Another contender has joined the wave of companies offering solutions to the problem of intrusive unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), particularly in the vicinity of airports and critical infrastructure.

Hensoldt recently demonstrated its Xpeller counter-UAV system on the Airbus airfield in Hamburg-Finkenwerder to representatives from the police, industrial companies, airport operators and the armed forces.

Hensoldt comprises the former security and defence electronics activities of the Airbus Group, which were divested under an agreement with investment company KKR that took effect earlier this year.

The system demonstrated by Hensoldt uses a combination of radar, RF and optical sensors and a targeted jammer. Xpeller was seamlessly integrated into the airfield's infrastructure to prove its compatibility with all the other local systems. It managed to reliably detect UAVs starting from different locations at a distance of several kilometres and to identify them as threats.

The modular Xpeller product family includes various sensors such as Spexer 500 radar, NightOwl thermal camera and radio frequency detectors as well as direction finders and jammers. The system uses sensors to detect and identify a drone and assess its threat potential at ranges from a few hundred metres up to several kilometres.

Based on real-time analyses of the control signals, a jammer then interrupts the link between drone and pilot or interferes with its navigation. The modular Xpeller system concept relies on the selection of individual devices from the product family depending on customer requirements and local conditions.