The war in Ukraine has brought drones to the forefront of the modern war, creating a request for anti-Drone systems.
However, heritage solutions to oppose drones, such as land -based protection systems and internet warfare, often come at a great price price. For the German start -up Eagle, these solutions fall short: when the first view of the first person (FPV) $ 500 have the ability to destroy multi -million tanks, cost -effective responses are needed.
“We use cheap, mass-produced systems to set a symmetry against the numerical advantage of free strike drones,” said the Dutch entrepreneur Jan-Hendrik Boelens Bolens. The Munich -based Alpine Eagle, which he founded in 2023, develops sentinel, a mixture of software and equipment focused on cost efficiency.
In contrast to land-based competitive solutions, such as Hover’s anti-land turret, Sentinel is air, with modular sensors that are not hampered by terrain and other obstacles, avoiding making a stationary target.
Her mother, who is sophisticated but is not meant to be expense, carries kamikaze interceptors that also help her do more than detect threats or block them: they can capture objects with nets or destroy hostile drones altogether.
While potential applications exist in law enforcement and other sectors, the current geopolitical climate has prompted the demand for this technology mainly in the military. The Munich -based starting provided the German army as its departure client, in addition to other government agencies, and said it reached the seven digits in the first 12 months of operation.
This helped him close a series A 10.25m (about $ 10.96 million) led by the British firm of Deep Tech VC IQ Capital. New funding will help begin expanding its current team of aeronautical machinery learning practitioners, with new employment throughout the product, engineering, business development and sales bringing its calculation to 40.
The fact that the round is run by a British VC firm is no coincidence, as the beginning will have the United Kingdom as a major market in its expansion. This is also because its market goes beyond the battlefields, with recent events, emphasizing the need to protect military bases and wider infrastructure.
However, there is no doubt that the Alpine Eagle is part of the growth of European protection and interest technology for the sector, especially in countries that feel the most in threat.
In addition to returning the general investors Catalyst and HCVC, its lid table now includes funds from Estonia, Germany and Poland. “We were looking for a consortium of European investors who share the emergency for the building (a) the European Ecosystem of Defense Technology and located in the main countries,” Bolens said.
Despite this feeling of emergency, Boelens did not want to rush Sentinel’s entrance to Ukraine. “Our approach there was to make sure we first have a mature system to give them so that we do not waste their time with something that is not working yet. We have seen a lot of startups doing it, and we have felt that we have to go there only as the system is thought to do.”
After proves his system with the German army, she is now testing his system in Ukraine and speaking with various brigades that helped identify the first line use cases. One is fiber optic drone; Using cables instead of radio frequency makes them more difficult to detect or blocked.
Drones who are immune to RF interference can also be a challenge for Epirus, the beginning of American defense technology co-founded by Joe Lonsdale who just raised a D 250 million series, and the product of Leonidas Flag radiates high-power microwaves.
In contrast, the airbine alpine air system can integrate various sensors including radar panels to detect low -flight drones that often avoid soil -based systems.
However, the lock goes in both ways. This is one of the aspects in which the Alpine Eagle is using it, with the processing of the data on board the device for navigation purposes, as well as collecting data in order to recover its algorithms “have more adaptive tactics based on what they actually perceived in reality.”
A main tactical aspect of Sentinel is Swarming, which is also a sale point of the latest drone models from the German Helsing Defense Technology company. Its implementation to oppose the drone strategies follows the same logic of restrictive costs and victims, with modern warfare that is increasingly unconscious.
“We realized that all Western powers have the problem of not having enough soldiers, so we try to build a system where many, many drones can be operated by a single operator using high levels of automation and really promoting the soldier in a mission manager than a pilot,” Bolens said.
