RADA’s RPS-82 (ieMHR) radar can detect a Group 1 drone at 10 kilometers, and if a target is bigger than Group 1 it can see even farther than that. Photo courtesy of RADA.
In this Q&A with Sergio Menchaca, director of business development at RADA USA, we discuss the role of radars in the Counter-small UAS (C-sUAS) kill chain, recently demonstrations by Joint Counter-small UAS Office’s at the US Army’s Yuma Proving Ground, and C-sUAS as a Service.
Breaking Defense: RADA USA is involved on the radar-detection portion of the C-sUAS kill chain. Tell me about that challenge.
Sergio Menchaca, director of business development at RADA USA.
Menchaca: There are five steps in the kill chain: detect, track, classify, identify, and defeat. Our radars take care of the first three steps. First you must be able to detect something to know what’s approaching you. Ideally you want to do that at long ranges, way longer than they can detect you. Once we pick up a detection through our 4D AESA pulse Doppler radars, we track those objects throughout their entire transit in and out of an area. As early as possible, we apply our proprietary AI methods and classify the tracked target. If the target is classified as a threat, the radar track is then supplemented with other sensor input for comprehensive identification so that you can decide on defeating it.
Our company has extensively invested in this technology, and we recently built and delivered our thousandth RPS-42 Multi-Hemispheric Radar at our facility here in Germantown, Maryland. We are on the leading edge of this technology, as you look back in 2019 in the Strait of Hormuz when the USS Boxer utilized our RPS-42 Multi-Hemispheric Radar as the C-UAS detection sensor on-board.
Breaking Defense: That’s a great story and I’ve seen the photos of this C-sUAS vehicle on the prow of the Amphibious Assault Ship.
Menchaca: Yes, and it almost lends itself to the concept of Counter UAS as a Service because they didn’t have time to go through a multi-year program to get our radars qualified and integrated on a ship. It was as simple as rolling out the vehicle and strapping it to the deck to give them an immediate capability to conduct counter UAS operations.
Breaking Defense: The RPS-42 (MHR) radar is part of a family that also consists of the RPS-82 (ieMHR). As you mentioned, RADA USA has built more than a thousand of them. They’re now being used for counter UAS, but what are their additional purposes?
Menchaca: They are basically aerial surveillance radars to detect anything that flies. Our parent company is in Israel, and they developed these radars to track threats coming from over the Gaza Strip into Israel — mainly rockets, mortars, and artillery. As drones became more prevalent, the company added the drone detection capabilities by merely modifying the software.
With Counter-UAS being a current threat for our warfighters, RADA radars are ideal for tracking these aerial threats. For each mission, our hardware stays the same. These radars are software defined with multi-mission capabilities such as: short-range air defense; counter rocket, artillery, and mortar; and counter UAS.
The APS capability is developed with our smaller radar mounted on a vehicle to track, detect and classify threats approaching the armored vehicle giving our warfighters the opportunity to launch a countermeasure.
Breaking Defense: What’s the difference between the RPS-42 and the RPS-82?
Menchaca: The RPS-42 can detect a Group 1 drone (such as hand-launched Raven, WASP, and Puma unmanned systems) that are portable and the most commercially available. Most Group 1 drones have a range limited to 1 or 2 kilometers, and the RPS-42 has a long range of coverage out to 5 kilometers to protect an area of a vehicle.
An RPS-82 radar can detect a Group 1 drone at 10 kilometers. And if a target is bigger than a Group 1, we can see it even farther than that. So, it’s based on the radar cross section of whatever the object you’re tracking.
Both are active electronically scanned arrays, or AESA, that provide 360 degrees of coverage when four radars are employed as a system. That is useful because if you don’t need four radars — if you’re just looking in one direction, for example — you can just deploy two radars or scale up to three or four depending on your mission, which can save you SWaP and cost.
They can be employed either stationary at a fixed site or installed on a vehicle for an on-the-move operation that lets you track drones while driving at highway speeds. That’s another discriminator in that they are multifunctional in that respect.
And as I mentioned earlier, you can have multiple mode files on the radars. If the mission changes tomorrow from counter UAS to counter mortar, for example, just select a different configuration file by pressing a button.
Another benefit of our radars is that they are quickly integrated with a variety of command-and-control systems. Most of our users already have C2 systems and they can quickly integrate our radars into those so that they can see our tracks on their displays and then queue other sensors or effectors using their native system. Customers don’t have to train anybody on a different C2 system.
Our radars also lend themselves well to the swarm conversation because we are not fighting ones and twos anymore. With advances in autopilot technology, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, drones can work collaboratively and without GPS or a command link. So, it’s important to have radar systems like RADA’s that can detect hundreds of tracks so you are able to classify what type of threat, and how to defeat it. And you can do that at long ranges, so you have time to classify, decide, and act.
RADA’s RPS-42 (MHR) aerial surveillance radar detects anything that flies and is also now being used for counter-UAS. Photo courtesy of RADA.
Breaking Defense: Tell me about RADA’s participation in the Joint Counter-small UAS Office’s (JCO) 2021 and 2022 demonstrations at the Army’s Yuma Proving Ground.
Menchaca: The 2021 event was a low collateral intercept demo to defeat small UAS without a lot of collateral by catching them with nets or basically ramming them with other drones while they’re in flight. We partnered with an interceptor and they used us to detect, track, and put them on target so they can either capture it with a net or destroy it.
For the JCO’s demo earlier this year, the focus was on high-power microwave ground-based aerial denial systems and Counter-small UAS as a Service. We were fortunate to be on four of the five teams and the only reason we weren’t on the fifth was because we didn’t have an extra radar to lend them.
Two of the companies had our RPS-42s (MHR) and two had the RPS-82s (ieMHR), and it came down to how they wanted to address the threat — whether they wanted to conduct counter small UAS at five kilometers or 10 kilometers. That’s because no fixed operating base is the same, they all scale differently. The demo displayed our ability to scale our products so you can select the best radar or group of radars to fit your mission, threats and environment.
Breaking Defense: What is RADA’s view on Counter-sUAS as a Service?
Menchaca: It’s basically a construct for the government and industry to share lifecycle costs and program risk because the government doesn’t absorb all the risk of having to buy systems. That lets them accelerate fielding and the time it takes to get capability out to the warfighter.
That lets us work collaboratively as a government-industry team that can address not only today’s threats but position us to continuously improve the technology to address the threats that we see coming tomorrow. The beauty of Counter-small UAS as a Service is that it’s going to allow us to protect a lot of areas very quickly.
