The US Army has tested an app that allows smartphones to serve as counter-UAV assets by providing visual information and location data of suspicious drones to central authorities.
The US Army Central’s Task Force 39 recently trialed the counter-UAV smartphone utility at the McEntire Joint National Guard Base in South Carolina. The exercise involved several unit members spread across a wide area using the app to snap photographs of spotted drones. Those images, along with accompanying geographical coordinates, were then automatically relayed to a unified command post, which used incoming feeds from participants to lock in on and track the vehicle.
As its marketing-indifferent name suggests, the CARPE Dronvm app was developed for a US Army innovation program to create and integrate new tech assets into armed forces operations. Produced by the MITRE corporation, the smartphone capability is not only designed to create a more affordable counter-UAV supplement to heavier defense and enterprise detect-identify-track-and-mitigate solutions, but also use crowd-sourcing to gather data.
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According to MITRE, the app works as such:
1. CARPE Dronvm user takes a picture of the suspicious drone, using the CARPE Dronvm app.
2. CARPE Dronvm app automatically communicates with the processing engine (running a computer-vision machine learning algorithm) to determine if the picture contains a drone and to calculate its location.
3. If a drone is detected:
a. Command center is alerted, and drone location is generated on the situational awareness map.
b. Alerts are sent to other CARPE Dronvm users in the vicinity of the drone.
MITRE says the app’s planned use on readily available Android and iOS smartphones will allow authorized US Army users to serve as sensors in a wider counter-UAV network, and at minimal costs to boot. Detection alerts and situational data updates on suspicious drones will be collected and shared between CARPE Dronvm users across a designated operational radius.
It will not, of course, afford participants neutralization capabilities – but with the US Department of Defense backing them up, eventual zapping action shouldn’t be a problem.
While MITRE apparently designed the app to initially function in smaller areas, Task Force 39 operations officer Maj. Travis Valley said officials with US Army Central (ARCENT) recently decided to test the smartphone counter-UAV gadgetry on a more ambitious scale.
“We expanded the experiment footprint, covering 50 kilometers, with multiple individuals in the area using the CARPE Dronvm app,” Valley said. “This was all to prove the CARPE Dronvm app works. It did, in fact it exceeded my expectations on the simplicity of use and the program’s drone detection ability. This has the potential as a force protection multiplier, adding another tool to help protect soldiers in a deployed environment.”
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Despite the promise the successful US Army trial inspires, civilians probably shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for CARPE Dronvm to become available on Apple and Google app stores so they can join the crowd providing counter-UAV alerts.
Image: ARCENT
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