Fast Facts

FAST FACTS

Announcement Overview

• Invariant Corporation has integrated its FireFLY passive acoustic sensor with Surface to Air Kinetic Engagement (STAKE), its counter-drone hunter-killer weapon system.
• FireFLY can now detect a drone by sound alone and pass that detection directly to STAKE, which slews its camera to confirm the target and cue its laser-guided rocket, completing a detection-to-defeat kill chain that begins without emitting any signal.

Why it stands out

• A unique integration pairing an acoustic sensor with a kinetic weapon system for counter-drone defense.
• Sensor companies market sensors; effector companies market effectors. Invariant owns both, and has now connected them.

How It Works

• Detect: FireFLY hears the drone. It is fully passive, it listens rather than transmits, so it gives off nothing an enemy can detect, jam, or target.
• Track & Identify: FireFLY passes accurate bearing data to STAKE, which slews its high-end electro-optical/infrared camera to the target. DroneVision, Invariant’s onboard artificial intelligence, confirms it is a threat, not an airliner or a bird.
• Defeat: STAKE cues its laser-guided APKWS rocket for kinetic defeat of Group 1–3 drones, physically destroying the target rather than relying on jamming.

The Priority It Meets

• Counter-drone defense is a top priority across the Department of War. The threat is evolving faster than the sensors built to stop it: wire-guided drones emit no radio signal to intercept, and attack routes are deliberately flown low to hide from radar.
• No single sensor solves this. The Department is moving to layered defenses, and acoustic detection is the layer that catches what radar and radio-frequency sensors miss. Demonstrated success in Ukraine against Shahed 136 platforms.
• It also answers the Department’s “avoid being seen” imperative: a defense that never transmits cannot be found by its own emissions.

Proven Systems on Both Ends

• FireFLY has been deployed protecting warfighters since 2012 and is a program of record. It scales from fixed-site base defense down to a man-portable version carried by a squad.
• STAKE is a fielded, platform-agnostic hunter-killer system that operates on the move, at the halt, and in GPS-denied environments. At a rough cost of $30,000 per shot, STAKE dramatically improves the economics of Air Defense around the globe.