Key Factors
- The U.S. Air Pressure’s 352nd Particular Operations Wing is searching for a passive acoustic drone detection system for RAF Mildenhall, with quotes due August 4, 2026.
- The solicitation follows drone incursions over RAF Mildenhall, Lakenheath, and Feltwell beginning November 20, 2024, that later unfold to RAF Fairford.
The U.S. Air Pressure desires to put in a community of microphones at considered one of its most secretive bases in England, constructed particularly to listen to enemy drones coming earlier than anybody ever sees them.
A newly printed Air Pressure solicitation reveals that the 352nd Particular Operations Wing at RAF Mildenhall is searching for a passive acoustic drone detection system, a community of sensors that listens for the distinctive sound signature of small unmanned plane slightly than emitting any radar or radio sign that would reveal the system’s personal location to an adversary scanning for precisely that sort of transmission.
The solicitation names Squarehead Know-how’s Discovair array G2+ as the popular system, although it permits competing distributors to bid an equal product, and specifies that the Air Pressure desires 4 networked sensor items able to detecting and classifying each Group 1 and Group 2 drones, the 2 smallest classes within the navy’s five-tier classification system protecting every part from tiny commercial-style quadcopters as much as barely bigger leisure plane weighing as much as 55 kilos (25 kilograms).
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Every particular person sensor should detect a Group 1 drone, the sort of shopper quadcopter bought underneath manufacturers like DJI’s Mavic line, from at the least 500 meters (1,640 toes) away underneath optimum situations, whereas protecting a minimal subject of view of 100 levels in each horizontal and vertical instructions, extensive sufficient {that a} handful of networked items can realistically cowl a whole base perimeter with out leaving apparent gaps in protection.
RAF Mildenhall serves because the headquarters for the 352nd Particular Operations Wing, the one Air Pressure particular operations unit assigned to the European theater, house to CV-22 Osprey tiltrotor plane and MC-130J Commando II transport planes that help categorised particular operations missions throughout Europe, Africa, and elements of the Center East. Unauthorized drones swarmed over Mildenhall and two neighboring bases, RAF Lakenheath and RAF Feltwell, for a number of consecutive nights beginning November 20, 2024, with U.S. officers confirming on the time that teams of as much as 20 drones directly appeared in restricted airspace, forcing inbound plane to divert and prompting Britain to deploy roughly 60 fight troops to assist defend the installations. The drones later unfold even additional, showing over RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, greater than 130 miles (209 kilometers) from Mildenhall, the place 4 American B-52 bombers had been deployed on the time as a part of a rotational bomber process power.
Britain’s Day by day Mail reported in November 2025, citing paperwork obtained underneath the nation’s Freedom of Info Act, that police logs from the unique incident described a Nationwide Police Air Service helicopter pressured into an emergency evasive dive after two fast-moving objects appeared to pursue and match speeds with the plane at roughly 140 knots (161 miles per hour or 259 kilometers per hour), a much more alarming account than the model initially given to the general public. Those self same police logs recorded witnesses describing swarms of 10 to fifteen drones probably getting into base airspace throughout a three-day window, particulars that had not been beforehand disclosed and that solely got here to gentle by means of the information request practically a yr after the unique incursions.
In opposition to that backdrop, a passive acoustic detection system presents a particular tactical benefit that conventional radar-based counter-drone methods can not match. Radar works by actively broadcasting a sign and listening for the reflection bouncing again off a goal, a way that reliably detects bigger plane however usually struggles towards small, slow-moving drones constructed from supplies that return a weak radar signature, and radar transmissions themselves can reveal a defended web site’s actual location and capabilities to anybody monitoring the electromagnetic spectrum close by.
A passive acoustic array sidesteps each issues completely, listening just for the sound of a drone’s motors and propellers with out ever emitting a detectable sign of its personal, and the Air Pressure’s technical necessities particularly name for a system that retains working even in environments the place GPS indicators are jammed, degraded, or completely denied, precisely the sort of contested electromagnetic situations an actual adversary would probably create earlier than trying one other incursion.
The solicitation requires each sensor to be man-portable, weighing not more than 10 kilograms (22 kilos) per unit, letting a single Airman deploy the system rapidly in both a hard and fast set up or an expeditionary atmosphere without having specialised lifting tools. Bidders have till August 4, 2026, to submit quotes to the forty eighth Contracting Squadron, although the solicitation notes plainly that funding for the trouble will not be but out there and no contract award will comply with till cash is definitely appropriated, a typical caveat that nonetheless underscores how a lot of this procurement stays contingent on price range choices nonetheless working their approach by means of the system.
