Australian start-up unveils sovereign counter-drone system

The announcement comes as Australia accelerates investment in sovereign counter-drone capabilities under the 2026 National Defence Strategy and Project LAND 156, reflecting lessons from conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East where low-cost drones have transformed the modern battlefield.

Unlike most existing hand-held drone jammers, which are assembled using commercially available RF components, Rakurai has been developed from the semiconductor level upwards.

MILLIBEAM said its integrated chip-level architecture enables the system to transmit simultaneously across multiple frequency bands, allowing it to counter a broader range of drone threats while reducing the weight and power demands that have traditionally limited portable C-UAS systems.

MILLIBEAM founder and chief executive Venkata Gutta said rebuilding the underlying RF architecture was essential to keeping pace with rapidly evolving drone technologies.

“For a century, the world has built more on top of legacy RF communications networks without ever rebuilding the foundation itself,” Gutta said.

“Every autonomous and defence system currently depends on architecture designed for a different era. Australia has a narrow window to own that foundation rather than import it.

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“Designing from the chip up, here in Australia, is how we field sovereign capability at the speed and scale the National Defence Strategy demands.”

The technology has been supported by $4.6 million in Commonwealth funding, including a $2.6 million Industry Growth Program grant and $2 million through the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative to advance the semiconductor technologies underpinning the system.

Main Sequence partner Mike Nicholls said the company’s decision to redesign the entire RF architecture, rather than relying on off-the-shelf components, represented a significant technological breakthrough.

“Every counter-drone system on the market today is built by bolting together off-the-shelf parts – and that ceiling is exactly what’s letting drone threats outpace our defences,” Nicholls said.

“To deliver the performance needed to put this capability in the hands of individual warfighters and security teams, the MILLIBEAM team had to design and match the entire RF architecture from the ground up, including the chips and the antennas.”

Rakurai has reached Technology Readiness Level 5 and is preparing for field trials, marking an important step towards operational evaluation.

As drone proliferation accelerates across military and civilian environments, the emergence of sovereign Australian technologies such as Rakurai highlights the growing importance of domestic innovation in electronic warfare.

For Australia, success in future conflicts may depend as much on mastering the electromagnetic spectrum as on deploying conventional military platforms, making homegrown capabilities increasingly critical to national security.