Segovia, March 21, 2022. A few weeks ago, a demonstration of the operation of the anti-drone system (C-UAS or Counter Unmanned Aerial System), from Thales, Horus Shield (part of Eagle Shield Thales’ solution), took place at the airfield of the Segovia town of Marugán. This demonstration is part of the tests approved by the Spanish Army as part of the Fuerza 2035/BRIEX 2035 initiative, which aims to adapt the Spanish Army to the operational environment foreseen for that year.

The event, coordinated and supervised by the Spanish Army's Head of Information Systems, Telecommunications and Technical Assistance (JCISAT), was also attended by personnel from other Army units and from the Spanish General Directorate of Armament and Material (DGAM), which reports to the Secretary of State of the Ministry of Defense.

Capable of protecting vulnerable infrastructures from the unauthorized presence of any type of drone, Horus Shield stands out for being a very versatile anti-drone system; offering numerous information to the user on a single screen; and having a surprising capacity to integrate sensors from different manufacturers, which makes it a very interesting C-UAS for different organizations. For example, for the Army, with whose Command and Control systems BMS-ET and PROMETEO it is prepared to be interoperable, although this functionality was not the subject of the demonstration.

C-UAS systems must detect drones at long distances, in order to have sufficient reaction time; identify and track them, in order to determine whether or not they pose a threat and, finally, have the ability to neutralize them in case they pose a real risk. Horus meets all these requirements, as could be seen in the demonstration in Marugán (Segovia), where a drone traveled distances of more than 2 km, despite which the Thales anti-drone system detected and classified it by radar and direction finder, optronic tracking and neutralization by frequency jamming.

The Horus-Shield demonstration included the Thales GECKO optronic system, which has extensive experience in use in border surveillance tasks both in our country and internationally. The Thales Horus-Shield anti-drone system has been deployed for more than three years in different customers monitoring critical infrastructures both in urbanized areas with disadvantaged populations and hostile groups with high technological level, as well as being used in the protection of major sporting events.