MITRE to submit final report on counter-drone exercise in January

By Marjorie Censer / November 14, 2016 at 2:13 PM

The MITRE Corp. is preparing a final report to submit early next year following a September challenge focused on detecting and interdicting small unmanned aircraft systems.

MITRE announced earlier this year two winner in its Countering Unmanned Aircraft Systems Challenge: DroneRANGER by Van Cleve and Associates and SkyWall 100 by Open Works Engineering.

The competition sought technology that could detect small drones during flight, determine whether they were a threat and then interdict those deemed threats. It required technology that could be safely used in an urban environment, meaning it had to quickly identify whether a drone was a threat and be able to safely bring it down.

More than 40 companies applied, and MITRE narrowed the finalists to eight, which were tested in Quantico. Officials from Capitol Hill and the White House observed the event, MITRE employees told Inside Defense.

Jonathan Rotner, lead systems sensor engineer at MITRE, said the company is now preparing a final document to submit to the government.

“The challenge that we put on as a company was a great representation of how you begin to think about some of those different aspects,” he said of the broad range of ways to counter UAVs. “Every experiment leads to a little bit more daylight.”

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