The Ministry of Defence’s programme to develop new electronic countermeasures protecting service personnel from radio-controlled threats has passed a key design milestone, with prototype systems due for testing in early 2027, the UK Defence Journal understands.
Asked by the Conservative MP for Huntingdon, Ben Obese-Jecty, what progress had been made on delivering Project Crenic, the Minister of State for Defence, Luke Pollard, said the programme had passed its Critical Design Review in summer 2025, and that the first prototype systems were expected in the first quarter of 2027 for testing.
Work was ongoing, Pollard said, “to optimise the capability to protect Service Personnel from emerging radio-controlled threats, while ensuring the procurement and delivery model supports continuous through-life development and upgrades in response to an increasingly complex threat landscape”. The emphasis on continuous upgrades reflects the central challenge the project was set up to address, namely keeping pace with threats that evolve far faster than conventional equipment programmes can respond to.
Project Crenic dates to a five-year, £45 million systems integration contract awarded in 2022 by Defence Equipment and Support to a group of UK businesses known as Team Protect. Its purpose is to develop force-protection electronic countermeasures, software-defined systems designed to detect and jam the radio signals used to trigger improvised explosive devices, protecting soldiers, vehicles and military bases on operations around the world.
The programme is led by PA Consulting, with Leonardo UK, Leidos UK and Marshall Land Systems among the partners. According to Leonardo, the work is focused on the complexity of threats, how rapidly they emerge and how they appear in the electromagnetic spectrum, with the team tasked with responding to changing threats far more quickly than traditional equipment programmes allow.
That includes threats arising from the newest communications technologies, such as 4G, 5G and the Internet of Things, which between them occupy a far wider portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The system is designed to be upgraded continuously through its life rather than fielded once and left, an approach suited to the electromagnetic environment, where adversaries can change the frequencies and methods they use to detonate devices or control drones at short notice.
Is this ECM as most would remember from N.I? or is more related to Drones?.
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I rebuilt most of those for extended frequencies.
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“Project Crenic is a £45 million UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) program developing software-defined electronic countermeasures (ECM) to protect soldiers, vehicles, and military bases from improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The system intercepts and jams radio signals used by adversaries to detonate remote-controlled explosives.Key Capabilities & Technology:Versatile Radio Observation & Direction (VROD): Backpack-sized or vehicle-mounted kits detect and understand hostile electromagnetic signals.Search and Attack (VMAX): The systems provide electronic attack effects to counter threats, rivaling the sophistication of electronic warfare systems on aircraft.Advanced Spectrum Coverage: It is specifically built to counter fast-evolving communication technologies, including 4G, 5G, and the Internet of Things (IoT).Multi-Domain Integration: Using the Defence CEMA (Cyber and Electromagnetic Activities) Architecture, the system ensures gathered data can be shared and used across multiple operational domains, ensuring smooth communication while jammers are active.Led by PA Consulting and a consortium of industry partners (Team Protect), the initiative leans on agile acquisition to rapidly adapt to emerging threats in real-time. It is designed to replace older legacy systems and support collaboration with NATO and allied partners. Early systems and prototypes of this technology are being rolled out and tested in active operations”
While I was working with an defence company we offered the MoD this equipment in about 2011. It was in effective use with the US Marines in Afghanistan. Even under a UOR the MoD couldn’t get their procurement teams to make a decision and, like many UK suppliers faced with the political inertia of UK defence procurement… we had to give up.
That about sounds right. Dithering abd doing little and its still the same
Any good against Bullets 🤔
Why would it be good against bullets when it is anti drone. To stop what we see happening to Russian troops daily happening to ours. Most troops in the battlefield today are not killed by bullets but by drones. Halfwit strikes again.
I’m sure Halfwit meant it as a joke!
In the NATO recent training, NAto troops were tourn apart by ukrainain drone operators, so much so that senior officers confirmed it. NATO and more importantly the UK really needs to up it’s game in respect of drone warfare. Traditional tactics just don’t work and learning from Ukraine is essential.
Steve, I have heard several points of view about this exercise, Ex HEDGEHOG, May 2025 in Estonia. One ‘take’ was that 16,000 NATO troops from 12 counries (including UK and Estonia) were told not to cam up when in leaguer and then to often move non-tactically, so the 10-man Ukrainian drone team(s) could ‘have a good exercise’ and score some dramatic results to shock our politicians into releasing more anti-drone funding to programmes.
It was said that the Ukrainian drone teams ‘wiped out two entire NATO battalions’ but I have seen no details as to what the metrics were. What was announced was that the drone team simulated the destruction of 17 AFVs (not actually a lot) and conducted 30 additional strikes within just half a day.
Certainly British forces are learning from Ukraine and have been for a very long time – we started training their army in Ukraine under Op ORBITAL from December 2014, and relaunched that initiative in July 2022 renaming it Op INTERFLEX and relocating such training to the UK. There has been a huge amount of feedback from Ukrainian army personnel for the last 11+ years during these various training courses. There is no way our tactics remain unaltered over more than a decade.
Additionally we have some military personnel in Ukraine who are also learning from Ukrainians. (Sadly LCpl George Hooley, PARA was killed in Ukraine on 9 Dec, 2025, during a accident while observing Ukrainian forces test a new defensive capability (probably a new drone) away from the front line.)
Fair no idea. Most training exercises are not done at realsitics conditions, which is what went wrong with the Falklands, with multiple enquiries indicating training was fundamentally flawed. However as senior leaders from multiple countires were admitting it was an issue, the type that normally try and downplay everything, I do wonder
Make sure they aren’t golf ball finders this time.
So….possibly in service date by the end of the century?
5 years for a prototype? We’ve been doing this by and large for decades in Ulster.
How is this going to help with fibreoptic drones and inevitable AI controlled drones?
It’s a start. Plus it will be better than what we carried in Afghan. As these jammers will have a broader jammer bandwidth. Fibre Optic controlled drones will need a different effect to neutralise them, same with the likely forthcoming AI controlled (human not in the loop) drones. The directed RF weapon could be the answer to drones, by providing a drone denied area that you operate within.
You can place the battery and circuitry in Faraday cages as a defence against an RF or EMP attack. The battle field of the future will be many times more lethal than we realise. I also suspect drones will become insect sized and will target humans and leave the hardware unmolested. The good news is that war will be become a level and terribly lethal prospect that humans will opt for equity and peace in all areas.
Sadly it’s not as simple as applying a Faraday cage around everything. Directed RF doesn’t behave in the same way as normal electromagnetic interference (EMI). What we are really talking about is what is called electrical susceptibility, which is where currents are induced on to circuit lines, due to circuit tracks acting like antennas, that then overload components to make them fail or the induced interference screens out genuine signals. A Faraday screen with static electrical wicking can help, but RF has a nasty habit of finding small gaps and leaking through, for example through the optical camera. Especially at very high frequencies and power levels.
Won’t work with velocity or optical attacks though.
We had this problem as can’t stop a command line and drones can be built to home in on jammers.
We proved time and time again that we cannot technology our way out of everything. Our purchase of Israeli systems for chally 3 seems to ignore the 800 merkava losses with that same system
There is a new technology coming which will improve jamming significantly, called RF fingerprinting. It looks at the specific signal that is being used to control the drone and can replicate it to jam it. This is an evolution of digital radio frequency modulation (DRFM). It has the benefits of specifically targeting a signal, rather than just jamming a specific band of frequencies, like our mobile phone jammers used in Afghan/Iraq.
I think your Merkava numbers are a bit high? Bearing in mind Trophy was originally designed to protect the vehicle against ATGMs and RPGs that generally attack from the sides or at an angle downwards. Hamas found the weak spot, when it flew the drones over the effective range of Trophy’s effector (think claymore range) and dropped anti-tank (HEAT) grenades directly on top of the vehicle. They could do this because a) there is a radar blind spot directly above the vehicle, and b) the effector’s turret couldn’t elevate high enough. Up to 2023, no Merkavas were lost to RPGs or ATGMs in attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah. It has been reported, that the manufacture of Trophy, Rafael, were making modifications to counter this type of threat. But judging by the hastily built cope cages etc, it isn’t in service yet.
Trophy is currently the only battle proven system, that can protect a vehicle against RPGs and ATGMs. Drones are new threat, but the effector should be able to take out both a FPV drone and the dropped weapon, if the system can detect them using a upwards facing radar, and the turret is given sufficient elevation to point directly up. How it fares against a swarm of drones, is also a very good question? As it will depend on the effector magazine depth and how quickly it can cycle its effector reload. But its right that Chally 3 get Trophy. I am surprised that Ukraine isn’t using it?
Will it have the same properties as a Faraday cage ? Just wondering as when shield is activated will any comms equipment be blocked .I’m still waiting for Frontline Hoover boots ..