The U.S. should integrate a low-cost acoustic network to detect aerial threats developed by Ukraine into its own air defense systems, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command said Wednesday morning. Consisting of thousands of acoustic sensors across Ukraine, this system helps detect and track incoming Russian kamikaze drones, alert traditional air defenses in advance, and also dispatch ad hoc drone hunting teams to shoot them down.
“Their use of acoustic sensors has proliferated across the country to the point now where they’re almost positively identifying drones in the distance because of this acoustic and the fireteams attached to that acoustic, low-cost capability that they’ve developed and proliferated,” Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Gainey said during a discussion at the Hudson Institute. As a result, Ukraine has a “low-cost defeat” system. The U.S., he added, should “find a way” of integrating “that type of low-cost capability into our system. We should be able to find ways to work together and augment some of our capability with some of that lower-cost capability.”
Hellbound and Down 