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NATO conducts first full-blown counter-UAS exercise

By Brooks Tigner |

A Dutch serviceman demonstrates a shoulder-held C-UAS solution during NATO's recent TIE21 exercise. (Netherlands Ministry of Defence)

NATO is to analyse the results of its first fully-fledged technical exercise to locate, identify, and counter hostile unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) โ€“ particularly from swarm attacks.

The data will then be farmed out to industry, researchers, and other trusted stakeholders in early 2022 to address gaps in capability and command-and-control (C2) reactivity. Looking ahead, NATO also aims to nudge the allies toward a new common standard for interoperable tactical data exchange among their diverse C-UASs and components, according to allied officials.

Seventy technical systems and some 30 companies, national defence agencies, and NATO research and policy units were involved in the 2โ€“12 November exercise, dubbed C-UAS Technical Interoperability Exercise 2021 (TIE21). TIE21's counter-drone activities were carried out at a Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF) base near Venlo, and organised by the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA).

A central objective for the NCIA was data-capture across TIE21's various radar units, jammers, radio direction finders, C2 systems, and effectors in order to finger problems such as bandwidth deficiency, excessive latency or false positives.

โ€œMany companies are working on C-UAS capabilities with their own data protocols and in isolation from one another,โ€ Rene Thaens, head of NCIA's electronic warfare and sensors branch, told reporters during a 10 November on-site press briefing. โ€œThere's hardly any communication between them for moving towards an interoperable data-exchange standard.โ€

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