Up to now 12 months alone, Russian-origin drones have reportedly entered the airspace of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Romania, triggering NATO intercepts and disrupting civil aviation. And NATO’s conventional air protection programs — designed for big plane and ballistic missiles, not low-cost drones — are struggling to maintain up.
Now the counter-drone firm that Axon (the identical firm that makes the taser) acquired has a plan to repair it.
Dedrone by Axon introduced this week that it’s partnering with TYTAN, a Munich-based protection startup, to create a system that may detect, observe, and destroy drones starting from small client drones to medium-sized army platforms just like the Iranian Shahed-136.
Group 3 drones pose challenges for army
Group 3 drones are a category of drones weighing 150-600 kg. They sit in what protection analysts name the “grey zone” of recent warfare. They’re too small and cheap for conventional missile programs to have interaction cost-effectively. However they’re too succesful to disregard.
The Shahed-136, which Iran provides to Russia and which has been used extensively in Ukraine to strike infrastructure, is the poster youngster for this class. It prices a fraction of what a cruise missile prices, flies low and gradual to keep away from radar, and might carry sufficient explosives to destroy energy stations, gas depots or command facilities.
When one in every of these crosses into NATO airspace — whether or not by chance, as a provocation, or as a real assault — the calculus will get ugly quick. Fireplace a multi-million-dollar interceptor missile at it? Let it go? Attempt to scramble jets?
“Shahed-type drones have changed cruise missiles as a less expensive, devastating strategy to hit essential infrastructure,” mentioned Rick Smith, CEO and Founding father of Axon, in a ready assertion. “The world wants daring advances in UAS and counter-UAS know-how. The way forward for protection can be outlined by how briskly we will join sensors, programs, and allies into one community that acts at machine pace.”
That’s precisely what the Dedrone-TYTAN partnership is designed to do.
How the system works
In brief, Dedrone’s AI detects the drone, and TYTAN’s interceptor kills it. Right here’s the longer model:
Dedrone brings DedroneTracker.AI, a synthetic intelligence platform that’s already logged over 800 million drone detections throughout 30+ international locations. The system fuses knowledge from a number of sensor sorts — radio frequency, radar, optical cameras, acoustic sensors — right into a single unified airspace image. It makes use of machine studying educated on over 18 million photographs to determine drone signatures and nearly get rid of false positives.
When DedroneTracker.AI spots a risk, it could possibly mechanically cue TYTAN’s kinetic interceptors for launch.
TYTAN’s interceptors are primarily autonomous missiles purpose-built to chase down hostile drones. They launch from modular containers that may be mounted on autos or deployed as semi-fixed installations. Utilizing laptop imaginative and prescient and AI steerage, they dash towards targets at speeds exceeding 250 km/h with engagement ranges as much as 25 km.
The interceptors keep lock on targets even in GPS-denied environments or underneath digital jamming — essential capabilities when dealing with adversaries who know tips on how to disrupt communications. As soon as the interceptor will get shut sufficient, it destroys the goal drone by direct kinetic impression.
The complete sequence — from detection to launch to destruction — occurs in seconds, with minimal human intervention required.
“This alliance permits us to supply our prospects a seamless CUAS platform that spans Group 1 by Group 3 threats,” mentioned Aaditya Devarakonda, CEO of Dedrone by Axon in a ready assertion. “Collectively, Dedrone and TYTAN are serving to NATO and its companions construct the related community that may outline the way forward for air protection.”
Fight-proven in Ukraine
Dedrone’s detection programs are deployed at army installations, airports and demanding infrastructure websites globally. The corporate was the one counter-drone supplier acknowledged underneath the Division of Homeland Safety’s SAFETY Act for anti-terrorism know-how.
TYTAN’s interceptors have undergone operational testing in Ukraine. Movies from these exams present the interceptors efficiently partaking drone targets, managed by operators utilizing industrial gaming units just like the Steam Deck — a deliberate design selection that prioritizes fast iteration over army procurement forms.
In October 2025, Germany awarded TYTAN a multi-hundred-million-euro contract to develop interceptor programs for the Bundeswehr. The German army particularly wished an answer primarily based on what had been confirmed in Ukraine.
The TYTAN partnership represents the primary of a number of collaborations Dedrone by Axon has instructed that it plans to announce. The corporate is positioning DedroneTracker.AI as an open platform that may combine a number of detection sensors and mitigation applied sciences from completely different producers.
The system scales from defending single services by DedroneCity deployments to nationwide networks protecting whole international locations.
Each Dedrone and TYTAN emphasize their dedication to “technological sovereignty” — which means the programs are developed and manufactured in Europe (particularly Germany), with software program that allies can quickly replace with out relying on non-allied know-how suppliers.
From Tasers to drone killers
For Axon, this partnership represents a major growth past the corporate’s conventional public security roots.
Axon is greatest recognized for Tasers, police physique cameras, and digital proof administration software program. However the firm has been steadily increasing into robotics and aerial programs. Earlier than buying Dedrone in October 2024, Axon purchased Sky-Hero (which makes indoor tactical drones) and Fusus (which creates unified intelligence ecosystems for regulation enforcement).
The Dedrone acquisition alone added an estimated $14 billion to Axon’s whole addressable market, opening doorways to army, authorities and demanding infrastructure prospects that beforehand weren’t within the firm’s orbit.
AXON CEO Rick Smith’s go to to Ukraine crystallized the strategic imaginative and prescient. Working with BRAVE1 and protection innovators in Kyiv, Smith noticed how quickly the character of battle is altering — and the way conventional protection procurement cycles are too gradual to maintain tempo.
“Ukraine has change into a proving floor for the way forward for protection innovation — particularly in unmanned and counter-unmanned programs,” Smith mentioned. “FPV drones have change into the brand new IED — low-cost, in all places, and lethal on the entrance traces. To fulfill these threats, we have to join sensors, programs, and allies into one community that acts at machine pace.”
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