Miles Jamison
Leidos has unveiled its newest counter-unmanned aerial system called AirShield. The company said Monday AirShield is a multi-layered air defense system with enhanced capabilities, including kinetic and non-kinetic effectors, intended to strengthen defense against unmanned aerial vehicles and similar threats.
AirShield is designed to quickly identify and assess potential threats in real-time while stationary or mobile. It functions autonomously and is capable of tracking, classifying, prioritizing and neutralizing threats.
Additionally, AirShield utilizes AI for weapon-to-threat pairing instead of a rule-based algorithm. Leidos is also working on developing the system’s resiliency against cyber attacks with the potential to conduct offensive and defensive cyber strategies simultaneously.
According to Derrick Birdsell, AirShield program manager for Leidos, the new system will be integrated into existing and future systems. “We’re excited to be able to offer our AirShield architecture’s ability to integrate additional effectors for a variety of customers.”
Birdsell, added, “Our Co-axial Unmanned Guided Autonomous Rotorcraft (CUGAR) effector, showcased last year at the MFIX demo, is our current effector. We plan to augment it with the APKWS [Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System] missile system to boost its effectiveness.”
The U.S. Southern Command plans to start fielding AirShield by 2025.
