Weaponized drones. Assets that just 10 years ago were almost exclusively reserved for the wealthiest of nations and militaries. These large and costly UAS platforms with expensive weaponry are being overshadowed by the proliferation of smaller more affordable first-person view quadcopters, or FPVs for short, today. Endless videos are coming out of modern conflicts of the recordings of FPV pilots acquiring and closing in on their targets. Whether it is man or machine, nothing and nowhere is safe from above. Not even here at home. In most of these videos, there is one common element expressed by the face of the victim in the very last frame before the grainy camera feed cuts to black.
Fear
As the drone's feed cuts to black, so does the victims. A mirror image. However not every FPV strike is a sealed fate. As the war in Ukraine has progressed, we have started to see successful, albeit low rates of soldiers shooting down FPVs with anything from rifles to shotguns, to even other drones. The counter drone industry was born about a decade ago, but the ongoing conflicts have only accelerated its need.
Counter UAS, or CUAS, is not a one solution problem. Layered defenses such as jammers, interceptors, and lastly point-defense are all necessary, and therefore necessary to train with. The question is then how do you, the rifleman, train against these FPV style drones? The simple answer is to just shoot a real one down. An interesting and even unsafe problem arises with this solution.
While weaponized FPV kamikaze drones are one of the lowest cost, guided weapon systems to ever hit the battlefield, they are one of the most expensive targets the rifleman could ever train against. Hundreds of dollars just vanish from just one critical hit from a rifle or shotgun against an average drone being utilized as a target. Then, said drone becomes an uncontrolled flying object before slamming into the ground and hopefully not the trainee or even worse, the ammo point. Their batteries can rupture, causing fires, and toxic smoke shutting down range operations. Lastly, the supply chain to have enough targets is growing ever more strained as the same components needed for a target drone are the same needed for a weaponized one. These pain points are becoming ever apparent from early counter drone programs. Training is most effective when it is repetitive. With all these pain points, there has to be a solution that mirrors what the current training practice is. As a tanker myself, we do not shoot real tanks at the gunnery range, we shoot plywood and rubber tank-shaped targets.
From this concept, Cardinal Defense Group LLC was born. It started as school project in my final year of college while also balancing the National Guard obligations of being a tanker. A job seemingly being phrased as "obsolete" by capabilities of these FPV drones. The idea came to create a drone target that was not in fact a drone at all. Current FAA regulations prohibit the downing of even the smallest of drones as they receive the same protections as a normal aircraft. Through the help and collaboration with friends and fellow co-founders, our first product, the AVIS-1 was created.
First product prototype test flight and trial completed.
AVIS is not just a product name. It is a theory and concept of affordable CUAS training under the values of crawl, walk, run. Something fairly hard to do with most CUAS programs that skips to a version of jog, and sprint. These values are the basis of our drone target designs. AVIS is designed to be modular so that almost anyone can now train against drones even if they themselves do not own one. For the crawl, every target features a cutout that a wooden target stand stick can fit into, letting users have a static target to determine optimal weapons, ammunition, holds, and engagement distances. Not to say that a group of Marines couldn't use this stick create a moving drone target from the safety of the rifle range pits. The walk and run concepts followed the tethered capability of our targets. The provided harness lets users hoist the target to unique and unfamiliar angles using any lift system. Whether it's a tree limb or a real drone towing a target at speed, the tethered system is the most economical and practical option to conduct point defense training against FPV drones. The AVIS product line and theory will only continue to evolve and expand as more airborne threats emerge. Our objective is to provide more affordable means to counter these threats.
Instead of fear, there will be confidence.
Cardinal Defense Group LLC