Learn about a high-speed drone smasher that uses its nose cone to ram enemy UAVs

Hi, this is Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo, the Europe correspondent for Defence News

We're here at DSCI this week, taking place in London. I have here with me Stephen Scott, who is the manager of Defence Labs at Mars. Welcome

Thank you. So we're here at one of the biggest trade shows in Europe

Can you take us a little bit on the background of the company, what you guys focus on

Yeah, sure. ours is a defense tech company. We have quite a big presence in Europe and in the Middle East as well

We focus primarily on software and integrating third-party hardware. So we have a command and control software called NIDAR, which does sensor fusion of radars, cameras, sonars, a whole variety of sensors

We present all that to an operator in a very slick user interface that's very easy to learn and very easy to use

easy to use, which helps reduce the cognitive burden for the operator

And then we can also integrate countermeasures into that. So in the case of our counter-US system, we can integrate third-party effectors

and use that to defeat drone threats. And so the company is based in the UK

So our defence business is run out of the UK. We have a non-defence part of the business which is based in mainland Europe

And one of the big themes that has emerged this week at the show has been around drones

specifically drone interceptors, one of which you guys are exhibiting at the show

Can you take us through essentially what that technology is and what it's used for

Sure. So we have the Mars Interceptor, which we're developing in-house. We've been developing it for a couple of years now

Essentially, the options for effectors that end users have tend to be fairly typical military systems

We wanted to develop a system that was dual use so that it could be used to protect civilian sites as well as military locations

So we came up with the idea of developing a drone interceptor which in our case is a hybrid airframe So it a quadcopter combined with a fixed aircraft That gives us the benefits of both of those systems So we can take off vertically then we transition to fixed mode like an airplane

We fly at extremely high speed, about 80 metres a second, which is about 288 kilometres an hour

And we directly impact into the target using kinetic energy. So there's no warhead on there, simply using kinetic energy for a head-on collision

And let's take us through a scenario. This faces, for example, another drone threat

How does it use kinetic energy to destroy or neutralize? Yeah, so basically, in order to maximize your kinetic energy, you're trying to fly fast

It weighs around 8 kilos, so you're trying to basically accelerate an 8 kilogram mass as fast as you possibly can to maximize your energy

If you do a head-on collision with a target, the target also has kinetic energy

so you can combine the two together, and then that causes physical damage to the target

Depending on what the size of the target is, it will either cause damage to the interceptor as well

in which case it's a one-way mission, or for smaller targets, we would survive that engagement

We can deploy a parachute if we need to, and the system can be recovered and reused for a later date

And what would you say is the main attraction from a customer standpoint to a system like a drone interceptor

Is it more affordable than certain traditional measures? Is it its capabilities

Yeah, absolutely. So cost per kill or cost per engagement was a key driver in the development

And we've had that on our requirements from the very beginning. If you compare it to the price of a V-SHORAD missile, which tends to be at least $100,000, sometimes more

versus the cost of the threat systems we're seeing. It's just not really comparable

So actually you have to try and change the financial metrics of each engagement

So we try and drive the cost down of each interceptor so that it less than the cost of the threat that it defeating The targets against which it reusable also helps with that metric as well In addition to that one of the biggest benefits is you can abort the mission

So unlike if you fire a missile, it's gone. You've done it, whether you change your mind or not

You still dispense with that missile. With the interceptor, you can abort the mission and it will return to base

You recharge it and it's ready to go. And what types of mission sets or what types of targets would it be more effective against, let's say

Yeah, so a broad range. We designed it primarily to defeat Shahid-type targets, like we see a lot of at the moment

which have been a persistent threat in the Middle East for a number of years now

and that was our original use case. Of course, now we've seen Ukraine its Shahids and then everything below that as well

So that's our target set there. And what would you say this far from what you've observed this week and, you know, in the past couple of years with the company

Where is the market going? What are some market trends? Where do you see this technology evolving in the next few years

Yeah, so we're definitely seeing a huge increase in the demand for interceptors as either an alternative to conventional missile systems

or to work jointly with that as part of your layered air defense solution

The price is obviously a key driver there, the availability of it

The ability to use it in civilian contexts as well, so without the warhead, reduces your collateral damage risk and your risk to civilians as well

The drone threat is multiplying globally. We said this a number of years ago that the threat we were seeing in the Middle East five, six, seven years ago was only going to proliferate

We're now seeing that in Europe, obviously, but actually domestically as well, we're going to probably start to see a lot more hostile drones

People taking inspiration for what they're seeing on social media in particular and using them, whether it's an individual or whether it's a state or another company or something like that who's using them in a hostile way

So the marketplace for counter drone systems is definitely increasing And what do you think we can expect from this market in the next couple of years Is it going to be absolutely booming as a more affordable

option than traditional counter measure sets? I think what we'll definitely see is much more

interceptor drones available. So there's a number that are in development as well as ours

We're quite far ahead, I think, in terms of maturity. We've been doing it for a few years

We also have the benefit of using a lot of our technology from our ground-based system

particularly our AI and machine learning. So actually we've built a very intelligent

very capable drone system. There'll definitely be more of them. I think the demand is probably

the market's probably gonna be able to cope with more interceptors than just the one we're developing

But I'd like to think that we're gonna be at the forefront of that marketplace

In terms of sales forecasts, when we're talking to some of our existing customers

who run our county system, they're talking about buying not just ones or twos

it's like thousands of them they need. And so the market potential there is quite substantial

over the next five years. And last but not least, obviously autonomy AI is a hot topic right now

Is there any sort of AI functions that are part of the drone interceptor

that you're showing this week? Yeah, absolutely. So as I mentioned, our ground-based system already uses

machine learning based computer vision models. We've essentially taken a subset of that capability, which normally runs on a server rack

and we've actually condensed it down so that it can run on each individual interceptor

So we're adding a lot of intelligence. The interceptor itself is fully autonomous, so the operator doesn't need to fly it manually

which helps massively with training burden. It also means that that operator can manage multiple interceptors simultaneously

unlike, say, a conventional missile system where they might actually only be able to do one-on-one

It means their training burden is very low and all of the intelligence is in the interceptor

but of course the operator has the ability to abort the mission and supervises it from

beginning to end. Awesome. Well thank you so much and have a good rest of your week

You too, thank you