Case Study

Countering Unmanned Systems

Washington, D.C.

With the increasing threat of unmanned aerial systems, the effort to counter this threat has become an urgent operational need.

Unmanned aerial system (UAS) technology is rapidly proliferating and evolving. The US Navy sought to better understand the threat to facilities, personnel, and platforms as well as any potential mitigations.

SPA helped the Navy analyze UAS risks and mitigations by combining our extensive experience in threat assessment, policy and operations, and Modeling and Simulation (M&S) to inform the identification, selection, deployment, and modification of systems that counter UAS (C-UAS). SPA’s comprehensive and integrated approach involving numerous government stakeholders across the DoD, DHS, FAA, FCC and more, enabled rapid and continued improvement of effective C-UAS solutions.

SPA’s methodology allowed government clients to more quickly understand risks associated with UAS threats and issues associated with approaches to counter them.

Counter UAS Highlights

Assessed Counter UAS system performance

Using our propriety modeling and simulation tool, GCAM®, combined with our geospatial analysis environments, SPA developed wargames and models to assess the absolute and relative impact of C-UAS systems performance against various detection, identification, tracking, and mitigation metrics. SPA also produced dynamic simulations of actual UAS incursions as well as future threat scenarios.

Coordinate and analyze live testing events

SPA applied its extensive experience coordinating and analyzing live testing events to assess C-UAS solutions. Similar applications of our live testing experience include autonomous underwater, surface, and ground vehicles.

Rapid response to urgent operational need

With the challenge of coordinating across multiple organizations and meeting an aggressive schedule to deploy a C-UAS solution, SPA’s experience provided the Navy a tailored approached to evaluating C-UAS while maintaining the safety rigor to ensure the safety of systems and personnel.