Airobotics acquires Iron Drone assets

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Iron Drone offers a counter-drone intercepting system that can eliminate small drones without using GPS or RF jamming. | Source: Ondas Holdings

Airobotics, a subsidiary of Ondas Holdings, announced that it has completed the acquisition of the assets of Iron Drone Ltd, an Israeli-based company that creates autonomous counter-drone systems. The acquisition became effective on March 6, 2023. 

Iron Drone offers a fully-automated drone intercepting system that can eliminate small drones without using GPS or RF jamming. Based on initial radar guidance, the company’s interceptor drone is launched from a designated pod and autonomously flies toward its targets. The drone then locks onto the target with advanced AI vision, follows the target, incapacitates and captures it using a net and a parachute before it safely lowers it to the ground. 

“Iron Drone’s counter-drone technology is a perfect fit for Ondas’ portfolio as it is a mission-critical system that can be installed to protect sensitive assets,” Eric Brock, Chairman and CEO of Ondas, said in a release. “The combination of Airobotics with Iron Drone represents a new revenue opportunity for Ondas in a market that is seeing a lot of growth. Iron Drone’s expertise and technology will be complementary to the Optimus System drone, providing our growing list of customers in the public safety and industrial sectors with the solution they are looking for.”

Iron Drone is Ondas’ first foray into the public safety, homeland security and defense markets. The company’s system and Airobotics’ Optimus System together offer a government-grade drone system for security and critical infrastructure protection and monitoring. 

“We’re moving fast to bring the Iron Drone solution to the homeland security worldwide market,” Meir Kliner, Ondas Autonomous Systems President, said in a release. “We have already been approached by various potential customers who are looking for a reliable, non-weaponized counter-drone solution. The unique integrated AI-based Iron Drone solution relies on [the] physical elimination of the target drone. This makes it effective against pre-programmed hostile drones and UAVs which do not rely on [the] operator’s radio-link. Moreover, due to its low collateral signature, it can be operated in areas where the use of jamming is prohibited, such as airports, populated areas, and critical infrastructures. With Iron Drone, our customers will be able to neutralize threats while utilizing Optimus drones for monitoring, observation, and video surveillance.”

Ondas announced it was acquiring Airobotics in July 2022, with the goal of accelerating American Robotics‘, another Ondas subsidiary, technical development and regulatory roadmap and expanding the breadth of applications, use cases and vertical AR targets. 

Airobotics’ Optimus System is an autonomous unmanned aircraft system that focuses on high-value applications within the industrial, homeland security and smart city services market. The system includes an industrial-grade drone-in-a-box and the Optimus Airbase, which allows for robotic battery and payload swapping. 

The Scout System from American Robotics includes Scout, a fully-autonomous drone, ScoutBase, a weatherproof charging and edge computing station and ScoutView, a fleet management and analytics software. Scout is intended for industrial, agricultural, and defense markets.