As recent conflicts and security incidents have shown, uncrewed aerial systems have become increasingly accessible and capable so there is an urgent requirement for armed forces and critical national infrastructure to detect and defeat evolving threats at pace. Meeting this challenge requires more than sensing alone; it demands the ability to rapidly sense, decide and deploy responses to threats.
BATS is a software-defined counter-uncrewed systems capability that integrates sensing, intelligence fusion, command and control, decision support and countermeasures within a single modular architecture. Designed to work seamlessly with existing and future BAE Systems and third party sensors and effectors, it enables a scalable, adaptable, layered defence capability while maintaining meaningful human oversight and context-appropriate decision-making.
The trial showcased an integrated gun system and an end-to-end kill-chain using electronic warfare which validated the system's ability to coordinate and deliver appropriate effect through a unified command-and-control architecture.
At a time when governments are increasing spending on drone defence following lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East, the trial was designed to demonstrate capabilities in three separate scenarios:
- Detection and situational awareness: validating BATS’ ability to fuse information from multiple sensors into a common operational picture, enabling operators to detect, identify and track aerial objects while distinguishing threats from non-threatening activity.
- Non-kinetic response capability: demonstrating the successful integration of electronic warfare and software-defined radio technologies into BATS, enabling operators to deploy effects against operator confirmed targets in near real time.
- Full end-to-end chain in a more complex tactical scenario: validating the complete sense to effect chain in a complex tactical scenario, allowing operators to confirm identification of different categories of drones and deploying appropriate effect for each threat.
"Drones are becoming increasingly capable, accessible and difficult to counter, creating new challenges for armed forces and critical infrastructure operators. These trials demonstrated BATS’ ability to bring together sensing, decision-making and response options withing a single system, enabling operators to identify and defeat threats more rapidly and with greater confidence. This is designed to reduce cognitive burden for individual operators by using a single integrated system to identify, confirm and target drones."
“Throughout the trial, we also explored how BATS could support future networked operations, enabling threat information to be shared securely across multiple locations. This enables operators to build a broader understanding of the airspace, improving coordination and response across distributed sites.”Louise HeywoodHead of Strategy at BAE Systems Digital Intelligence & Land
Following successful live trials, BAE Systems is progressing BATS towards operational deployment and further expanding its sensing, countermeasure and threat intelligence capabilities to address the evolving drone threat landscape.