By Graeme Forsyth, Counter-UAS Product Manager at SPX Communication Technologies
Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are increasingly used in the battlefield on both sides of conflict, especially in regions such as Ukraine. As a result, defense and security teams are gaining greater awareness of the threats and are prioritizing countermeasures to stay one step ahead.
To meet this growing demand for Counter-UAS (C-UAS) capabilities, the number of vendors has dramatically increased in the past two years. From larger system providers to a myriad of subsystem manufacturers offering pieces of the puzzle, customers have more options than ever before. However, the realization that C-UAS transcends hardware and relies on a deeper knowledge and education around threat types, doctrine and available solutions is often missing.
Combining decades of technology innovation, expertise, and deep customer conversations, SPX Communication Technologies – formed of TCI and ECS – has gained a strategic viewpoint: there is no “one size fits all” in today’s volatile C-UAS landscape. Every customer organization is on a different path and has distinct requirements. That’s why SPX has set out to support defense and security teams in meeting their needs in a way that reflects the nuanced reality of their domain, leaving them best placed for the future.
Creating an ecosystem of industry-leading capabilities
To address this, we’ve created a new C-UAS capability, BLACKTALON Ecosystem. Its open-architecture framework combines our operationally-proven BLACKTALON solution and decades of experience with a global network of providers to meet defense and security needs, threats, skill sets, and budgets.
What puts us in the best position to spearhead this? First, our C-UAS equipment has been fielded in multiple NATO nations since 2017, making us one of the first companies to identify a growing UAS threat and its significance. We’ve developed C-UAS solutions that evolved in tandem with the threat in real-time. As specialists in Radio Frequency (RF) defeat and detection technology with decades of experience, we’re uniquely placed to analyze frequencies across the battlefield and gain vast amounts of valuable intelligence to stay abreast of developments.
Finally, our position as a trusted partner to various customers, other technology providers and industry leaders around the globe has put us in a solid position to orchestrate an ecosystem of collaborators and create a compelling vendor-agnostic framework with a very agile support environment in over a hundred countries.
Making an ecosystem operationally sound
Subsystem providers – like OpenWorks, Echodyne, Chess Dynamics and Blighter – are the bedrock of the BLACKTALON Ecosystem. They are a vital source of innovation and technological advancement that help each customer meet their individual requirements. But in designing the BLACKTALON Ecosystem, we’ve established an open network where no system is above another, and providers can achieve industry exposure and feedback from real-world applications of their technology.
Putting customers at the heart
By offering a configurable framework, defense and security teams can avoid vendor lock-in and gain from the flexibility of adapting their solution to suit their needs at any given time – whether it’s due to the natural evolution of technology, the threats they face or even an increase or decrease in budget. SPX works with customers as early as possible to understand the subtleties of their needs and priorities to refine the right providers and elements as part of their customized BLACKTALON Ecosystem solution.
Maintaining an open and honest dialogue with all customers and ecosystem providers means we can understand details that would otherwise fail to surface from a traditional one-way approach. Furthermore, allowing choice for each element of the C-UAS solution changes the dynamic of these conversations and allows us to be specific about capabilities and their merits.
We look forward to evolving the BLACKTALON Ecosystem even further in the coming months and years to support present and future defense and security teams’ C-UAS needs – all in close collaboration with customers and the industry and naturally supported by our proven technology.
For more information on the BLACKTALON Ecosystem, visit www.tcibr.com/blacktalon-ecosystem, email us at sales@enterprisecontrol.co.uk or visit us from 17-19 September at EW Live in Tartu, Estonia (stand 7).
The post Uniting industry and technology to deliver leading Counter-UAS capabilities appeared first on SPX Communication Technologies.