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This gun downed four drones at Brazil’s presidential inauguration

Federal law enforcement officials at Sunday’s inauguration ceremony for Brazil’s president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, say they used an anti-drone gun to bring down four “suspicious” aircraft heading toward the president.

According to reports, Brazilian presidential security utilized DroneGun Tactical, a long-range counter-drone system developed by US/Australian company DroneShield.

The anti-drone gun, which is yet to be authorized by the US FCC, works by intercepting a drone’s communication signals. When disruption is triggered, the drone responds by either landing vertically on the spot or returning to its home location. This ensures that the drone remains intact and available for forensic investigation. But, as an additional security measure, the device ceases the video transmission back to the drone operator immediately.

DroneShield has been operational in Brazil since mid-2021 when Anatel, the national telecommunications agency, gave the company access to the radio frequencies it needs to deploy its devices. The company says it has sold several anti-drone guns to the Brazilian government to date.

According to DroneShield CEO Oleg Vornik, “Brazil is a key South American market for DroneShield, and we are pleased to see the deployment of our systems in the country at the highest level, which is expected to flow down to further systems being utilized in Brazil, as counter-UAS requirements continue to rapidly grow.”

Read: 2022 rewind: FPV drone videos that left us awestruck

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Avatar for Ishveena Singh Ishveena Singh

Ishveena Singh is a versatile journalist and writer with a passion for drones and location technologies. She has been named as one of the 50 Rising Stars of the geospatial industry for the year 2021 by Geospatial World magazine.