Air Force Special Warfare Airmen from the 48th Rescue Squadron, 7th Air Support Operations Squadron, and 316th Civil Engineer Squadron Explosive Ordnance Disposal conducted a counter-small unmanned aircraft system (C-sUAS) proof-of-concept event on April 7 at the Arizona Army National Guard Florence Military Reservation.
The exercise evaluated the Guardian-1 Interceptor from Powerus, a kinetic counter-drone system weighing 2.65 kilograms with battery, designed to engage Group 1 through 3 small UAS targets at ranges up to 15 kilometers and burst speeds of 180 to 211 mph.
“Our interceptor drone locking onto a target drone high above a U.S. military base,” Powerus founder Brett Velicovich said of the exercise. “This is next-gen air defense in action.”
Airmen under the Air Force Repair Enhancement Program (AFREP), managed by Tech. Sgt. Aron Figueroa, built the target aircraft for the event, producing 10 mission-ready drones in under 30 days at 1.5 percent of the cost of comparable commercial systems.
The Arizona Army National Guard and the Southwest Mission Acceleration Center, a Defense Innovation Unit-linked accelerator in Phoenix, participated as partners.
The exercise addressed a persistent gap for small forward-deployed teams that lack access to the fixed-site air defense systems protecting larger bases. Airmen executed four functions, covering detection, assessment, command and control, and defeat, with target profiles spanning fixed-wing systems and quadcopters across the full Group 1 through 3 range.
“We are evaluating a range of layered detection and defeat capabilities,” an AFSW Airman assigned to the 355th Wing said. “Our objective is a man-portable capability with a high degree of autonomy that can operate with minimal infrastructure while remaining fully interoperable within a broader C-sUAS architecture.”
Powerus produces 1,000 Guardian-1 units per month, with plans to scale to 5,000.
On April 14, the company announced a partnership with Digital Force Technologies (DFT) to integrate the Guardian-1 with DFT’s Seraphim command-and-control platform, deployed at U.S. military outstations worldwide.
