Today drones hover above refineries, skirt the edges of airspace over commercial airports, and drift silently toward substations, naval facilities, and forward operating bases alike. But even so, the most striking change in modern security isn’t technological, it’s geographic. The frontline is no longer a place, it’s a concept. And it stretches from the blast walls of a desert base to the radar shadow of an offshore wind farm.
And we’ve seen the evidence unfold in real time. Just months ago, over 100 FPV drones were launched in a coordinated, multi-base strike during Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, targeting Russian bombers deep inside the country. Carried hidden in your usual highway truck and launched hundreds of kilometers behind enemy lines.
But Spiderweb was not a stand-alone case. Similar platforms were used in a series of precise attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure in 2019, cutting global supply and sending crude prices spiking. In Europe, 2018’s Gatwick Airport shutdown—caused by an unauthorized drone sighting—disrupted 140,000 passengers and grounded over 1,000 flights, despite no physical impact. And back in Ukraine, dozens of power stations have been struck by loitering munitions and explosive drones, plunging cities into darkness in minutes.
What these incidents reveal is chilling: the same small, affordable, highly maneuverable drone platforms are being used across the board—against civilian energy assets, military runways, commercial airports, and border outposts. The lines between battlefield and homeland are no longer blurred. They’re gone.
This convergence of military and civil has exposed a critical flaw in how we approach protection. Historically, military installations were hardened against conventional attacks like mortar fire, missiles, and armed insurgents, while civilian sites planned for accidents and physical breaches.
But with this new threat; small and agile, and with a low-Radar Cross Section, drones can now bypass both categories of defenses with equal ease. And in doing so, they render the distinction between “military” and “civil” protection effectively obsolete.
To match this threat, we must adopt a fundamentally new approach that acknowledges the shared vulnerabilities across sectors.
What’s required isn’t just better sensors, or more personnel, or stronger fences. It’s a layered system of detection and decision-making, capable of identifying airborne threats at short notice and low altitude, in cluttered or contested electromagnetic environments, and doing so in a way that enables immediate and coordinated response.
To be more concrete, that means four things need to be established at every critical site in need of 3D surveillance, be it civil or military:
First, 360° volumetric detection, basically meaning 3D radar coverage of your site.
Secondly, it means real-time AI-driven classification that can distinguish a hostile quadcopter from a bird and (maybe even harder) a surveillance drone from a stray hobbyist.
Thirdly, it means resilient, pulse-based radar systems that don’t fold under electronic interference, simply because the typical site that we’re talking about usually comes with lots of clutter in a regular radar image.
And finally, it means a command structure that fuses multiple sensor inputs including 3D radar, video, RF, and access control into a single coherent operational picture, not just for monitoring and documenting but for acting and setting in motion counter measures.
What we’re describing may sound like something only possible in theory. But the truth is, the technologies already exist, and the architecture is already mature.
Systems like our own SCANTER Sphera 3D Radar – originally developed for military base and border protection – are now being adopted by civilian operators who recognize that their infrastructure is no longer off-limits.
The radar is built on a pulse-based design that strengthens its immunity to the most common jamming techniques and delivers 360° coverage optimized for low and slow-flying targets. Its AI engine, trained on drone flight profiles, provides actionable insight with low false alarm rates, even in busy port or airport environments with high clutter.
Paired with a command & control system like our T.react CIP, this radar becomes part of something larger: a unified, sensor-agnostic platform capable of merging data from across the physical and digital security spectrum. Radar cue cameras. Camera cues access control. RF detection verifies intent. And operators, no longer overwhelmed with fragmented alerts, are instead presented with a ranked list of actionable decisions that are backed by a full incident record for compliance and review.
This is what modern protection looks like. Not a higher fence or another camera. But a smart, adaptable ecosystem that sees in all directions makes sense of what it sees and delivers that awareness where it’s needed in real time.
And the key point here: today, the system looks the same no matter if you are an offshore windfarm or a forward operating military base.
We’re not preparing for a future threat. We’re catching up to a present one. The drones are already here and so are the consequences: Energy systems shut down, communication lines and airports closed, and political tensions escalated.
We can continue to rely on siloed systems and outdated threat scenarios, or we can deploy integrated, intelligent, mission-ready protection now – across sectors, across borders, and across use cases. If we want to stay operational and secure as a society, we need to meet the threat on its own terms.
Because in this new battlespace, there is no “civil” and “military.” There is only protected and unprotected.