan Quale, Officer Commanding C-UAS Operations Evaluation Unit OEU, 2 C-UAS Wing Royal Air Force Leeming, speaking SAE Media Group’s Counter UAS Technology Europe Conference.
The first military counter-UAS mitigation systems have been deployed in the UK, in Northern Ireland in support of the visit there by US President Joe Biden. In the UK, library-based C-UAS systems are fine for domestic deployments and should be fine for another year or two, where the main threat are nuisance drones, but for overseas, military deployments other technologies are required, he reported. A key challenge is to identify common features in different procurement programmes, he said.
