Bird and Drone Detection at Military Airbases

Protecting Military Assets

At military airbases, protecting assets and operations from the growing threat of bird strikes is no easy challenge. Fighter-jets fly fast, low, and perform tens of cycles of activity; that makes them particularly vulnerable to birds. Then there’s drones. A growing and elusive threat that can strike without warning, and with detrimental consequence. With both challenges developing rapidly, ensuring aircraft and assets remain mission-ready is becoming an increasingly tough demand

Birds: Mitigating the Threat

Managing wildlife and habitation on and surrounding airfields is absolutely paramount to successful and safe operations. That seems obvious. But, what’s less obvious is how to do
that in a way which saves time, money and reduces risk as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP).

This is made even more tricky by the fact that military aircraft are more at risk than civil aircraft. The cycle rate is high, and training and operations are often in the lower airspace, where 90% of bird strikes occur.

Thankfully, Category A incidents are rare when it comes to bird strikes, but they’re not rare enough. And one strike could even be enough to put a single-engine fighter jet out of the
game.

Working with warning and foresight is the best way to minimise the threat. Minutes, even seconds, matter. It’s the difference between avoiding a strike or not.

This is where our avian radar, MAX^®, comes in. It automatically detects and logs hundreds of birds simultaneously, including their size, speed, direction and flight path.

With MAX^®, you’ll be tracking in real-time, 24/7, all-around your airbase. And you configure it to your specific needs.

But it’s not just about the here-and-now. Our radars also support the long-term analysis of patterns and behaviour; giving you the means to strengthen and adapt your wildlife policies with hard, organised data.

Drones: Mitigating the Threat

Drones have become affordable, easy to obtain and simple to fly. They’re an innovative piece of technology for photography, prized by hobbyists and professionals alike, and are even used in the public sector, in delivery and agriculture.

But the advanced and accessible technology that makes them popular is the very same reason why they are a formidable threat.

They’re becoming smaller, faster, can fly higher and for longer. They’re elusive and extremely difficult to detect, classify and track. Traditional radar simply cannot see them.

Mitigating the threat begins with detection: knowing exactly what’s happening in your airspace at all times. Our purpose-built drone radars automatically distinguish drones from birds, detect, and the output from multiple radars is incorporated into one unambiguous picture.

Both IRIS^® and ELVIRA^® cover 360-degrees and come with a standard instrumented range of five kilometres for smaller multi-rotor drones, and an optional 10km instrumented range for larger rotary- and fixed-wing drones.

As well as our purpose-built drone radars, we’ve released a new optional Drone Classification Module (DCM) upgrade, providing additional drone radar functionality to our flagship bird radar, MAX^®.

This early warning is the difference between being at risk of an intrusive drone, or proactively managing that risk to take the fastest and best course of action to deal with it.

Radar Love

Our technology is installed across the globe, on numerous terrains. But, it all started in The Netherlands.

In cooperation with the Royal Netherlands Air Force, and later, the European Space Agency (ESA), TNO began developing unique algorithms to use radar. It was clear the technology had huge potential, and Robin Radar Systems was spun out of TNO in 2010. The rest, as they say, is history.

A lot has changed since, and today’s market demands even more... Military airbases and airfields are confronted with the unenviable challenge of mitigating risks posed by wildlife,
and dealing with an entirely unpredictable threat altogether: drones.

Tackling these challenges starts with complete situational awareness. That’s what we’ve built our radars for.

Explicitly designed for avian targets, MAX^® has the fastest rotation speed in the market, resulting in track updates every second and uniquely detailed 3D visualisation.

Unlike human observers, radars don’t need to rest, and can see in all weather, day and night. They provide detailed insight in real-time and the ability to distinguish patterns and predict the risk of bird strikes on a long-term basis.

We know that time and resources are critical in a military setting, so our purpose-built drone detection radars prevent false alarms by distinguishing between drones and other moving objects, such as birds.

Both IRIS^® and ELVIRA^® cover a full 360 degrees, and IRIS^® adds target elevation, increased range and elevation performance, and comes in a small and lightweight package. Don’t have a drone radar but do have MAX^®, or are thinking of deploying MAX^®? Our Drone Classification Module (DCM) for MAX^® provides an even more affordable and efficient way to add drone detection and tracking to your safety management system.

All three radars combine smart, intuitive software with innovative hardware, and we’ve designed them to be easy to use and have minimal infrastructure requirements.

At Robin, we believe that knowledge is power. And a position of full situational awareness is the difference between being at risk, and being in control of risk.

Full situational awareness at any airbase is game changing in terms of reducing the operational downtime caused by bird strikes or a potential drone threat.

Our range of bird and drone radars track the exact flight paths of both flocks and individual birds up to 10 kilometres, and drones up to 4 kilometres.

They automatically detect and log hundreds of birds (and drone swarms) simultaneously, including their size, speed, direction and flight path.

Radar tracks are displayed on intuitive interfaces to empower teams with unprecedented situational awareness.

We know detection is key, but only the first step in neutralising a drone threat. That's why we've built our drone radars to integrate seamlessly with other technologies.

We work with a number of partners, and invite system integrators to contact us to explore possibilities.

Early Warnings and Organised Data

Simply put, no other sensor technology has as a wider coverage area than our avian and drone radars.

MAX^® has been built to monitor birds from the start. Its antennas are designed explicitly with avian targets in mind. Height information is provided for all tracks, and there’s
practically no cone of silence above the radar.

Both IRIS^® and ELVIRA^® provide early warning of approaching drones, giving you precious time to react. They classify, and most importantly, differentiate between drones, birds and other moving objects; a critical feature in preventing
false positives.

With our optional Drone Classification Module (DCM) upgrade, you can add drone detection and classification capabilities to MAX^® as well.

We’ve combined each radar’s hardware capabilities with equally proficient softwares that enable their users to see the information they need, quickly and without hassle.

Make Informed Decisions Quickly and with Accuracy

Drone Viewer

Awesome hardware demands software to match, and that’s why we’ve spared no effort to create Drone Viewer. It’s explicitly designed to give you fast, clear information and can be configured to suit your specific needs.

Simple and Intuitive Map-Based Interface

Our map-based Drone Viewer is a web interface comprised of colour coded tracks. Red tracks indicate drones and their flight path. Orange tracks represent suspected drones. Green tracks represent birds and other moving targets. All track
types can be toggled on and off, and the track visualisations and colours are all user-configurable.

Customise Your Own Alarm Zones

As a user, you can define virtual zones depending on your own special use-cases. You can cause both visual and acoustic alarms to be triggered when a drone is detected and classified. And for the more complex environments, you can trigger alarms only when a drone enters a specific area, which you define yourself.

Friend or foe? Defining safe zones where you deploy your own drones is also possible, and will ensure detections do not trigger alarms in these areas.

Remote Diagnostics

The system’s performance can be monitored from a remote location. If something is not working the way it should, technical staff can immediately log in, perform diagnostics and in most cases, solve it remotely.

Record all Data

To enable case evaluation, all tracks and alarms are stored in a spatial SQL database.

Drone Classification Module (DCM)

Know Exactly What’s Happening in Your Airspace

Mobile Viewer

Mobile Viewer is designed for day-to-day operations. It empowers users out in the field to access real-time information easily on tablets, which can be also be installed and used in vehicles.

Mobile Viewer also uses the tablet’s GPS to pinpoint your current location in relation to the activity happening around you.

Align Field Observations with Data

The intuitive interface enables users to manually link species to specific tracks or locations based on human observation, for later reference and/or reporting. Simply select the track of the bird you’ve identified, and log your findings. Want to note something not related to tracks? Add a ground observation to quickly store that information for replay.

Track Birds Accurately

Tracking bird movements in real time has never been easier. You can select and zoom in on individual coloured tracks, which represent actual bird flight paths. The colours distinguish between small, medium and large birds and flocks. A circle at the end of a track, varying in size depending on the bird, indicates each birds’ present location. Each track in the viewer also offers altitude information: how high the bird or flock is flying.

Display Critical Insights

It’s important to be where the action is – but we know what you’re thinking - how can I possibly deal with all of that information at once? There’s a lot of birds in the air, and surely too many tracks can become confusing? You’re right. And that’s why Mobile Viewer offers activity grids, showing where recent hot spots of bird activity are, for example, the past 30 minutes. Get important insights into the severity of bird movements happening at that time to determine which areas you should focus on.

Get Automatic Warnings

Your teams will be immediately notified of activity detected in areas of risk, giving precious time to react and manage the threat. Get real-time warnings if, for example, a flock of birds is about to enter a critical zone. Runway funnel and graph colours will change, indicating when the number of birds is higher than a threshold which you set. These critical zones are pre-defined in conjunction with our experts, and are easy to modify based on the new insights you’ll be sure to gather.

Highly Customisable Classifications

See only what you want to see. All classifications are customisable to give you the information you need, from bird sizes to number of birds in flocks. Using Mobile Viewer, you can also hide some classifications to make sure you can focus on the right tracks.

Look at the past to predict the future

Bird Viewer

Our intuitive Bird Viewer enables its users to zoom out and oversee what’s happening on and around their airbase over longer periods.

Bird Viewer is a web-based application designed for office-use, and can be installed on one of the system servers. It runs from your browser on a device that is connected to your radar system.

It even works remotely, as long as a 3G, 4G or 5G connection is available.

Customise Your View

You are the master of your own universe. Or, at least your own Bird Viewer. You can choose different overlays and map types, and even navigate on a Google Earth background
complete with customised site landmarks. Change orientation, zoom and tilt to view tracks from the perfect angle

Log and Replay

All data is automatically and continuously logged to a
database. Via Bird Viewer, you can easily search for, collate
and replay activity. This way, you can watch back and take a
closer look to analyse those critical moments.

Report Viewer

Need to convert bird data into into visual reports and summaries? No problem.

With our custom reporting and viewing tool, you can choose which KPIs you want to report on, and which timeframes you prefer to use.

This interface supports more-detailed analyses of data to establish long-term patterns and behaviours.

The result? Tailored policies and approaches that are backed by hard facts to achieve the biggest impact.

Holistic Bird Hazard Management

Since 2021, Robin offers logging software and nature-inspired bird dispersal systems for bird control teams at airports and airbases, through the acquisition of Scarecrow Group in the UK.

Scarecrow’s bird management products use bio-acoustic technology, which is the evolutionary communication method used by birds to warn of immediate danger, for the safe and humane management of birds.

Combined with the products and services of Robin Radar Systems, users can ensure a thorough grasp on bird activity on and around their airbase at all times. It enables the
analysis of long-term effects of dispersal, and provides the chance to optimise policies to be as effective as possible with hard data driving decision making.

• Monitoring
• Deterrence
• Logging
• Reporting

B.I.R.D Tab^TM

The industry standard for bird strike avoidance; Scarecrow’s flagship airside product is the Scarecrow B.I.R.D. Tab™. This is two systems in one, providing not only a Bird Dispersal method as a vehicle-mounted system solution, but also provides Data Logging/Analysis/ Reporting Software for helping airports to make and take informed choices on action to mitigate future bird strike risk – whether that be by deploying resources in a more informed way at key times, or taking steps to reduce the bird numbers seen in the first instance.

Premier 2020

The Premier 2020 is a vehicle mounted bird distress call broadcast system. As part of an
integrated bird management scheme, it has proved effective for bird dispersal from airfields and surrounding areas, and has been the backbone of Airfield Wildlife Management for the past 38 years.

B.I.R.D Tab^TM Reporting

Scarecrow B.I.R.D. Tab™ Reporting System is a highly effective data logging and analysis
system that has been designed to provide all of the same functions of Scarecrow B.I.R.D.
Tab™, just without the ability to broadcast distress calls to disperse birds.

O.A.R. Off Aerodrome Reporting

This powerful software tool has been designed in consultation with four international airports
and the CAA (UK). Our comprehensive solution provides you with everything you need to
monitor, record and analyse off aerodrome sites that may pose a bird strike risk.

Mission-Ready Radar

In 2016 the Royal Netherlands Airforce (RNLAF) sent F-16 fighter jets to an undisclosed location in the Middle East to support coalition forces.

The F-16 fighter jets were sent for policing purposes - a military authority in the skies. But that wasn’t all, our own drone radar was sent to support the mission.

Robin’s ELVIRA^® radar was also installed at the international base; placed to give early warnings of potential drone attacks and detect any unauthorised activity in airspace.

Traditional radar simply cannot see drones, but they pose a serious threat to military operations. ELVIRA^® is built explicitly to classify and track them, giving precious time to react and neutralise the threat.

First to Trial Avian Radar

In 2021 RAF Lossiemouth became the first Royal Air Force station in the UK to trial a radar system to help protect jets from bird strikes.

Located at the Moray airbase, the coastal station is particularly vulnerable to this risk, as it’s also surrounded by a number of pig farms - another bird attractant.

Project Winchell was designed to help protect operations, and saw a succesful 18-month trial with avian radar. Robin’s MAX^® radar is now deployed permanently, helping protect the
base for years to come.

MAX^® provides real-time height and positional information of airborne targets. The valuable research will also be put into play at other RAF stations in the future, tackling the threat in a more strategic way to reduce the danger and impact of bird strikes at military airbases.

Make Even More of Your Radar Data

Optimising your Wildlife policies, making plans with precision and taking the best course of action - it all starts with knowledge. Unprecedented knowledge.

With your bird radar, you’ll identify key areas of seasonal activity and patterns of bird behaviour on and around your airfield, and have the information you need to mitigate bird strikes and even intervene, when necessary. But you don’t have to – there are Wildlife Consultancies out there who can guide you in the best course of action.

We choose our friends carefully, and they’re just as knowledgeable in habitat management and industry guidance as we are in radar technology. If you need a hand to take your policies up a gear with the insights you gather and discoveries you make, we’re happy to point you in the right direction!