Russian company ELVEES (Zelenograd) will supply a batch of the newest drone detection systems "Enot" to South Korea. The journalists were informed about it by the Industrial Development Fund (IDF, which is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry and Trade), which financed the creation of this system.

The deal with Seoul will be implemented by the end of Q1 2020. The company's management is also conducting negotiations on export to European countries - Great Britain, Germany and Bulgaria. It is expected that decisions on deliveries will be taken by the end of this year.

According to President of the Korea-Russia Business Council Jeongho Park, Enot is "a budget solution that has an optimal price/quality ratio for systems of this class. It follows from his words that Russian complexes will provide security for major airports, oil bases and power plants.

"Enot is collected for export for civil purposes. By the end of the year ELVEES plans to produce 27 complexes, in 2020 - about 100 units. If the volume of orders increases, the Moscow Region enterprise is ready to launch additional work shifts.

"ELVEES' project is a vivid example of high-tech domestic production, the products of which will be in demand both in the Russian and foreign markets. In 2018, the FIE provided ELVEES with a loan under the Development Projects programme in the amount of 75 million rubles to launch mass production of drone detection systems. The total volume of investments amounted to 158 million rubles," said Roman Petrutsa, Director of the FIE.

ELVEES is one of the leading Russian developers of processors, analog-digital and radio frequency intelligent systems, including complexes for processing radar signals.

"Demand is high enough"

It took about one and a half years to develop Enot. In a conversation with journalists, Andrey Pimenov, Deputy General Director of ELVEES, said that "it is quite a short time for such a product. The most important elements of the newest radar are produced at the company's facilities, the rest of the components are purchased in Russia and abroad.

As explained by Pimenov, the brainchild of ELVEES is oriented both to the international and Russian markets. It is used in the civil sphere. For this reason, the company is not tasked to manufacture radars exclusively from domestic elements.

"Enot is intended for protection of airports and fuel and energy complex enterprises. The system is also suitable for ensuring the safety of so-called open facilities, such as strategically important plants and power plants, located on a flat, well visible area, the creators of the complex note.

"Demand is quite high, but it is mainly related to exports. Unfortunately, the Russian market is quite conservative, although our first customer was from Russia. I think that the drone industry is more developed abroad, and therefore the issue of detection is more acute. However, I am sure that the attitude to security will certainly change in our country," Pimenov told reporters.

The top manager of ELVEES reminded that the Russian Federation has rather strict rules of UAV use. At the same time he noted with regret that the existing protective measures are often not effective enough when drones are used deliberately and knowingly for illegal purposes.

"Small and light class drones are widely used in Russia and abroad. Their number is increasing every year, and there are practically no effective, small-sized and inexpensive detection devices. Now they are needed not only by law enforcement agencies, but also by services responsible for the security of enterprises and infrastructure," Pimenov says.

"The Enot consists of a 14-kg three-axis radar, a power supply cabinet, a set of software and a computer for its operation. At the customer's request, the complex can be equipped with video cameras, thermal imaging cameras, means of radio electronic warfare (REB), capable of "intercepting" the UAV control.

The uniqueness of "Enot" is in the use of multi-beam receiving systems. They provide detection of an unlimited number of drones with an effective scattering surface (EPR) of 0.01 sq. m. at a range up to 1.8 km. Ground and surface targets are fixed at distances of up to 8.3 km.

The advantages of "Enot" include compactness, mobility (the complex can be installed on any vehicle), low power consumption, no restrictions on the number of accompanied targets and the ability to scan the airspace above water, which is considered a complex technical task. The system is all-weather and is able to choose the most appropriate algorithm for each environment.

"The radar automatically notices the drone and triggers an alarm. The operator sees a virtual map of the area on the monitor, sees where the drone is located. The drone is indicated by an icon. Its range, altitude and speed are displayed above it. Then the operator makes a decision on counteraction", - said Pimenov.

As Oleg Zinchenko, Chief Designer of Enot, explained, operator training does not take much time and does not require deep technical knowledge. The interface and controls of the complex are intuitively understandable to a person with the skills of an ordinary PC user.

Zinchenko admits that his brainchild is inferior in range and efficiency to the samples, which are in service of the Russian army. According to him, the advantage of Enot lies in its affordability for a wide range of consumers in the civil sector.

"Good prospects are opening up."

The experts interviewed by RT believe that the complex developed by ELVEES is designed to solve a very urgent problem. Drones (especially vehicles without metal structures) are very difficult to detect. The most effective means of monitoring are radar surveillance systems in combination with optical and acoustic means.

"Incidents using UAVs by Middle Eastern fighters have demonstrated a huge need to develop means of detection and defeat of such vehicles. Low-cost, handmade drones have become weapons that threaten both military and civilian targets. They can conduct reconnaissance and strike," military expert Yuri Knutov stated in his conversation with RT.

Dmitry Kornev, founder of the Military Russia portal, believes that the product presented by ELVEES can be used directly to intercept drones. In his comment to RT, the expert noted that complexes like Enot should be relatively easy to integrate with a variety of REB tools that jam radio signals and suppress satellite navigation systems.

"Russia is the world leader in radar facilities. It is not surprising that domestic enterprises are going out for export. It is difficult to overestimate the need for complexes capable of effectively detecting small-size UAVs. Before the drone attack on the oil facilities of Saudi Arabia it was considered to be a purely military task, but in fact the problem of defense against drones is much wider, our country has good prospects in the world market," concluded Kornev.