Elodie Collins 
Drone technology has evolved from once was a fun hobby to a real threat that nefarious actors can use to target critical infrastructure and pose national security risks, said Tim Saffold, vice president of autonomous and unmanned systems at Amentum, in an interview with Breaking Defense.
How Amentum Builds Counter-Drone Tech
According to the executive, Amentum follows a holistic approach to counter adversary drones. He shared that the approach begins with intelligence and analytics to identify threats, followed by research, development, test and evaluation.
The company then advances through research, development, testing, and forensics and exploitation to continually strengthen security.
He also revealed that Amentum uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to aid analysis of different information and data and decision quality outcomes.
“From that it goes to the research and development and Amentum has been involved in this across multiple agencies of our government for quite some time. So you take all that, you put it together,” he explained. “Now you can get to a point where you can prototype, you can develop and you should create the kind of solution that secures the environment for any end user.”
He emphasized that defense in depth is essential, cautioning against relying on a single system to do everything. Defense in depth, the executive shared, also involves integrating across multiple areas, including IT and drone capabilities.
