UK purchases LiveLink CUAS system
The CUAS sensor has been trialled on the UK RN’s XV Patrick Blackett. (Photo: Crown Copyright/UK RN)
LiveLink has worked with the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), Defence and Security Accelerator and Royal Navy (RN) in the development of CUAS sensors and systems.
The UK Royal Navy (RN) has purchased new CUAS sensors which were developed by the UK’s DASA and LiveLink Aerospace.
The procurement follows LiveLink receiving a contract in 2020 under the Countering Drones: Phase 2 competition, an effort run on behalf of the Home Office, which was followed by further work as part of a Royal Navy tender in 2022.
The consortium developed a low-cost, flexible and scalable sensor unit for tracking multiple UAS called Passive Detection & Ranging (PDAR) and following competitive field trials, the RN procured more than 10 CUAS systems for their frontline ships
The PDAR system uses conventional software defined radios, integrated circuits that can be reprogrammed and an innovative implementation of Convolutional Neural Networks technology to detect radio frequencies (RF) emitted by drones. The sensor unit itself is also silent and stealthy, as it does not emit RF emissions that could alert an adversary.
The latest purchase is for CUAS sensors which can be installed on ships, boats or fixed sites and trials have already taken place of the sensor on RN experimental ship, XV Patrick Blackett.
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