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Winner of the Coolest Thing Made in Idaho: Black Sage's Sawtooth
from IdaHome--June
Enforcing the "no drone zone"
BY HAILEY MINTON
Ten years ago, counter drone systems did not exist because they were not needed. High commercial drone production has led the market to evolve quickly, which has opened the door for the technology to be used for nefarious purposes. Black Sage is a Boise company that offers counter drone solutions. They live by their business philosophy of being agile and proactive to quickly adapt to new problems. Whether it is a big military drone classified as a Group 4 drone, or a small Group 1 drone you can buy at Walmart, Black Sage’s defense OS software utilizes sensors of the highest caliber to detect and defeat any drone threat.
Ross Lamm, co-founder of Black Sage, is the Chief Technology Officer and holds a PhD in Machine Vision Engineering. “It’s really interesting to be constantly exposed to new and different technologies that we can add to the system,” he says.
Sawtooth is the system that is used in the field. It is a layered approach. Black Sage doesn’t make any of the sensors used in the system themselves. “Many of our competitors repurpose their radar to counter UIS,” explains Ross. That makes them biased towards their own technology instead of using the best solutions for their clients. “We don’t make any of them,” Ross continues. “We integrate various sensors that are very interesting. We don’t necessarily make all those sub technologies, but we survey the market space and evaluate the different things available and integrate those.”
Black Sage’s Sawtooth setup has a range of sensors atop a mast. The sensors are integrated with their Defense OS software. This mast is built on a trailer that can be driven to the location that needs to be protected. After raising the mast, the radars, cameras, and antennas monitor the area for threats. The effectors on the mast are responsible for defeating the drone threats.
Ross and his team are passionate that their contributions in technology save American military lives. The U.S. military’s Forward Operating Bases are some of the locations that need counter drone protection. FOBs are typically a structure like a shipping container and act as an office for personnel to communicate with others who are operating in the field. Sawtooth has the capability to jam a signal, fire a laser, or even shoot a machine gun to defeat a threat. However, some actions require a person in the loop depending on the concept of operations in the field. Ross clarified that Black Sage isn’t the one deploying these counter drone actions; the governments, or locals with the authority, are deploying them.
These systems are used frequently for military purposes but Sawtooth success stories in those situations are classified. This technology is also relevant to markets like airports and hosts of large public events. Their system potentially saved lives at Incheon International Airport in South Korea when it detected a drone in the air. The air traffic was diverted until the drone was out of the sky. In another instance, someone was flying a drone in a restricted area at a New Year’s Eve celebration in the Middle East. The police had the authority to use a jammer so they did so and took down the drone. The number of illegal drones entering the airspace is accelerating and drones pose an increasing threat worldwide.
“There’s no single technology that stops all drones,” says Ross. If someone is flying a drone via remote control, they are communicating with that drone through radio frequency. Sawtooth can listen for passive radio frequency to alert the system of a drone in the air. However, that radio frequency communication isn’t needed if a person programs a drone to fly from point A to point B before deploying it. To spot these drones, Sawtooth uses active radar to send out pings to look for objects moving in the sky. The next layer is a thermal camera system. The day I interviewed Ross, they were in the field hammering the system with the difficult scenario of having to disambiguate the many birds in the area. All of these different layers look for questionable flying objects and determine if they are a threat.
Once a threat is determined, Sawtooth can jam the radio frequency, interrupt the programmed mission to get the drone from point A to point B, fire a laser at the drone, or use a machine gun to defeat the drone. “We’re deploying with a laser in one place, some international airports have jammers, at another we don’t,” says Ross.
Defense OS is the software created at Black Sage that integrates all those sensors and effectors on Sawtooth. The software is what makes the technology so adaptable and Sawtooth is the platform that offers a variety of solutions depending on the mission.
