The Israeli defense company Omnisys plans to expand its existing battle resource optimization (BRO) mission-planning platform with a next-generation counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) platform that shifts counter-drone defense from reactive to proactive, the company announced in a statement on Monday.
Updating its BRO C-UAS system by “further leveraging advanced technologies,” Omnisys’s new system aims to shift “counter-drone defense from reactive interception to proactive, model-driven prevention,” the company said.
As UAS technology advances, so too does counter-UAS technology. Since traditional air-defense measures often struggle against UASs, innovative solutions are becoming commonplace.
According to the company, the BRO C-UAS suite will enable operators to understand their arena in depth and anticipate likely UAS attack paths. It will “significantly improve mission effectiveness against small drones, FPV strike platforms, and loitering munitions (kamikaze drones),” it said.
Counter-UAS tech advancing quickly
The BRO C-UAS allows for easier detection of low-altitude approach corridors and coverage gaps caused by terrain, buildings, and vegetation.
Further, it “computes actual detection, tracking and engagement envelopes for sensors and effectors,” Omnisys said.
BRO C-UAS enables users to identify vulnerabilities and close blind spots. It also allows them to prioritize critical sites and routes and to deploy scarce radars, RF sensors, jammers, and interceptors “where they deliver the highest operational impact under real terrain and spectrum conditions.”
By evaluating “alternative deployment options and operational concepts,” Omnisys said, “[the system recommends] courses of action that enhance coverage and interception probability” while mitigating mutual interference and overlap.
BRO C-UAS works by creating a “physics accurate” digital model of the battle space along with an AI-driven optimization engine. By using artificial intelligence and modeling operational behavior, constraints, and enemy courses of action, the system supports mission understanding. It helps commanders reach better, faster decisions while in the midst of dynamic battlefields.
“We make use of AI and related task technologies to improve the solution by learning the user’s theater of operations, its systems, and the enemy’s course of action,” Omnisys business development manager François Bodenheimer told Defense & Tech by The Jerusalem Post.
Massive deployments of drone swarms
Bodenheimer told the Post that “UAS of all kinds, individual and loitering munitions, as well as swarming UAVs, will continue to proliferate. We are already seeing massive deployments on both sides in Russia and Ukraine.”
He pointed to the growing threat posed by “hybrid warfare already going on across Western Europe,” citing the appearance of drones over strategic locations that have forced the closure of civilian airspace and critical infrastructure.
Bodenheimer said that “institutional security bodies, as well as critical and strategic facilities, are required to begin planning and equipping themselves with appropriate defense systems, supported by smart and cost-efficient planning.”
“We find time and again that intuitive planning, which commanders or mission planners do based on their operational experience and taking into account the characteristics of the theater of operations, often results in suboptimal solutions, so that is where BRO comes in,” he said.
While complementing existing command-and-control and sensor-control systems, the platform works as an independent planning tool, helping “commanders reach better, faster decisions to cope with the intense challenges of the dynamic battle space.”
“BRO has a proven capacity to optimize actual use and maximize performance of available systems of the users for planning and in-mission execution of UAV missions, including real-time operational recommendation support, or protecting against adversary drones and UAVs,” Bodenheimer said.
“AI enables BRO to continuously learn and improve the optimization results which it generates for the users, including while missions are underway,” he noted.