Honeywell Aerospace and Odys Aviation Create Airborne Counter-UAS defense solution

Hon­ey­well has announced a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Odys Avi­a­tion to deliv­er a per­sis­tent air­borne defense solu­tion designed to pro­tect crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture and strate­gic assets from rapid­ly evolv­ing drone threats.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion on this counter-unmanned aer­i­al sys­tem (C‑UAS) builds on more than a year of joint devel­op­ment and sys­tems inte­gra­tion work to adapt Hon­ey­well Aerospace’s Sta­tion­ary and Mobile UAS Reveal and Inter­cept (SAMURAI) Autonomous Air­borne plat­form for deploy­ment on Odys’ long-range Laila UAV.

The effort sup­ports the broad­er Unit­ed States nation­al strat­e­gy to fur­ther strength­en domes­tic lead­er­ship in advanced avi­a­tion and accel­er­ate the deploy­ment of Amer­i­can-built drone tech­nolo­gies across defense and crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture pro­tec­tion mis­sions.

Matt Milas, pres­i­dent, Defense and Space, Hon­ey­well Aero­space, said: “SAMURAI deliv­ers crit­i­cal counter-UAS capa­bil­i­ties with proven reli­a­bil­i­ty, scal­a­bil­i­ty and seam­less inte­gra­tion into exist­ing defense archi­tec­tures.

“By lever­ag­ing Honeywell’s long his­to­ry in avion­ics, sen­sors and defense sys­tems, we are enabling C‑UAS capa­bil­i­ties that pro­tect far­ther, respond faster and oper­ate with min­i­mal down­time.”

Togeth­er, the Laila-SAMU­RAI sys­tem intro­duces a new defen­sive lay­er between ground-based sen­sors and high-end mis­sile defense sys­tems, reduc­ing reliance on cost­ly kinet­ic defens­es while extend­ing pro­tec­tion cov­er­age across vast and remote areas.

This capa­bil­i­ty is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant for dis­trib­uted ener­gy infra­struc­ture includ­ing refiner­ies, pipelines and off­shore pro­duc­tion plat­forms.

Odys is a dual-use aero­space com­pa­ny build­ing hybrid-elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (VTOL) air­craft. Laila will serve as the first air­borne appli­ca­tion of the Hon­ey­well SAMURAI sys­tem, and its hybrid propul­sion sys­tem – com­pat­i­ble with Jet A, Jet A‑1, and JP‑8 fuels – pro­duces enough pow­er to stay in flight for up to eight hours across a 450-mile range.

Built using mod­el-based sys­tems engi­neer­ing, SAMURAI pro­vides a turnkey, mod­u­lar solu­tion that incor­po­rates diverse cus­tomer-select­ed sen­sors and effec­tors. The sys­tem is com­pli­ant with Mod­u­lar Open Sys­tems Approach stan­dards, sup­port­ing inter­op­er­abil­i­ty, life­cy­cle vis­i­bil­i­ty and long-term sus­tain­ment.

Laila also elim­i­nates the need for ded­i­cat­ed charg­ing infra­struc­ture, enabling rapid deploy­ment in remote, expe­di­tionary and off­shore envi­ron­ments.

James Dor­ris, CEO of Odys Avi­a­tion, said: “Drone threats have fun­da­men­tal­ly changed the eco­nom­ics and oper­a­tional require­ments of air defense. Crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture and for­ward-oper­at­ing loca­tions require per­sis­tent pro­tec­tion across large areas and the abil­i­ty to engage threats at the hori­zon long before they’re at the doorstep.

“By com­bin­ing Honeywell’s SAMURAI sys­tem with the endurance, run­way inde­pen­dence and onboard pow­er capa­bil­i­ty of Laila, we’re intro­duc­ing a new air­borne defense lay­er designed for today and into the future.”