From Ukraine to the Middle East, choices between capabilities and cost have come to the fore. Somewear’s just-released Horizon multi-network radio seeks to deliver on both attributes, providing connected LOS/BLOS control for affordable, attritable unmanned operations.
“If you look at the volume that is coming out of Ukraine and Russia, the numbers are staggering,” James Kubik, co-founder and CEO of Somewear Labs, noted. “If you look at the U.S., we’re not even scratching the surface. So, Horizon is looking at being one of the first exquisite capabilities that is scalable to that level.”
Though it’s attritable by design, the less-than-six-ounce unit offers automatic LOS-BLOS link management with MAVLink compatibility, TAK integration and manageable RF signature.
“What this does is combine a mesh network with a satellite communications component,” Kubik continued. “That’s really, really powerful because in a lot of the environments that we support our customers in, they’re bringing drone operations into either contested environments or they’re trying to go long-range, where you really can’t get command and control from a simple line of sight radio.
“So, bringing satcom plus line of sight together in one form factor at a low cost is something we’re tremendously excited to bring to the market.”
Somewear has been offering support across government and commercial organizations from search and rescue to downrange military operations. “We have a strong foundation around making sure you have active, strong resilient communications,” Kubik said. “We built on top of it, took a lot of lessons from our soldier-borne work and brought that to unmanned systems.”
Among those lessons are intelligent routing around different comm solutions to manage how the network switches automatically, and the ability to run concurrent networks. “We’ve built a number of different algorithms around that and brought them to this product so you don’t have to put that cognitive load onto the operator. The system is intelligent itself and understands how to leverage multiple networks.”
Kubik reiterated Horizon’s position along the cost: benefit spectrum. “In the ecosystem we see phenomenal capabilities. We partner with a lot of them but at the end of the day they are extremely expensive. I think a core component is you have to build for attritability. If we’re going to be building to volume, a key component was, ‘Can we bring exquisite capabilities aa a scalable price?’
“I think we’re going to continue down this path of ensuring that the USX world has optionality and reliability and resilience in its networking.”
