OpenWorks celebrate winning the MITRE Challenge as Managing Director, Chris Down, collects the $20,000 cash prize during the MITRE Technology Day. SkyWall100 successfully stopped more drones than any other team during the live fire event that was held in August.
Originally selected from 42 entries, SkyWall100 was announced as the winner of the best UAS interdiction category at the MITRE Technology Day held last week. Eight teams competed in the live fire events held at the Quantico USMC base, in Virginia USA, and the unique SkyWall technology out performed all of the competition, a mix of electronic counter measures. Many of the drones were being flown autonomously and without radio link to the operator, something that prevented many of the jamming technologies from successfully stopping the targets.
SkyWall100 works independently of how a drone is being piloted and as such was able to protect the designated area better than any electronic counter measure (ECM) device. This successful endeavour further cements SkyWall as one of the counter-measures of choice when dealing with nefarious drones.
A series of classroom and field lessons were provided to ensure new trainees could safely handle and operate the SkyWall100 system. Training projectiles provided a cost-effective way of getting each operator comfortable with firing the compressed air powered system. Each new operator fired a small number of live projectiles during the final lesson.
All trainees demonstrated a high level of competency when capturing drones in a range of scenarios.
