Countering UAS Using EW and DEW Attack Vectors

Although the term Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) is often used interchangeably with both Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and “drone,” a UAS is a “system” of three parts, with UAV or “drone” referring to the aircraft itself. In addition to the aircraft, the UAS includes the control station and the communication link between the control station and the aircraft. It is this communications link that is often the primary target, or “attack vector,” of conventional Electronic Warfare (EW) systems. A second EW attack vector is the aircraft navigation system, which utilizes very low power Global Positioning System (GPS) signals to reference itself in three-dimensional space. Interfering with the passage of information from Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) like the U.S.’s GPS, Europe’s Galileo, China’s BeiDou, and Russia’s GLONASS, is the essence of navigation warfare (NAVWAR). The manipulation, degradation, or denial of these communications and navigation signals constitutes the vast majority of ongoing counter-UAS (C-UAS) activities in the Department of Defense (DoD). While these C-UAS EW activities have proven to be successful when the appropriate attack vectors can be identified and exploited, technological advances in autonomy, artificial intelligence, and techniques specifically designed to counter ongoing EW activities is rapidly evolving. As these attack vectors either close, or become increasingly difficult to exploit, the DoD requires capabilities that are still able to address the growingly ubiquitous UAS threat. This is where Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs), comprised of both high-power microwave (HPM) and high-energy laser (HEL) systems, can be utilized to open new C-UAS attack vectors, or re-open previous attack vectors that have been closed by conventional counter-countermeasure (CCM) techniques. In this webinar, I will discuss techniques for countering UAS using a combination of both conventional EW techniques, and DEW techniques, as technological advances in UAS technology make conventional EW attack vectors increasingly difficult to exploit