Pretty much all of the counter-drone tech we cover day in and day out is designed to protect military personnel, infrastructure, and installations, but the threat of hostile drones isn’t limited to conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Civilian infrastructure—everything from stadiums to airports, political rallies, and data centers—is vulnerable, too.
The proliferation of cheap commercial drones has made protecting the airspace above major events a top priority for the folks running them, and for good reason. During this summer’s World Cup alone, the FBI seized more than 700 illegal drones and detected another 1,600 around the 11 stadiums hosting games.
That threat isn’t going away anytime soon (not to be too much of a Debbie Downer), and NFL stadiums—which hold an average of nearly 70,000 fans every Sunday—are slowly taking notice.
The Jacksonville Jaguars this morning became the first NFL franchise to get into the counter-drone game, tapping Ondas subsidiary Sentrycs to deploy its drone detection and cyber takeover technology at its stadium this coming season, the company exclusively told Tectonic.
Under the deal with the Jags’ stadium operator, Legends Global, Sentrycs’ tech will be operated by law enforcement partners trained at the newly established National Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Training Center (NCUTC) in Huntsville, Alabama.
Taking over: This isn’t Sentrycs’ first rodeo in stadium protection. The company was also one of a handful, along with Utah-based Fortem Technologies, to field its non-kinetic (for obvious reasons) counter-drone tech at stadiums during the World Cup.
Sentrycs’ “cyber-over-RF” technology is designed for places where drones falling out of the sky is less than ideal. Instead of blowing them up or jamming them, the system allows operators to geofence an area and, put simply, take over the comms link between a drone in the unauthorized airspace and its remote control, bring it to a safe altitude, and land it in a predetermined landing zone.
- The full-stack system offers passive RF detection and tracking to alert law enforcement, in this case, of unwanted aerial visitors, and the ability to take it over safely (and, most importantly, without interrupting the game).
- It also provides data on the drone’s operator and flight path, which comes in handy for any investigations.
“The NFL and the stadium operators have, for a number of years, been using detection technologies, anywhere from radar systems to other passive RF systems and some optical systems as well, but the NFL hasn’t been mitigating the threat,” Ondas CEO Eric Brock told Tectonic. “The Jaguars are the first to take this step, and I think it’s reasonable to believe that others will as well.”
“As drones become increasingly accessible, we recognized the importance of moving beyond detection and adding an effective mitigation capability to our security strategy,” the Jags’ events and security director added in a statement. “This investment reinforces our commitment to delivering a safe and uninterrupted game-day experience.”
Sounds good to us. NFL games have enough breaks without needing to pause for a drone delay as it is.
