The modern security landscape faces a technological paradox: while drone traffic has surged, the industry's most common detection method—Radio Frequency (RF) analysis—is rapidly losing its edge against the most dangerous threats.
Security teams are increasingly encountering the "Dark" Autonomous Drone: a UAS operating in complete radio silence, navigating by GPS waypoints or visual odometry. To a standard RF sensor, these drones simply do not exist. To counter this, professionals are turning to active radar.
However, upgrading to radar introduces a new challenge: The Noise Problem. High-performance radar detects everything, birds, swaying trees, and authorized air traffic. To successfully secure airspace against silent threats, you need a solution that combines the physical precision of Metamaterial Radar with the intelligence of Advanced Flight Filtering.
Standard RF detection relies on intercepting the "handshake" between a drone and its controller. Sophisticated actors break this handshake using three primary tactics:
Waypoint Autonomy: Commercially available UAVs fly pre-programmed missions without an active link.
Frequency Manipulation: Threats operate on non-standard frequencies or use encryption to mask their signature.
Against these "RF-Silent" threats, defense must shift from monitoring signals to monitoring physics.
To see what doesn't want to be heard, Airsight leverages hardware partners like Echodyne and their Metamaterial Electronically Scanned Array (MESA®) technology.
Unlike legacy mechanical radars that spin slowly (leaving gaps in coverage), MESA radar is solid-state. It steers beams electronically, allowing for:
Detecting movement is easy; knowing what moved is hard. This is where Micro-Doppler analysis becomes critical. It examines the frequency shifts caused by the internal micro-motions of the target.
Rotor vs. Wing: The system distinguishes the consistent, high-frequency spin of a drone’s propellers from the periodic flapping of a bird’s wings.
96% Accuracy: This binary classification virtually eliminates the "bird vs. drone" confusion that plagued early radar systems.
This is the critical new layer. When you tune a radar to detect small, silent drones, you inevitably detect other things. A security team cannot afford to react every time a plastic bag blows across a runway or a legal delivery drone flies past the perimeter.
Airsight’s AirGuard platform solves this with a two-stage verification process: Advanced Filtering Technology followed by Human Oversight.
Instead of just looking at what the object is, AirGuard analyzes how the object is behaving. By applying customizable flight profiles, AirGuard filters out noise based on three vectors:
Velocity Gating (Inbound/Outbound): A bird might fly randomly, but a threat drone often has a specific speed profile. AirGuard can ignore objects that don't match the speed of a suspicious approach (e.g., ignoring slow drifting objects or high-altitude commercial flights).
Altitude Thresholds: "Dark" drones often hug the treeline to avoid detection. AirGuard allows operators to set vertical boundaries, ignoring high-flying authorized traffic while alerting instantly on low-altitude penetrations.
Range & Geofencing: Prioritizing drones based on their proximity to critical assets rather than just their presence in the sky.
Software is powerful, but context is king. To ensure your team never chases a false alarm, AirSight backs its software with a 24/7 Human Monitoring Team. Once the software filters the data, our expert analysts review the remaining alerts in real-time. They visually verify the data signatures to distinguish between complex edge cases—ensuring that when your phone buzzes, it is a confirmed, verified threat.
The Result: Rigorous testing has confirmed that this combination of automated logic and human verification allows security teams to suppress benign detections while maintaining extreme sensitivity for "dark" threats.
A comprehensive drone detection solution is not about buying a single piece of hardware; it is about fusing data into a single operational picture.
Airsight is hardware agnostic but mission specific. Whether you require the Complete Tier (EchoGuard Radar + RF + PTZ Cameras) for a high-risk prison or the Essential Tier for corporate perimeter monitoring:
We Fuse the Data: We combine the physical tracks of the radar with the metadata of RF sensors.
We Filter the Noise: We use AirGuard software and Human Analysts to verify every track.
The drone threat is evolving from "loud and careless" to "silent and precise." Your security system must evolve with it.