NATO Agency holds exercise to improve counter drone technology

Описание: The misuse of small, widely available drones represents a significant and growing risk to NATO operations and day-to-day defence activity. NATO is working with industry to develop capabilities to counter this threat. A trial of various counter-drone technologies and systems was undertaken at an airbase in the Netherlands. The exercise, C-UAS TIE 21 (Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Technical Interoperability Exercise) brought together specialists from across the civilian, military, scientific and industry world in order to test emerging technologies and integrate systems that will counter small drones.

The goals of the testing were to identify a minimum set of standards relevant for the NATO C-UAS domain; facilitate the implementation of these standards in a collaborative environment; demonstrate interoperability between C-UAS components and fully integrated systems in NATO-relevant scenarios; and evaluate C-UAS technical architectures and identify standardization gaps.

The achievement of so-called ‘zero-second integration’ was also an objective; the ability to link various sensor and detection systems together instantly without the need for software or hardware adaptations.

Footage includes various counter-drone technologies in action, drone flights and interviews with military and civilian specialists.

DR CRISTIAN COMAN, NATO COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION AGENCY (NCIA)
‘Within the Alliance there is a multiplication effect that you will see when everyone works in the same direction and we can talk to each other the same language. And I’m saying here not only speaking French and English as languages but also speaking technical languages, the same language. So for NATO it’s important to make sure that when nations are procuring capabilities and investing money in this capability, their capabilities can be employed together into a joint area of operations such that we can achieve this multiplication effect of an alliance.’

MAJOR KOEDAM, ROYAL NETHERLANDS AIR FORCE
‘The reason for this event is to bring all together. In NATO there are so many countries, so many systems, and we want to have them integrated. And this is basically the intent of this exercise, to try to find ways to integrate all these different systems to bring a common operational picture. An operational picture brings so many advantages when trying to mitigate this drone threat that we are seeing.’

SOUNDBITE IN ENGLISH - PROFESSOR PAUL THOMAS, DSTL
‘Zero-second integration is really important because rather than spending months or years developing a system which, by the time you’ve fielded the system, the threat has changed or gone away, you can just click together these pieces like Lego and they just work at deployment time so you can respond to a threat, to a new threat or to an emerging threat by integrating the pieces you need at the time you need them.’

#eudebates the unique initiative aiming to promote debate, dialogue, knowledge, participation and communication among citizens. #Drones #Antidrones #defence #NATO

The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency) organized a counter-drone exercise from 2 to 12 November 2021 at the Lieutenant General Best Barracks in Vredepeel, the Netherlands.

NATO's Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS) Technical Interoperability Exercise 2021 (TIE21) is a live testing event used to ensure that commercial systems from different NATO Nations can work together to counter the threats posed by drones.

Exercise C-UAS TIE21 is particularly timely, as it highlights how machine learning and artificial intelligence are used in the Alliance after the recent approval of NATO's first Artificial Intelligence Strategy. NCI Agency experts contributed to the development of the strategy by offering their lessons learned from implementing artificial intelligence projects for NATO.

One system deployed during the exercise was the NCI Agency's own prototype ARTEMIS*, which uses machine learning algorithms to detect and classify drones.

"ARTEMIS is a prototype system developed by the Agency's centre of technical expertise on countering unmanned aircraft systems," said Major General Göksel Sevindik, the Chief of Staff at the NCI Agency. "It is an essential tool to help the Agency understand the technology being used in the market and to identify areas where NATO would benefit from developing standards around counter-UAS systems."

The NCI Agency hosted the exercise with the support of NATO Headquarters through the Defence Against Terrorism Programme of Work and the C-UAS Joint Nucleus within the Netherlands Ministry of Defence.

Drones are used for a large variety of applications, from conventional military uses such as security surveillance purposes and search and rescue, to commercial, recreational and personal use.