Counter-drone technology: inside defence’s next great manufacturing boom
As drones flood battlefields and civilian airspace alike, the scramble to counter them is spawning a new industrial sector.
IN Brief:
The counter-drone market is set to grow from ~$3bn in 2024 to as much as $22.7bn by 2032, fuelled by the surge of cheap battlefield drones and civilian security concerns.
Technologies range from jammers and spoofing systems to lasers and high-power microwaves, creating new manufacturing demands and exposing fragile supply chains.
Civil and military demand is converging, with AI-driven autonomy and swarm defence pushing counter-drone systems into the core of defence manufacturing.
On a proving ground in Indiana earlier this year, Epirus demonstrated its Leonidas high-power microwave system by frying a swarm of drones out of the sky in seconds.
It was the kind of spectacle designed to reassure generals and investors alike: one push of a button, an invisible wave of energy, and an entire formation of quadcopters simply fell from the air. But it also illustrated a deeper industrial shift. The rise of cheap, abundant drones — from Ukrainian first-person-view quadcopters to commercial off-the-shelf models repurposed for attacks on refineries and airports — is forcing the defence sector to industrialise counter-drone technology at unprecedented speed.
The numbers alone make it clear this is more than a niche market. The global counter-UAS sector was worth between $2.2 and $3.7 billion in 2024, depending on whose estimate you take. By 2030, it is projected to grow to between $9.3 and $14.5 billion, and by 2032 as high as $22.7 billion. Compound annual growth rates of over 25 per cent are rare in any defence segment, and rarer still in one that only a few years ago was regarded as peripheral.
The Ukraine war has acted as a laboratory, with more than 1.3 million drones deployed in 2024 alone, proving that inexpensive aerial systems can alter the character of war. At the same time, civilian authorities have seen first-hand the vulnerabilities of airports, stadiums and energy facilities to drone incursions, with the Gatwick disruption of 2018 still a defining case study.
The kill chain and the manufacturing race
Counter-drone systems work through what the industry calls a kill chain: detect, track, identify and mitigate. The first three steps are about awareness. Radar tuned with micro-doppler processing can now distinguish the minute frequency shifts from rotor blades, allowing drones to be separated from birds and clutter. Radio-frequency analysis listens for control signals between drone and operator, in some cases even triangulating the pilot’s location. Electro-optical and infrared cameras provide visual or thermal confirmation once cued, while acoustic arrays pick up the distinctive sound signatures of propellers. The industrial emphasis is increasingly on fusing all of these feeds together into AI-assisted command-and-control platforms that can give operators confidence in what they are seeing.
It is the final step — mitigation — that is defining the industrial boom. The technologies span from low-cost jammers to high-end directed energy weapons, each with its own manufacturing requirements. Electronic warfare remains the most widely deployed approach. Jammers overwhelm a drone’s control link or GPS receiver, forcing it to land or return to base. The method is cheap and area-wide, but indiscriminate: it risks interfering with civilian communications and navigation, making it unsuitable in many urban settings. Spoofing systems are more sophisticated, mimicking the operator’s signal to hijack the drone outright. That allows authorities to pilot it to a safe landing site, and is considered the gold standard for airports and stadiums, though technically demanding to execute.
Kinetic options continue to play a role. Raytheon’s Coyote missile, designed specifically for the counter-UAS mission, can intercept drones at range, while medium-calibre cannons fitted with advanced fire control systems are being adapted for the task. Yet the economics are poor: shooting down a $500 quadcopter with a $100,000 missile is unsustainable in saturation scenarios. That is why smaller, reusable kinetic systems are gaining traction. Fortem Technologies’ DroneHunter F700, for example, is an interceptor drone that launches a net at its target, dragging it down or deploying a parachute. These approaches are slower but safer in populated areas, and can be deployed repeatedly without the cost of consumable munitions.
The most transformative technologies are directed energy systems. High-energy lasers use concentrated light to melt or disable critical components, offering speed, precision and a cost per shot that is effectively the price of electricity. Their weakness lies in poor atmospheric conditions, where fog or dust scatters the beam. High-power microwaves are emerging as the preferred option for swarm defence, projecting a cone of electromagnetic energy that can disable multiple drones at once. Epirus, a start-up backed by venture capital, has led development of solid-state microwave systems that are now entering military trials. Manufacturing these weapons requires new supply chains for compact power modules, thermal management systems and high-damage-threshold optics — a different industrial base from traditional missile or radar lines.
Supply, demand, and the next frontier
Across all these technologies, the industrial challenge is not simply inventing the effectors, but producing them at scale. Modular, open-architecture designs are becoming the default so that components can be swapped out rapidly as drones evolve. Ruggedisation to meet military specifications adds another layer of cost and complexity, particularly for small companies entering the defence market. Production lines remain limited, with industry reluctant to commit millions to new facilities without the assurance of multi-year procurement contracts. Regulatory constraints add further friction: in the United States, the use of jammers is tightly controlled by the Federal Communications Commission, while export regimes complicate sales abroad.
Supply chain fragility is the other defining feature. Advanced counter-drone systems depend on semiconductors, rare earth elements and specialised materials — sectors where Western dependence on China is acute. China controls around 90 per cent of global refining capacity for rare earths and 95 per cent of gallium, both essential for radars and microwave emitters. It is also the dominant supplier of germanium, used in infrared optics. These are not hypothetical risks: Beijing has already imposed export controls on gallium and germanium, directly threatening directed energy development in the West. Even outside China, bottlenecks are visible, from a single German supplier of fused silica for laser optics to just a handful of American firms capable of building beam directors. For policymakers, securing alternative sources is no longer an industrial issue but a national security imperative.
The range of case studies highlights just how broad the sector has become. Epirus’s Leonidas points to the potential of microwaves as swarm killers. Fortem’s DroneHunter shows how reusable kinetic systems can be fielded safely in urban environments. The Royal Navy is trialling the K3 Scout, a fast unmanned surface vessel designed to carry modular counter-drone payloads at sea. German firm ARX Robotics has produced the Gereon ground robot, a modular unmanned vehicle capable of carrying sensors and effectors to protect manoeuvring troops. Each reflects a manufacturing trend towards modular platforms, dual-use adaptability, and rapid prototyping feeding directly into production.
Civil demand is also feeding the boom. Airports are the most obvious case, with the Federal Aviation Administration running pilot programmes in Seattle and Atlantic City to test detection systems in live environments. Stadiums and public events are another area of concern, with legislation moving slowly towards giving local law enforcement more authority to deploy approved systems. Companies like DroneShield are responding with products such as SentryCiv, offered as a subscription to reduce upfront costs for civilian operators. The convergence of military and civilian demand is pushing manufacturers to design dual-line systems — one hardened for battlefield conditions, the other tailored to regulatory limits for domestic use.
The trajectory ahead points towards greater autonomy. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are already being integrated into detection systems to cut false positives and predict drone intent from flight patterns. The next step is fully autonomous mitigation, where a counter-UAS system selects the most appropriate effector and engages at machine speed, leaving the human operator in a supervisory role. That shift is being driven by the ultimate challenge: swarms. Coordinated attacks involving dozens or hundreds of drones will overwhelm any one-to-one system. The response will be one-to-many weapons like high-power microwaves, or even defensive swarms of interceptor drones.
What began as an add-on to traditional air defence is fast becoming a backbone of defence manufacturing in its own right. The counter-drone sector is forcing industry to build new supply chains, invest in new manufacturing processes, and adapt to a pace of technological obsolescence more familiar to consumer electronics than missile defence. In doing so, it is creating one of the most dynamic and strategically important industrial booms of the decade.