Ukraine's Sky Sentinel: AI‑powered defence against drone threats
Ukrainian engineers have developed the Sky Sentinel system, an autonomous air defence turret. Here’s what it is and how it operates.
The Russians are deploying Iranian Shahed drones on a large scale to strike Ukrainian cities. It is estimated that since 24th February 2022, Russia has launched over 45,000 drones targeting energy facilities, civilian infrastructure, and residential areas. While these drones are relatively easy targets, they pose a significant challenge for Ukrainians when coordinated with cruise and ballistic missiles.
Such tactics overload the air defence systems, and some attacking units inevitably penetrate. Ukrainians simply lack the personnel and air defence systems like the Gepard. One of the solutions to mitigate these deficiencies is described by the United24 portal as autonomous Sky Sentinel anti-aircraft turrets.
Anti-drone defence based on AI — support for traditional methods
The current methods of eliminating Shahed drones include standard air defence systems such as NASAMS or Gepard, electronic warfare systems, mobile intervention teams on pickup trucks equipped with machine guns and handheld air defence systems, and fighter jet patrols.
Unfortunately, this is not always sufficient, and that’s where the next line of defence, in the form of autonomous turrets powered by artificial intelligence, is intended to come in. The creators estimate that defending a city would require 10 to 30 turrets integrated with target detection radar.
Autonomous defensive turret
Sky Sentinel is an autonomous turret that operates independently using artificial intelligence algorithms, equipped with a Browning M2 or a similar large-calibre machine gun. It can rotate 360 degrees and distinguish Shahed drones from large birds, for example, and the system is even capable of targeting a cruise missile. The limit is for objects moving up to 805 kph.
According to its creators, the turret will be capable of autonomously detecting an object, tracking it, calculating the trajectory based on flight path analysis, determining the aiming point, and firing shots.
Each stage was a significant challenge for the designers, but the prototype has already downed four Shahed drones and can combat drones five times smaller. The biggest challenge was aligning the components and ensuring the precision of the turret's movement mechanism, as even a fraction of a millimetre of play can affect shooting precision by several metres over a distance of several hundred metres.
This is how the chief engineer describes the process of creating Sky Sentinel: "We solve dozens of micro-problems to make everything work as one smoothly operating system. The goal is no mechanical play, software delays, impeccable optics, and precision of fire. Everything must work in perfect synchronisation."
It is worth noting that the project relies on foreign components that currently have no equivalents in Ukraine. These include optoelectronic components and those responsible for measuring the distance to the target.
The chief engineer of the project admits that maintaining quality control and managing defects will be a challenge once serial production begins. Currently, this is manageable as this issue only concerns a few prototypes at the moment.
However, if necessary, it will be possible to mass-produce several dozen turrets per month, at a unit cost of approximately £120,000. This is very low compared to other reusable anti-drone measures because rockets for even the more economical air defence systems cost a similar amount.
