In the last decade, the development and the diffusion of aerial drones (UAV – Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) have reached relevant purposes, offering many applications in various economic and scientific/research sectors. Today, the market is growing and involves more than 15 Million drones for a year.

This strong growth has also caused a major availability of drones for malevolent scopes, considering the possibility to equip the drones with CBRN and explosives payloads.

The increasing level of terrorism alarm make dramatically concrete the issue of the protection against terrorist attacks by killer drones, especially in urban environments where the risk to cause damages is very high. A prime example is the assassination attempt on the head of state in Venezuela via a drone.

The capability to detect, recognize and localize such threats, as well as to track them in order to set the response (e.g. neutralization), is the precondition necessary for the protection of the site or asset.

A current solution such as GPS spoofing, hijacking, and UAV hacking are technologies highly dependent on the technology of killer-drone, so they can be not effective.

The anti-drones system, currently deployed in the same airports, is based on platforms that integrate detection, recognition and tracking subsystem with neutralization and effector subsystem. The innovation trend is focalized on methodologies and techniques on multi-sensor detection and recognition based on the integration of heterogeneous technologies.

This research project involves the study of architectural and technology solutions to develop an innovative concept of a counter-UAV system for applications in urban scenarios and, in general, for the protection of critical infrastructures or critical assets such as industrial plants, public or government buildings, space ground centers, ..). This concept shall demonstrate a high level of flexibility and adaptability in order to respond to the continuous increase of capability of threating and damage of the killer-drones.