An Army-led project called Halo Shield is examining how commercially available counter-drone technology could protect British military sites, according to an answer given in Parliament.
Ben Obese-Jecty, the Conservative member for Huntingdon, asked for the full scope of the project.
Louise Sandher-Jones, Parliamentary Under-Secretary and Minister for the Armed Forces, said: “Project HALO SHIELD is an Army-led initiative examining how commercially available Counter-Uncrewed Aircraft System (C-UAS) technologies can improve the protection of UK military sites from the growing threat posed by uncrewed aircraft systems.”
Halo Shield sits alongside Project PRESAGIUM, the £240 million enhanced counter-drone system the department described in a separate answer, which it says will provide detection and defeat of emerging drone threats.
Drone activity over British bases has moved from an irritant to an operational concern over the past two years, with incursions reported over sites including RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall, and the Prime Minister this week attributing the September incident at RAF Fairford to direction by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Counter uncrewed aircraft systems generally pair radar, radio frequency and optical sensors to spot and identify a drone with a mix of jamming, spoofing, nets, guns and directed energy to bring it down.
Protecting a fixed site is awkward because commercial quadcopters return almost no radar signature, because anything shot down has to come down somewhere, and because jamming radio transmissions over British soil runs into civil aviation and telecommunications law.
