Latest news with #Echodyne
The Independent
04-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Terrorists and criminals misusing ‘dark' drones could cause carnage, expert warns
A drone expert is warning that an attack by a swarm of 'dark' drones could cause carnage at a large public event or devastate critical national infrastructure. Both Ukraine and Russia use drone swarms as huge, unmanned air forces to destroy and intimidate each other's forces and civilian populations. But their radio frequency signals are susceptible to being jammed, so Kyiv turned to hi-tech drones that use fibre optic cables instead, and Moscow quickly followed suit. These drones, tethered with long, fine cables, are resistant to electronic jamming. They are dubbed 'dark' because of the absence of detectable radio frequency emissions. Mike Fraietta, a US drone pilot who has seen the development of the technology first-hand in Ukraine, says concerts, rallies, conferences and all other gatherings are now at risk from the threat of coordinated drone attacks with explosives – and says governments need to prepare their defences. In the UK, drones using radio frequency are already used to smuggle drugs into prisons. Police warned last year that gangs are recruiting skilled drone pilots to fly banned items including phones and even sachets of ketchup to cell windows in Amazon-style deliveries. Tethered drones have come down in price after China ramped up their production, and now they can be bought online from about £2,000. But those with more features sell for a lot more. Last year China set a new world record by using 10,000 drones, controlled by one laptop, to form images in the sky in Shenzhen. Mr Fraietta suggested terrorists could load explosives in a coordinated attack while a similar show was going on. 'If somebody could get their hands on huge quantity of them all at once, it could be absolutely devastating,' he said. 'These are not small drones either. And the payload can be as big as the drone can hold. 'Even one can cause devastation to a crowd or one could or hit water supplies.' He said after Ukraine and Russia began using tethered drones, they turned up in Myanmar and then Colombia, where drug cartels use them. 'So the rate of innovation of warfare technology usually comes years later, [but] we're seeing it come months later, getting into the hands of criminals and accessible to average citizens within months of being developed.' Every country will face threats, he said, but so far only Sweden and Estonia are investing in drone defence. And he called for the US government to appoint a drone tsar to control the threat, suggesting other countries including the UK do the same. American radar company Echodyne says most critical infrastructure sites, law enforcement agencies and public institutions are 'ill-equipped to detect dark drones, let alone defend against them'. Mr Fraietta says his drone-detection systems company, in New York, is experiencing rising demand from bosses of Fortune 100 companies. The UK government says it constantly monitors the development of all security threats and is 'well prepared' to respond.
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Kapta Space Launches out of Stealth Mode to Develop the Next Generation of Advanced Spaceborne Radar Systems
Former Echodyne and Astranis Engineers Raise $5 Million to Field Advanced Spaceborne Radar Systems for National Defense and Commercial Use Cases SEATTLE, Feb. 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Kapta Space, a Seattle-based space tech startup, today came out of stealth mode and announced that it has raised a $5 million seed round to support the development of its advanced spaceborne electronically-steered, radar-based imaging technology. The round was led by MetaVC Partners, in participation with Entrada Ventures and Blue Collective. The company will use the funds to accelerate on-orbit demonstrations. Founded by Milton Perque (formerly of Echodyne) and Adam Bily (formerly of Apple and Astranis) in 2023, Kapta Space offers a solution that centers around a sophisticated, electronically-steered antenna radar array through the use of metasurface technology. Kapta's novel approach to electronic beam steering will provide a more capable, scalable, and cost-effective solution compared to today's state of the art technology, such as Active Electronically Steered Arrays (AESAs). Kapta initially will enable two important capabilities from satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO): persistent geospatial imagery for Earth Observation (EO) and ground target tracking modalities for defense missions. By employing a technique called Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Kapta can create high-resolution "around-the-clock" imagery and analytics from space to provide commercial industries persistent, actionable information that is largely lacking today. Kapta believes there are blind spots in the EO industry (namely commercial SAR imagery, data, and analytics) that cannot be addressed with today's technologies. While others are delivering high-resolution satellite imagery products to satisfy DoD/Intel demand, Kapta has a different thesis. "SAR isn't just about capturing satellite images. Our system allows us to deliver a more diverse set of data products to serve the broader commercial market. Although our system can provide small, high-resolution images, we can also deliver many other imaging products and modalities that today's technologies simply are not capable of," says Kapta Space CTO and co-founder Adam Bily. For example, Kapta's system enables an imaging technique called InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar). InSAR mainly is used for earth displacement monitoring (a key need of large-scale mining operations, for instance) and produces a 3D deformation map of the earth that can cover very large areas with centimeter-scale sensitivity from space. Satellites using Kapta's technology are being designed to provide the highest quality InSAR data on the market. "With a modest constellation of around 10 satellites, we could provide rapid-revisit, practical 3D infrastructure monitoring of key locations all around the world," says Bily. Kapta Space CEO and co-founder Milton Perque suggested that their technology transcends just persistent EO imagery and analytics. "Our tech has much broader implications than just SAR," says Perque. "What we see is more of an advanced, multi-mission Spaceborne radar sensor that would enable many of the critical defense missions that don't exist at scale, like GMTI (or Ground Moving Target Indication; missions of tracking slow moving ground targets from space). That's not possible with a low-cost, mechanically pointed system. To enable these critical missions, radar sensors are required to be sophisticated, yet cost-efficient. This is incredibly challenging, and it has never existed in space at scale." As far back as 25 years ago, the Department of Defense (DoD) began to explore moving airborne missions (like those performed by AWACs, Wedgetail and JSTARS) into space. Space-based operations guarantee global, persistent access to areas in conflict, like the current war in Ukraine. Conducting these advanced missions out of harm's way is among the US military's most challenging efforts. The advancements Kapta brings to the defense domain are evident in its breakthrough performance and low cost. For example, in Q2 of 2023, Kapta was awarded a $1.8M Direct to Phase II SBIR to build a version of its electronically steered antennas for spaceborne radar and granted security clearances needed to execute on classified defense contracts. The company plans to continue to submit proposals to other non-dilutive funding vehicles throughout the year. "AESAs are plagued with several problems that generally make them impractical for spaceborne applications at scale," said Chris Alliegro, managing partner, MetaVC Partners, a metamaterials-focused VC firm. "That's where metamaterials come in. The Kapta team has designed a metamaterials-based radar imaging device that offers improved electronic scanning at lesser cost, complexity, and power consumption than spaceborne AESA's. And we are incredibly lucky to have Milton and Adam at the wheel, two early pioneers in the development of metamaterials-based systems." About Kapta Space Seattle-based Kapta Space is a developer and operator of spaceborne radar technology that provides low-cost, advanced, electronically steered array sensors. By employing a technique called Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Kapta creates high-resolution imagery and analytics from space in near real-time, addressing the limitations of high costs and small area coverage, and providing critical data for a variety of applications. This innovative technology has the potential to revolutionize industries such as defense, intelligence, and commercial earth observation. For more information on Kapta Space, go to our website at Media Contact: Tim TurpinCodePRtimt@ View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Kapta Space Sign in to access your portfolio
