NATO Trials Dstl Standard for Counter-Drone Systems

The U.K. Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl)’s Sensing for Asset Protection with Integrated Electronic Networked Technology (SAPIENT) has completed trials with NATO in order to assess SAPIENT as a potential NATO standard for Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS).

SAPIENT is an open software architecture that helps different sensors, interfaces and decision-making modules work together with little or no software engineering, and can improve efficiency through use of autonomy.

SAPIENT’s Interface Control Document (ICD) was tested during the Counter-Unmanned Aerial System Technical Interoperability Exercise (C-UAS TIE 21). During the air defense exercise, SAPIENT proved highly successful in providing the standard for underlying information exchange.

It enabled more than 70 connections between C-UAS and Command and Control (C2) systems. It also facilitated 17 advanced Autonomous Sensor Modules (ASM) from different vendors to connect to 7 decision-making modules. In some cases this connection was completely plug-and-play, achieving zero-second integration time.

As a result, many suppliers of counter-drone technology have now adopted the SAPIENT standard. It has already been adopted by MoD as the standard for C-UAS technology.

“NATO TIE adds to the recent success of the SAPIENT deployment at Contested Urban Environment 2021 and builds on its adoption in the U.K. MoD counter small-UAS Strategy,” said David Lugton, Dstl Project Technical Authority for C-UAS systems.

“The widespread voluntary adoption of SAPIENT by industry across NATO was highly impressive, paves the way to an open commercial market of SAPIENT compliant C-UAS components and places the architecture as a crucial enabler as the demand for rapid C-UAS interoperability increases across the NATO nations.” 

By providing a common standard for interfacing sensing, effector, fusion and C2 element, SAPIENT facilitates the use of autonomy and reduces the workload on operators. And by using the openly-available SAPIENT Interface Control Document, suppliers and partners can ensure they develop compatible modules, making integrations between systems quick and easy.

“Zero-second integration is really important,” said Dstl’s Professor Paul Thomas. “Rather than spending months or years developing a system, by which time the threat has changed or gone away, you can simply click together these pieces and they just work at deployment time. So you can respond to a new or an emerging threat by integrating the pieces you need at the time you need them.”