Monday, January 28, 2019
WhiteFox Defense: Solving The Drone Incursion Problem, with Luke Fox
For all of the positive uses of drone aircraft, there are many negatives, including issues around privacy, safety, and particularly, security—as demonstrated by the recent drone incursions at such airports like Gatwick, Heathrow, and Newark. Those airport drone incursions shut down Gatwick over the course of three days, which caused major delays at Heathrow and Newark. However, there is already the technology out there—from San Luis Obispo-based Whitefox Defense (www.whitefoxdefense.com) – to both detect, and neutralize those drones. We spoke with founder and CEO Luke Fox to learn more about the company, and its technology.
Explain how your technology works?
Luke Fox: At a high level, what our technology does is it enables people to ensure that their airspace is secure. It enables people to be able to create zones around operating airspace. If you think out the recent incident at Gatwick due to a huge disruption by a drone, we’re able to identify and mitigate drones operating in that airspace. We allow you to immediately know when a drone is in an airspace, gain situational awareness, identify whether it is friend or foe, why it is in that airspace. Part of that is forensic threat assessment, and mitigation of that threat in the airspace if it poses a risk to other aircraft operating in that airspace. And example of that is an airport, someone flying contraband into a prison or over the border, or someone operating in airspace to cause disruption. We’re able to remove that drone safely, without causing collateral damage that other techniques might create.
How did the company start?
Luke Fox: We started out a few years back, as a high-performance drone manufacturer. In that process, we realized that those drones we were developing could be used for bad purposes by people out there. Realizing that it would be bad to sell a drone to a terrorist, we thought we should create a solution to top someone who buys a drone, from using it for malicious purposes.
How far along is the technology now, and is this something people are using?
Luke Fox: It has been deployed in a pilot program for 12 months, all during 2018, in a wide variety of different environments around the world. It’s been used to protect critical infrastructure in nuclear power plants, to protect transmission lines, at prisons, at airports, by law enforcement, for dignitary protection, etc. It’s been used in a variety of environments, as well as on the military side, to ensure the technology is really ready for mass deployment. What we’re doing in 2019, is scaling the company. The last fundraising we did was use to prove out our technology, and we’ve now had head-to-head competition with our competitors and others in the space to prove out our technology, our unique capabilities, and our unique approach to solving this problem. We’re now ready to mass deploy this to ensure that all critical infrastructure and mass gatherings around the world can be secured from drones, whether those are being recklessly flown or illegally flown. That will inevitably open up the drone industry, and all the opportunities to use drones for good.
Would your technology work to solve issues like those at Gatwick and Heathrow, and how hard is it to set up?
Luke Fox: One of the things that I personally like to do, when we do head-to-head competitions, is roll in on the day of an event, and show how the system takes less than 15 minutes to get up and running, detecting and mitigating drones. Our competitors tend to take the whole day to set up and prepare. Our system is very easy to use, and quick to deploy, which is one of the strong differentiators of our technology. It takes minimal training to use our system, deployment is rapid, and you can operate it autonomously with complete automation. We can provide protection of airspace within seconds without manned operation.
I imagine it’s a challenge to cover all the varieties of drone manufacturers, is that the case?
Luke Fox: We cover the wide variety of different drones. What makes our technology unique, is that we focus on the protocol level for drone communications telemetry. Unlike the number of drones out there, there are really only about sixteen different protocols out there, and over 95 percent of the drones in use encapsulate about five of those protocols. With the mass market, even though there are lots of different manufacturers and types of drones, its really similar to cell phone technology in that even though there are many different cell phone manufacturers, there are only a few that really dominate the market. That’s a similar analogy with drones. Even though in the cell phone market there are lots of different phones that manufacturers make, if you look at the communications technology, it’s pretty much very, very similar. It’s much like languages, as most of them are adaptations and improvements and enhancements on existing technology, which has been around for decades.
What's your background, how did you get into this?
Luke Fox: I got into this when I was doing work with some scientists on different forestry initiatives. We had been exploring some of the world’s tallest trees, and we were starting to use drones for that research. That really got me involved in drones, and got started developing our own drones, and eventually, create a company to sell those drones. That allowed me to apply background in cyber-forensics investigation and computer science, and apply that engineering with threat analysis of seeing this emerging technology. We saw that the technology could be used for so much good, but in the wrong hands, it was bad. And, if and when it is used for bad reasons, it ultimately kills and stagnates the ability for everyone else to use that technology for good.
How are you funding the company?
Luke Fox: We’ve raised about $14M to date, and that’s come from a wide variety of investors. Those are largey strategic investors, as well as institutional investors who believe in what we are doing, and are also investing in the overall drone ecosystem. I think the technology we have created at Whitefox is a critical piece of the global drone ecosystem.
Finally, what’s next for you?
Luke Fox: We’re working on a lot of exciting technology. Now that we’ve released some of our technology into the market, which is being used by a wide variety of clientele, we have additional technology staging to be rolled out. We’re also scaling up our product for our current technology. We’re completely sold out, and there’s more demand than we can keep up with. That’s why we recently raised a round of funding, to scale our product and support services, to ensure our clients can all receive the technology they need.
Thanks!