Army is delivering world-class counter-drone equipment to protect the Australian Defence Force from drone attacks.
Defence personnel and industry specialists gathered in South Australia early in December at the Cultana urban training facility to assess a number of counter-uncrewed aircraft systems (CUAS) during Exercise Southern Arrow.
Lieutenant Colonel Josh Mickle, of Land Capability Division, said drones posed the most fundamental threat to forces that militaries had seen in a long time.
"It is an asymmetric threat, the technology advances at an extremely fast rate, and the counter measures to those drones must keep up," Lieutenant Colonel Mickle said.
The exercise culminated with a live-fire demonstration - the first iteration of the LAND 156 integrated CUAS acquisition, refresh and upgrade schedule (ICARUS) featuring a command and control system integrated with multiple sensors and effectors.
This version includes the DART RF detection system and EchoGuard active radar, Vampire rocket launcher, R400 Slinger armed with an M134D mini-gun, and MAG-58 and M230LF mounted on Hawkeye vehicles.
"Countering drones is not an air defence problem, it is an everybody problem, and what we saw was the future of force protection," Lieutenant Colonel Mickle said.
'It is an asymmetric threat, the technology advances at an extremely fast rate, and the counter measures to those drones must keep up'
"This is a developmental project and we are moving extremely fast.
"ICARUS is a complex system and it has required a massive effort from the team, from both the Commonwealth and industry partners.
"To integrate advanced sensors and effectors into a combat management system to neutralise the drone threat that we just engaged is a pretty impressive undertaking.
"The team that has been able to pull this together in an extremely quick time is nothing short of remarkable."
The ICARUS demonstration was the culmination of an intense period of testing and evaluation, which will continue in 2026.
"Over the past six to eight weeks the project has been conducting evaluations and assessments of the best dismounted systems in the world to find the best of the best, that we can introduce rapidly," Lieutenant Colonel Mickle said.
"We've taken into account technical assessment, cyber assessment and soldier usability assessment, to identify the most suitable systems that we will acquire more of. We'll be training the dismounted forces on these systems from early 2026."
