This is the sixth post of GDSN #2 review, if you haven't read our previous reviews it is a good time to check out the great talks!
Lucas Le Bell (CERBAIR) - Five UAV evolutions Every Sensitive Site Should Open Their Eyes To
Well, thanks for having me. I think I've already shared my screen, please tell me whenever that's on, I think it is. Alright, perfect. Alright, so thanks, again, for having me. I'm quite excited about discussing this topic with you. I just quickly introduce myself, for those of you who don't know, me, or the company I'm representing. So, my name is Lucas Le Bell, I'm one of the two co-founders and the actual CEO of a French company that is called CERBAIR. And what we do CERBAIR is that we are a counter drone solution provider. So that means that we develop specific technology solutions to actually protect all sensitive sites from the potential threats and attacks that drones can carry out. So, I know this is kind of like a joint forum. So, let me just start by saying that we cannot be friends, right? Because sometimes people say that anti drone companies are kind of like dragging down the drone business and all that stuff. So, I just want to say as a kind of like disclaimer, and as a means of introduction, that we serve the same purpose, we actually love drones, you see already a ton of them behind me, what we're trying to do is to actually just enable a safer world, a safer sky. And that means that we have to provide the means to actually allow drones to be used in a safe way. We already know that 99% of people actually using drones responsibly, and in a great way. But unfortunately, a tiny fraction of people out there actually uses drones in nefarious ways. So, our mission is to actually develop solutions to counter that. And we believe that if we succeed in our mission, this should actually unlock the huge potential that drones carry within themselves, right? I mean, we are big fans of everything we actually see out there in the world, drones being used for good purposes. Just a few examples, agriculture, archaeology, in New Urbanism, search and rescue operations, were very much excited to actually see all of this unfold. But let's not turn a blind eye on all the different drone attacks and problems that they will create, to give an ID to maybe those of you who are not very familiar with the threats that they can represent. To give you an idea, let's just say that there are four different categories of problems. The first one has to deal with attack drones being used more and more as air vectors that can bypass all security measures to deliver some usually weapons explicit devices to deadly effect. A lot of organization like ISIS, so or some narco organization, like the Cartel de Jalisco in Mexico have been the most litigate dispute, as is also a big issue. The Beluga the nuclear power plant in the US has been spied on from for a few weeks now, by drones. And we don't know what the intentions of the pilot are, but it's actually quite worrying. Thirdly, we could also name the risk of contraband. Drones actually being used to deliver contraband across the border, but as well, right into the, into the courtyard of some prisons across the world. That's a big issue. And finally, let's not forget about the risk of collision, drones can actually trigger a lot of damage, especially around the airport. According to some engineers who modelled it, it will be very scary to have a drone enter the reactor or have some specific parts of incoming aircraft. And so, we need to be very careful about that. One of these examples, was the terrible mess that some drones created by being flown on top of the Gatwick Airport about 18 months ago. And we don't want this to happen again. So, again, to unlock the potential of drones, it's urgent for us to actually control them. And that's where we come into play. Again, our mission is to actually design the solution and to also integrate our solution with larger unmanned traffic management solution UTM solution as you probably know them to make sure that drones are used only for good ends. So, onto the topic of conversation.
Now, for those of you who are not familiar with the counter drone industry, let's try to play a game and be in the shoes of, of the security manager of a site to be protected. So as a security manager, you have to know what's going on out there regarding the joint threat. And you actually often see that Jones actually evolving very fast, we see that you see that joint changing shape, size is becoming more and more dangerous, are becoming more and more affordable. And you see that they're hard to detect and neutralize. And when it comes to actually protect your site, you already have a little rather limited budget. So, one of the main concerns of our customer, is to actually make sure that the technology that they're about to actually invest in, doesn't become obsolete in a short period of time. That's probably the number one concern. So, what it means is that for us as counter drone manufacturer, one of our important missions is to have a clear view on the forthcoming evolutions that drones will go through over the long term, to better design our solutions and be able to offer a reliable solution to our customer that will be able to cope not only with the current level of threat, but also with the necessary evolution that it will actually go through. So that's why we came we came about with this topic, we decided to discuss kind of like what we believe are the five biggest next generation New Wave evolutions, every sensitive search will actually open their eyes to and as we discussed, that will conclude by trying to share what we believe are unbiased tips for actually sensitive sites, security managers to actually take into account when they actually start their purchasing their purchasing process. So here you see the five different UAV evolutions that I want to discuss today with you guys. The first one has to do with the size of drones. As the market started back in 2010, I think he was actually a French company out that kind of like democratized civil engineers to a much larger crowd. And it started a big market for, you know, micro drones. And so those are rather small. But now as time goes by, we see more and more diversity in terms of in terms of size. So, we discuss how that can affect your security. Secretary will discuss the autonomy of drones one of the most important topics in my opinion, we see that to me is different than automation. Third, we will see how drones are becoming more and more coordinated with all the benefits and advances and progress made in artificial intelligence, one of the main revolutions that drones would go through, and how we can impact the security of any sensitive site force, we'll discuss about the increased ranges that some new technologies like 5g will actually trigger an enable for sealing drones, and all the consequences it will carry out. And finally, we will talk about something that is less known, but quite exciting. It looks like science fiction, to be honest, all the I mean, what has to deal with the deception and the New Leaf technologies that drones are evolving towards. I'm talking about insect drones, I'm talking about build drones, and all of these technologies that will actually change the way we actually mentally represent drones to our subconscious. And finally, as I said, we will discuss some of the best practices for any security manager to take into account when it comes to actually go into the purchasing process of buying some anti drone technologies. Alright, so let's start with the first part. Let's talk about size and how it actually does matter. miniaturised versus, versus big uns. So, on one hand, you have a market that started with like micro drones. And on the other hand, you have more and more extreme drones, they actually built and commercialized in gaining some traction, you have indeed, some nano drones actually becoming more and more successful, and you have much larger drones being used to actually access some new ways and new capabilities to actually deliver the service. So that's, that's interesting to discuss here on this slide. You see two of these examples. So, the picture is kind of like a fly. It's as big as a fly, but it's actually your drone. And you can actually gather some intelligence and send it back to its operator. As you can see, it's not any bigger than a fingertip. And so, imagine that type of technology later on into the hands of somebody with malevolent intentions. That could be a big problem.
A drone that is below it is, it's well known actually, by professional and especially by the military. It's the famous black on it, it's a drone that is being used across the world, especially by different units of Special Forces. And it's, it's, it's very powerful it can, it's great to gather intelligence, but to do it in a very discreet way. And so, when we see a lot of these drones becoming smaller and smaller, and actually delivering, I mean, packing your punch in the sense that they can actually have embedded some advanced sensors. And so, despite the small size, they can still actually gather some relevant information. And while doing so maintaining their stuffs, it actually raises some questions for a counter drug manufacturer and their respective solutions. Because as we try to detect the presence of God, you have four different ways to do it to pretty simple, you can use the radar to detect the presence of these objects, you can use electronics, so let's just put it this way fancy cameras, to actually recognize the distinctive features of a journal, you can listen to the communication of a drone. And finally, you can detect the unique acoustic signature of a drone, and especially your feet roto spinning around. And so as, as we try to detect drones, I mean, most of the technologies are facing difficulties, the smaller of the drone is for this reason, imagine that you have a camera to try to detect a smaller drone over the distance is going to represent a smaller and smaller number of details to the point that at some point, you won't be able to detect it period. If you use a radar, you send an electromagnetic wave that is going to rebound against an obstacle. But if that, if that object is relatively small and uses some non-reflective material, then you might simply not detect. And for acoustic, it's exactly the same. The smaller Lee's the less noisy it is, the more silent it is. And as a result, this test here is actually what we discovered that radio frequency is the only technology that is agnostic meaning not impacted by the size of the drone, because as the technology states means we actually focus the attention of the communications that the drone uses, and communications have nothing to do with the size of the of the job they have to do with the transmitter and the emitter. So out of all the detection technologies, radio frequency is the one that is going to be the less impacted by that. Users are going to struggle more and more, of course, on the other end of the spectrum, we see, we see bigger drones actually hitting the market, if we remember correctly. At the end of the 20th century, drones already existed, right?
There were military innovations that were used to great effect by actually, especially the US Armed Forces first. And it's kind of its kind of interesting to see that now the Syrian market is actually producing and using drones that are bigger and bigger. They're not challenging the size of those military drones that I just described. But they are going towards that direction. And we can actually already see it in some specific sectors of the market, namely the agriculture. You can see on the bottom picture, you see drones actually being able to transport, let's say some fertilizers, for instance, and being able to spray them on top of crops. You see drones being used in industry and infrastructure sector, being able to carry a ton of sensors and specific tools and devices to actually assist the operations of let's say, the construction of railways, the maintenance of pipelines, for instance, and so on and so forth. And so, as a result, what it means is that drones being able to be bigger, usually means that they are able to carry your payload. And the bigger the payload, the bigger your potential problem, right? Because it means that the drone can actually transport, maybe a bigger explosive charge, maybe you can transport some more advanced electronics, meaning that it will be more efficient in the malevolent action it's intending to actually carry out. So, on one hand, it makes our job easier because the video drone is easier to detect, as opposed to the smaller one. Of course, if you have a radar, or if you're using a fancy camera or have some acoustic sensors, sorry, it's going to be much easier to detect that big of a drone compared to a nano one. But again, radio frequency will be affected by it. But on the other end, it means that the potential hazard by drones can actually be even bigger than that. So that's also one of the trends we are trying to keep track with. And it's something that as we said can have both positive impacts, I'm sure and, and but one, I wanted to share some video clips through this presentation to kind of like make it a bit more interactive. Just to show you how big these joints can be, and how much lift, they can actually, they can actually produce going to show quick video. So, let me show you that. Alright, so basically, the video is commercial, it's an old commercial from Samsung, during Christmas time of about maybe two years ago, that actually portrayed a Santa Claus, that was a snowboarding and using it not to be pulled, but actually in June. So, let's just see if you can see that you should be able to see the video. Hopefully it won't lag too much ISO.
So that's the of course, the relevant part. And we need to show you because there's a lot of science fiction around joined. And some people don't know how powerful and what their capabilities are, it's already possible to have joints actually lifting some human beings. And so right now, I would say that it's kind of like a gimmick, and people are just using it to, to, I don't know, for maybe advertising videos or to show the capability. But some people are really thinking about using it for malevolent intents. Today, I actually I read an interesting article that actually discussed the concerns that the US penitentiary administration actually felt about drones. And one of the new ones was about exactly this, they said that we're actually concerned that drones in the near future could not only be used to transport contraband into the courtyard of our prisons, but maybe in a few years actually come and lift one of the mates outside the prison and allowed an invasion. So that's, that's, I don't know, I guess it's, it's interesting, it's scary at the same time. So that's one of the evolutions of the drone threat that we have to actually keep track with. All right back to the presentation, let me it's going to be a little bit of back and forth between the different documents. But that's the only way I can ensure that it's actually smooth. So, let's see if I'm backwards, the presentation is perfect. So on to the second topic. Now we want to discuss the increased autonomy of drones. And before going into this, I think it's actually important to define what autonomy is because there is a little bit of confusion about it. So, we want to make a clear distinction between autonomy and automation. And to discuss that I think it's important to note that drones, in our opinion, have gone through three major Revolution, the first one has to deal with their actually intrinsic existence, the intrinsic nature drone, it actually means that you actually use them to fly them remotely. So that was the first revolution, an object that you can actually use, and fly and direct remotely. The second revolution that was a bit more recent was about drones being automated, meaning that you can actually pre-programmed the drone so that the drone will simply execute what you actually wanted it to do. So, for drones, or flying drones, that would be something like picking some GPS waypoints that the drones will actually follow. And around the way that you pick, you can actually choose a number of pre-set actions that the drone could do. Like for instance, as you go here, spray the fertilizer on top of the crop as you go there, drop an explosive device, and so on and so forth. But the cell revolution that we are about to see, we've already seen actually emerge, especially with the military, and it's about to hit the civilian market as well. It has to deal with autonomy. By autonomy, we mean an autonomous capacity for the drone to actually make its own decision and act accordingly. So of course, these calls for the advances of, of artificial intelligence, wealth, joins, can actually or will actually use the information that they can gather by themselves. For instance, most drones have one way or another sensor, usually your camera. Now imagine that you can have some detection algorithm embedded within the electronics of the drone and that the drone could actually recognize something relevant in the video feed it's capturing and, and that the drone could actually make a decision based on that. That's actually quite exciting. Right, because it means that you don't need an operator anymore, you can have entered your processes that are perfectly coded at the junior level, and the drone can actually take you down. So that's quite exciting. I mean, the potential for good purposes, is used to be honest. But again, it's equally huge for the failure’s attempts. And so, we're going to share a couple videos in a second, I'm pretty sure that a lot of you guys already know that them, they've been given a strong media coverage. But before doing so, let's discuss the impact of that at the security level of your site. So, we've discussed a little bit about the detection technologies, but not so much about the neutralization ones. So again, to put it simple, you have different ways to neutralize drones, the first way that I would argue is the most popular and right now the most efficient has to deal with genuine technology. So, jamming technology, meaning that you're going to create a very true magnetic emotion that is going to actually interfere with the communications that the drone actually relies on. So that you can actually isolate the drill from two things, one, you isolated from his pilot. And second of all, you isolate the draw from the reception of the GNSS signals. So, you isolate the drone from the reception of satellite navigation system. And basically, as you've completely isolated the drone, if it's remote, or if it's automated using GPS, it will eventually be able to pursue its mission. And as a result, most of the time, the drone will actually land automatically. What happens, strictly speaking, is that as soon as it's isolated, the joint will actually trigger an emergency procedure to go to safety kind of, and the number one emergency procedure is about the drone landing on the ground domestically. So that's a pretty powerful technology, because it's, it's kind of instantaneous, it travels at the speed of light, you can target several drones at the same time. So, you Don't risk your technology to be actually saturated, overwhelmed. And at the same time, it's very efficient across a wide range of drones, right. So that's one technology, another one has to deal with kinetic ways, meaning that you use the kinetic energy of a project that no matter what it is a bullet, a missile.
What else could it be a net, for instance, that could actually stop the drone, right, where right where it is and make it fall down. And finally, that's where I believe it's becoming even more interesting, you have the future of counter drone countermeasures. Those are called the Well first of all, you have the high energy mobile laser. So that would be the high energy laser technology. And then you have the high-power microwave technology. So those are technologies of the future, because they're actually target this evolution of the June. Let's go back a little bit. As drones become more and more coordinated. As they become more and more autonomous, they will have some decision-making capabilities inside them as an as they can make the decisions by themselves, it means that they won't be able to actually interact with a pilot or with some satellites. So, a drone that is actually for you. To them. This means that actually it doesn't rely on any communication. So, number one, it means that in terms of protecting technologies, radio frequency is put under severe difficulties to test them. And in terms of neutralization, it means that gemi won't be able to actually neutralize it, because simply there is no communication to actually saturate and hinder because everything is done on a closer grid at the drone level. So, you need to have a physical neutralization of the drone, there is no other option, but to actually to actually attack and neutralize to join physically speaking. And out of all the technologies to actually do that. There is some strong potential on directed energy weapon directed energy weapon.
The two technologies are described high power microwave on one hand, and high energy laser on the other hand, the reason behind it is that they are they will be there already actually quite efficient to target drones almost in an immediate way, it's quite instantaneous. They can target several drones at the same time, so they don't get set saturated too easily. And third of all, that is quite important. The cost of using such technology is not as important as says a ballistic missile or something like that, right. those technologies are pretty advanced. They cost a lot to actually acquire, but as you use them in the case of laser, for instance, you're simply using electricity. So, the cost of shooting it, and shooting it, again, is not as much as national cost of using a laser Patriot missile that is worth more than two to 3 million US dollar. So, the way they work is quite interesting for everybody's curiosity, so the high-power microwave is kind of like a super powerful general. But imagine that this time, the interference that the technology is going to create will not actually hinder the communications that the jewellery relies on. But at the feet at the physical level, it's going to fry the electronics on both the drone. And as a result, without its electronics, the drill will simply drop out of the sky. With the laser, it's a little bit different. It's a beam of concentrated energy onto the drone with laser technology, of course, that is going to actually punch a hole through the drone over time. So, it's not instantaneous, you need to actually kind of like, follow the drone and keep your laser on target for maybe a couple seconds. From what we've seen, at least, but it's pretty efficient. Of course, as PDFs, holds who the joy usually results in the journal falling down. So, there is a huge interest of the military in search technologies. Because over time, drones are going to become more and more autonomous, at least for certain missions that will allow it and in turn, it means that jamming technology will have some blind spots that will need to be complemented by dirty energy with them. So, I think it's quite interesting. So again, let's, let's do a quick video.
Actually, it's my favourite. A lot of people have already seen it, but I'm going to risky to show it to you another time. So, it's a video called slaughter bots. Basically, the story behind it is interesting. It's a group of researchers, of researchers that researchers in the military that decided to actually compile a fake video that kind of looks real, you're going to see the production is amazing to kind of have increased the awareness of the general public, and especially of the congressmen and congresswomen of the US of the US administration, to actually understand that we are going through major milestones, in terms of technology. And some of these technologies, especially in terms of artificial intelligence. And drones can actually take our memory to a whole new paradigm. And this new paradigm, which is very new force, is the fact that weapons could in the near future, be actually able to make the decision to kill somebody on itself based on egoism and artificial intelligence. So, it's a I think it's fascinating. It's also scary at the face at the same time. And that's why a group of researchers decided to actually increase the awareness in the attempt of actually stopping some of the some of the progress made in the investment made in such technologies. So here we go is called the sloto booth. It's a bit of a longer video,
(video audio)
customer pilots directed almost 3000 precision strikes last year. We're super proud of it. It allows you to separate the bad guys from the good. It's a big deal. But we have something much bigger. Kids probably have one of these right? Not quite a pile. No. That skill is all AI. It's flying itself. Its processor can react 100 times faster than the queue. The stochastic motion is an anti-sniper feature.
(video audio)
Just like any mobile device these days, it has cameras and sensors. And just like your phones and social media apps, it does facial recognition. Inside here is three grams of sheet explosive. This is how it works.
(video audio)
Did you see that?
(video audio)
That level bank is enough to penetrate the skull and destroy the contents. They used to say guns don't kill people. People do. Well, people don't. They get in motion, disobey orders, aim high. Let's watch the weapons make the decisions. Now trust me, these were all bad guys. Now that is an airstrike of surgical precision. It's one of a range of products, trained as a team, they can penetrate buildings, cars, trains, evade people, bullets, pretty much any countermeasure, they cannot be stopped. Now, I said, this was big. Why? Because we are thinking big watch. A $25 million border now buys enough to kill half as bad half nuclear is obsolete, take out your entire enemy, virtually risk free. Just characterize him, release the swarm. And rest easy. These are available today. We have a distribution network thinking,
Alright, I'm going to stop the video here. It continues on for about five minutes, if you want to see the end of it, I invite you to check it out on YouTube, you can just type in slaughter books, as you can see on the title on top. There, it goes on to kind of like a horror movie scenario, when actually that technology was originally controlled in the hands of the few. Let's say for instance, in that particular case of the US military, and then the technology could actually go into the hands of let's say, some terrorist organization, for instance. And then that could be of course, very problematic. So, if you're curious to see how it unfolds, you can check it out. I think it's, it's beautifully executed, you could actually believe that it's true. Firstly, because the production is, is greatly executed. And second of all, because I'm guessing a lot of you guys who know a lot about drones are not even surprised by it. Because as you can see all of these individual technologies, like a nano drone, for instance, a drone, being able to actually use a camera and recognize shapes, in particular figures and characteristic if it already exists as well, just being able to carry a small explosive device also exists as well suggested feature nothing, nothing fancy, to be honest. So, when you think about it, and that was the purpose of these scientists, all of these individual technologies and capabilities actually exist one way or another. It's, we believe, just a matter of time before somebody actually combines them all together, to actually have something that works. And well, in that particular case, what is scary is that the actual technology behind it, that that makes it stand out from other technologies, it mostly lies in actually software and not hardware. And the thing is, with hardware, it's actually I would say easier to actually control the spreading of a new house of building some specific algorithm, let's say that you want to give the me side for instance, no matter how good you are, you won't be able to do it by yourself, it's going to take some money, some efforts, you're going to need some plants, you're going to you're going to need some combustible, you're going to need a ton of things that actually makes it I would venture to say impossible, if not very hard for any actor to actually build any side. But for software, I mean, anybody could actually take a piece of that software and actually make it available open source, you can find it on the internet. And then some people could actually use that, that software and code it with some common objects like drones. Such I mean, nano drones like that you can buy some of them in China, they just cost a few 10s of dollars. But what if you can buy a big load of them and then program them to actually work together? that's accessible to actually not just state and big defence group that's accessible to actually a much wider audience. And that's what makes it scary, right? So that's one of the reasons why I believe that the control of weapons, it's actually already happening, but it's going to be even more important I believe in in the next years, the control of weapons is not going to be only directed towards traditional weapons, like you know, like an assault rifle, herbicide or both, but also specific parts of codes and software that in the wrong hands could actually trigger terrible results. So, we're going to go to the next phase of the presentation. Hopefully that did me
My transition towards the next part, because the next part is about the coordination of drones. So, indeed, at the end of this video, we saw that an organization actually made them work together and shipped a big load of them together in the bigger military transport aircraft to actually deliver them with like one mission, and they all kind of work together. Again, this is not science fiction, it already happened. I'm going to show you another clip in a second. That's the picture that you see on top of the slide. The I think it was in the US Air Force or the US Navy. In any case, the US Armed Forces that actually carried out an exercise with a number of aircraft, I think it was the pair of an F 18, actually carrying a big quantity of small expendable drones that were actually did with 3d printers, those drones are called paddocks drone, you can actually look them up. And I'm about to share with you that actually shows that a group of expendable drones in large quantity can actually work in in one mission to great effect. So of course, the use for the ministry is pretty obvious. Imagine that you can drop 10s, if not hundreds of them, actually to kind of like survey the whole battlefield and get like a great idea of, of the different defences in place, whether they are ground to air or even ground to have an exhaustive inventory of the different capabilities and weapons on the ground for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance purposes. That's kind of like the dream tool. All the more since it's expendable, and it's very cheap to actually produce in, and why is it expendable, because it doesn't cost money doesn't cost a lot of money, let's just put it this way. And be there is no planet, so you can risk losing them. Because at the end of the day, it's just plastic. So, I think it's kind of like a big revolution that now is happening, kind of like in the military. But for those of you in the audience who are more concerned about civilian matters, of course, he's going to go through ceiling uses, I would expect it to be kind of like restricted, so the users will become this giant terrorist organization, and so on and so forth. But still, this is something to keep an eye on. So, more coordination between drones. That's the key ID, let me show you this quick video clip again, if you like videos. Alright, so let's do this one. For instance, let's do the big stream. If you guys are interested about all of these topics, I will gladly share more information about all of these use cases sorry and discussing. So, let's play it. Alright, so you see a pair of FHs in which you will have cuffed, actually about to drop this bed.
So that's where it becomes interesting, you can actually see that somewhere in the command-and-control centre. All of these drones are mapped in are actually working together communicating together to actually achieve the mission. So, I don't have all the details about the mission. But you see that they kind of like fly in information as a tight group. They're gathering information moving on to a new target a few seconds after. So, I mean, I would say it's very impressive. And that happened, I believe in 2016. So, you can imagine where this technology is actually right now. Right, and they go on with their mission. So that's one of the examples. We know the ones that I wanted to share. Also, to illustrate my point that this technology is already hitting the civil market. It's happening in China, as you probably have seen for some of you, fireworks are becoming I wouldn't say obsolete, but that slowly being replaced, especially in Southeast Asia by drones, drones working together to actually shape some interesting drones just as a replacement of fireworks. And it's I believe it's very impressive. Let's, let's check it out together. All right, here we go. Usually, it's the opportunity for the bigger, you know, processor making companies chipset companies like Intel, for instance, and software companies to demonstrate them know how. So here we have, we are in cells with China. And I believe that it's how many drones out there, I think it's about five hundred of drones being used. So, let's play together. Alright, I'm going to stop it here, I guess, you go to the DMV. So yeah, more coordination between the drones. And finally, let me share again, my screen now, back to the presentation, more coordination, not only between Jones themselves, but as well between Jones and their operators. That's also quite interesting.
Not surprising. Also, this is a technology that is being used by the military but expected to go into the civilian world. There was an interesting article about a couple of weeks ago, that described some Israeli technology that is being used by the Israeli Defence Forces as well as different units of the armed forces. That's the visual that you see where basically, a foot soldier is actually using some specific goggles, that can actually see through the camera lenses of the drone, we could eat the first-person view, and that can, at the same time, actually, by augmented reality, provide some image recognition feature through the lens. So, imagine that you're a soldier, you're focused on the ground, but maybe one of your eyes can actually be focused on what your drone being used as a scout, ahead of you to prevent any ambush could actually detect. And at the same time, the detection algorithm can actually provide to you some return information. So, I mean, that's really powerful. That rebound, cool, and this is something that is going to be used, I bet you buy some level of actors, when they carry out the text. So, increase coordination between Jones, on one hand, in between joints and the operator, on the other hand, on to the next big, increased wrenches. So, what do we mean by that drones can already be used up to a pretty long wrenches, when you think about it, you can already fly commercially available drones up to a few kilometres? So, it's regulated, as you probably know, especially in the Western world. Let's take the example of the of the DJI drones, for instance, in Europe, most of them can be flown up to let's say, four 4.5 kilometres. In the US, it's a bit different. So, I would argue that it's already pretty far away. But it can go even beyond that. Already today. Very specialist drones like hobbyist drones, for instance, can be paired with like specific emitters, that can have like a more powerful signal that in turn allow them to be floated, naturally speaking up to let's say, a few 10s of kilometres, provided that the topography is, is satisfactory. And that's even more impressive, right. But you could go even beyond that, and really go beyond that. The technology that I want to put the emphasis on right now is the 5g because we will see in the near future, some drones actually having I mean, using and transmitting communications between the pilot and themselves based on the 5g network. Why does it need 5g because if you want to exchange some information between a drone, and the pilot, especially if there is a video stream, for instance, you need to have of course, a good flow of data, you need to have a good, a good bit of data in 5g. 4g already allows it but 5g is going to make it even more smooth and simpler and accessible to actually do it? And that's a problem because for some technologies well first of all for old technologies, it means that generally speaking, you won't be able to catch the pilot. If this pilot is operating from the hundreds of kilometres away, you can even have a pilot from 1000s of kilometres away, as long as there is the network to actually connect the drone to the pilot, the distance could be much, much, much further than what we've always known up until now. So that's a problem, it is going to be much harder to find the pilot on one hand. And on the other hand, some technologies like for instance, radio frequency, will, I'm not saying it's impossible, some people have already succeeded in providing some detection technologies and neutralize technologies on 4g, and 5g drones based on radio frequency, but it makes the challenge, a bit more complex, not going to too many details. But technologically speaking, it creates some challenges. So that's a question you could ask, as a security manager, about to buy some antibiotic allergies, what's the view? And what's the capability of the technology to actually target such drones? Alright.
Here we are, we just talked about at catcher. For those of you who don't know, what they are, integrators are pieces of equipment that allow to intercept an empty, so to just pretty simple, you intercept the communication of, of your cylinder communication, right. And so, if you want to intercept phone communication, for instance, that's the type of technology you're going to use. And so later on, if you want to detect the drones, or even maybe neutralize it, MC catcher, also we play a part in it to actually detect and neutralize by sending your network denial to the journey to actually to actually break the connection and force it to land. So, there are some technologies that are going to target that specific, that specific issue. But yes, it's important to know that it's coming in. And also making the bet that one way or another government, we try to contain this technology, because I mean, to contain the 5g embedded within jurors are trying to restrain it only to some professional that would benefit from an illegal authorization to do so that's just my opinion. That's what I believe. But let's see how it unfolds. Alright, on to the last evolution I wanted to discuss. That's, that's one that is also kind of like science fiction that I'm really passionate about is the new deception technologies of drones. Because of course, some people using drones, they don't want to be detected, right, they want to stay stealthy. And one way to do that is to make sure that your drone is not detected and doesn't appear as the traditional way, you would actually represent a drone to yourself. Everybody thinks about a quadcopter, when you think about the drone can take different shapes. But it's usually quite good there when exactly they look too good there. And they kind of like all look the same, right with like spinning rotors on top. But some people are working specifically on drones, either for leisure purposes, or for nefarious attempts, or for military attempts to actually make them even steps here. And the two examples here that we are describing the insect drones, on one hand, that's the one you see on top. And the second one is, is built with drones. And so, for obvious reason, they are becoming more and more steps here. First of all, they are becoming still here, because I mean, as human beings, we could actually confuse them for the object that they represent. But also, for the technologies that one might use to actually detect them. Because it could be it could be mixed up with an object that is actually not a drone. Let's take the example of a radar for instance. Well, to be honest, radars are already struggling enough, for the most part to actually make the distinction between drones and birds. But imagine now if drones can actually be birds, and look like birds, it's going to make it even more complex. The radar signature is usually smaller, depending on the material that is being used, it's going to make the radar job even more complex. And so, as a result is going to create some difficulties. So, let's try to capture videos to show you that it's really that it happens. The first video I want to share is going to be fast. I want to share the experiment that some us researchers have carried out with a dragonfly on which they implemented What is it called? chipset, the Chiefs had to actually kind of like control it from the distance. How impressive is that? All right, so let's do this. You recognize the dragon fly, but you also identify some chipsets. And the concept is pretty simple. It's actually a live dragon fly. They didn't kill it. But they genetically modified the dragon fly implemented some pieces of hardware to actually send some signals. It’s kind of like the brain level. It’s kind of like the nerve level of the dragon fly to actually send it some basic orders.
So of course, it's still an early project, but they've already delivered to actually demonstrate some basic features and busy folders. And again, I think it's very impressive. All right, in the second video, I want to share with you about this famous bill the German I think it's a, there's a French company working on it. Beauty bird, I think it's French might be American, Lou. Let's hear it.
There we go.
So, the Bionic bird is now sold for leisure purposes, it's kind of like fun to fly a bird instead of a flying Imia drone, especially considering that the boat can actually integrate more seamlessly with like groups of birds. But again, imagine what he could do.
(video audio)
It's called the bionic bird. It doesn't have to be registered with the FAA because it weighs hardly anything. Let's give it a try.
Right, and it goes on and on. So, you get the ID, you have a drone, that is no longer going to look like a drone, which in turn will actually make it super stealth, not only for our human eyes, but as well for the technologies that try to detect it. The acoustic sensors that try to detect it won't recognize the typical spinning rotors that we know of drones. And if you try to detect the flapping wings of such drone, then it might also detect all the birds out there, which would be counterproductive. And the central bank goes on goes for radar technology and optical detection. So that's going to be a big challenge for all of the detection technologies. Alright, so as a conclusion, I wanted to move on to some tips I would like to share for all the security managers out there, who I hope I didn't leave hopeless, that protect protecting their sights against such quickly moving target. Drones are indeed moving fast. They're evolving in very diverse directions. And I think we should be quite excited about all the potential economic opportunities and innovation opportunities this creates, because no doubt there are hundreds of them. But we must not turn a blind eye on all the nefarious attacks in UCS that, that they will carry within themselves, of course. So, I think one of the difficulties as a security manager is to actually work. Let's just put it this way, like, keep your feet on the ground. Think about thoughtlessly about the threat and stay focus. The drone can involve in many different ways. It doesn't mean that all of these potential evolutions actually concern yourself. I think that's the number one key ID, drones can actually invoke in ways that are not relevant to you. And I think it's what is important at first is to refocus on yourself, the better it is of your sight, the level of risk that you have the typical types of drones that are being used by such and such actors, the typical attack scenario that would be relevant to you, maybe the collision scenario is not relevant to you. Maybe the tech scenario is, but maybe because the people who have bad intentions regarding yourself don't have the financial means or the technology to actually go fully autonomous and swell, and maybe you're rather facing some amateurs. Maybe it's not relevant to be too much preoccupied by autonomous drones right now at least. So I think it's important to think at the local level of your site, its particularities, its level of threat, the typical attack scenarios to actually come up with the with the Greek solution, and the real solution, believe me, there is no one size fits all solution and I'm not I'm certainly not here to say that we have all the all the answers To all the sensitive sites, what we try to do here at Serbia is to provide a coherent and affordable first line of defence that protect most sensitive sites against a realistic level of threat at an affordable cost. That's the key ID. Because one of the main problems that drones race is that they create, they create like a big asymmetry between the attacker and the defender, meaning that whoever wants to attack me to do it doesn't have to pay a lot of money to carry out his attack. But on the other end, the one who defends himself is facing a huge amount of financial loss they should the jewel succeed meted out, and if the defender wants to protect from the June, most of the time, he's going to have to deploy advanced technologies that can cost a lot of money. And I mean, a lot in the mediums. That's, that's actually ordinary. So, our job at salvia is to kind of like bridge these, these two positions and provide a solution that reduces this symmetry in an attempt to democratize quality and to join solution for as many people as possible. But again, depending on the nature of the site, absolution may be relevant for you, or it might be just actually relevant, in which case, I think it's going to be what is already relevant. And that's the direction of the counter drone industry that we see. The industry is actually consolidating. And we are seeing more and more integration when we're actually experts of searching search technologies that start working together to provide a unified solution, where all technologies can synergize together and prevent one of the technologies to actually have a blind spot because another technology is actually going to take the lead in the detection of neutralization. So that's kind of a major challenge is to transition from a radio frequency expert anti drone company, towards a company that will actually make affordable some unified multi sensor, multi effector counter joint solutions, to be able to provide an arsenal of different technologies that we will meet together to actually provide a comprehensive and coherent solution for your particular case, no silver bullet, no one size fits all solution, but relevant technologies for some customer, and the necessity to integrate them over time. So that in the end, we will be able to provide a full key chain approach that you chain lies in earth providing different steps, that we work together to one end, stopping an attack. First, we will detect it most likely with renewed frequency, we'll be able to detect not only the drone, but as well as the pilot, then we will characterize the threat will allow you to actually know what kind of drone is actually flying, if it's getting closer, where it's like where the pilot is, so that you can maybe send a security team. later on, as we have an integrated solution with different sensor, we can actually allow you to confirm the presence of the jury by queuing up some additional technologies, maybe your fancy camera that would be able to align with the coordinates that the radio frequency or the radar provided. So that we can actually show you what the drone looks like if it's carrying a package. So that in the end, when you're pushing that button to neutralize the dune, you know what you're facing, you actually weigh in the potential, the potential loss or damage that the drone could actually trigger and the potential collateral damage as well, of the of the joint utilization. So that's the key.
And that's, that's about it. Guys. I don't know if you have any question, I hope you found it interesting. My role was to try to share some of the some of the evolution that we foresee, as you've seen all of them will have an impact on the security of your site is going to make this game more and more than juice, but also more and more interesting. And our job is to actually design solution that will not be obsolete over time. So, they are thought to be modular, and to integrate more technologies to accompany you, as the threat becomes more and more important to make the solution more and more robust as well.
