Australian defence technology company Boresight (ASX: BST) has demonstrated its drone swarming system to the US Marine Corps in Hawaii, as the Marines assess the technology for training use.
The two-day demonstration, held at a US Marines base in Honolulu, showcased Boresight’s one-to-many system, which allows a single ground control station to operate a swarm of up to 20 aerial target drones.
According to Boresight, Marines were given a half-hour briefing on system operation before setting drone routes and operating the swarm themselves.
Boresight Vice President of Business Development James Prior said the system was designed to allow operators without specialist piloting skills to run complex training scenarios, freeing trained first-person-view (FPV) drone pilots for operational tasks.
“Highly skilled FPV pilots are a valuable and limited resource. You don’t want them tied up flying training drones when their expertise is needed for higher-value operational tasks,” Prior said.
“Our system is designed so that either military personnel or FPV specialists can create and validate realistic flight profiles with only minimal training. Once validated, those missions can be executed by a much broader pool of operators using our ground control system, freeing experienced FPV pilots to focus on where they add the greatest value.”
Prior said feedback on the drones and ground control system had been positive, citing ease of use and the ability to fly multiple drones repeatedly.
The demonstration followed the Counter-UAS Indo-Pacific Conference in Honolulu earlier in the week, which Boresight attended.
Boresight’s aerial target drone offering combines quadrotor and fixed-wing drones with mission planning software and ground control systems. The company says the platform is used to emulate drone threats in counter-drone training and testing. Boresight has teams in Australia, the United States and Europe.
