Drone operators on modern battlefields are facing intense electronic warfare, with enemy jamming making it outrageously difficult to fly with GPS.
Maxar, a leading satellite imagery company, has unveiled a new solution to this problem that bypasses GPS by having drones rely on what they see and three-dimensional global terrain data.
The company announced Raptor, a “first-of-its-kind” program, on Tuesday. It’s designed for integration on any uncrewed aerial system; no additional hardware is required.
Rather than using GPS for navigation or location information, a drone using the Raptor system can use Maxar’s data — over 90 million square kilometers of 3D terrain data mapped around the world — and details from its surroundings.
Peter Wilczynski, Maxar’s chief product officer, said that this software ensures uncrewed systems “get the job done no matter how much GPS interference they face.”
It’s a novel approach specifically designed to counter the challenges of GPS jamming and electronic warfare, which can throw drones off-course. That has been especially prevalent in the Ukraine war and is becoming a top concern for future wars.
“The entire modern battle space is defined by GPS,” Wilczynski explained. A wide range of military systems depend on it, but it may not be available in future fights.
US and other Western military officials have long expressed the need for alternative navigational systems in environments where GPS may be contested or completely denied.
Raptor about visual recognition and data matching. With the software, a drone operator can compare the drone’s camera feed with Maxar’s data in real time and figure out where the system is and where it needs to go.
Maxar has been focused on the shift toward mapping out a 3D representation of the world from two-dimensional photos and data. Raptor is a culmination of that project, Wilczynski said, as well as an answer to the countermeasures that have been taking out drone navigation in battle.
The Raptor system consists of three elements. The first part is the vision-based position software, which has an accuracy of less than 10 meters RMSE, or root mean square error, which measures the difference between the model’s predictions and actual values. Next is the technology that syncs with the drone’s video feed to Maxar’s data. The final element is loaded on laptops, which the operators use to extract real-time coordinates from the video feed.
Geography is not static, especially in a wartime scenario, where battlefields can change quickly. Wilczynski said Maxar can update its data in about a day’s time; then Raptor gets new maps representing any changes. It’s similar to giving a drone operator a map right before an operation. The drone’s visual feed can also track changes by comparing what it’s seeing to the data.
And even with a bit of change or difference, or different qualities of video feeds depending on drone cameras, Raptor can help the operator match the 3D representation and video feed, sort of like “a puzzle or a lock and key,” Wilcynzski said.
A drone’s visual feed, too, can be severed or jammed. Raptor allows the drone to keep the map data locally, so it can still use that should the feed between the operator and drone be cut.
The 3D element, Wilcynzski said, is crucial. It gives the drone far more detailed topographical data than a 2D image. It’s more resilient to nighttime operations, seasonal and weather changes, and altitudes. Raptor can operate as low as 120 meters.
Another element is the ability to operate multiple drones at once. Because Raptor uses a central geospatial source and doesn’t require specific cameras on the drones, it is possible for different uncrewed vehicles to work together regardless of hardware or software differences.
Maxar’s Raptor comes as countermeasures to rising drone warfare are rampant, especially in the Ukraine war. Both sides have developed ways to jam each other’s drones. Alternative solutions, like fiber-optic drones and AI-driven drones that can’t be jammed, have proven useful, though nothing is without complications.
