ORIGIN and Anduril demonstrate BLAZE interceptor working through Lattice for Latvian military leaders

· Drones

TLDR

  • ORIGIN and Anduril demonstrated BLAZE working through Lattice to senior Latvian military leaders at the end of October.1
  • Resilience Media reports a live intercept of a training target drone, with a human operator in the loop.2
  • ORIGIN's commercial director told Resilience Media no procurement commitments have been made.2

ORIGIN, a Latvian company building autonomous unmanned aircraft, and Anduril said in a 5 November release that they demonstrated a joint capability to senior Latvian military leadership at a military training facility in Latvia at the end of October.1 EDR Magazine reports that BLAZE, ORIGIN's autonomous counter-drone interceptor, acted as the effector of an integrated air defence solution through Anduril's Lattice command-and-control platform, alongside a radar already deployed for Latvian air defence.1 The demonstration followed a memorandum of understanding signed on 25 September to explore integrating BLAZE with Lattice.1

Resilience Media adds detail from ORIGIN commercial director Mārtiņš Marenis: a ground-based radar detected the target, Lattice passed the track to BLAZE, and the interceptor engaged the drone in the air with a human operator in the loop throughout.2 He said the test took place in normal daytime conditions against a standard military training target drone with a wingspan of about 2 metres.2 Anduril Europe vice president Brian Moran said the technical integration took four days, ending in a live engagement that linked the radar, Lattice and BLAZE.12

The companies say they will continue joint testing and validation on NATO's eastern flank, along with concept of operations development for counter-UAS missions.1 Resilience Media notes that Latvia's interest in counter-drone capability follows May incidents in which several drones entered its airspace from Russia, with two coming down in the country and one crashing into an oil storage facility.2 Both accounts rest on statements from the two companies, and neither gives an engagement range, altitude, number of engagements or radar model.12

Why it matters: the demonstration shows an interceptor tied into a shared command layer on NATO's eastern flank, but it was a daytime engagement against a training target with no procurement commitment made.2

Sources

  1. ORIGIN and Anduril demonstrate joint counter-UAS capability on NATO's Eastern Flank (EDR Magazine)
  2. Origin and Anduril put joint counter-drone system through its first test in Latvia (Resilience Media)