Motorola Snaps Up C-UAS Startup D-Fend Solutions for $1.5B

If you’ve taken a look at the summer events calendar and are worried about how hostile drones could throw a wrench into all of the FIFA World Cup and America 250 festivities, you’re not alone. The big players in public safety are, too, and they’re making some money moves to make sure it all goes smoothly. Yesterday, Motorola Solutions snapped up Israeli-American drone-takeover company D-Fend Solutions for a cool $1.5B, adding a key C-UAS capability to its broader public safety portfolio of products. Taking over: D-Fend’s drone-downing tech is designed less for the battlefield and more for places where drones falling out of the sky or blowing up mid-air isn’t really an option (think stadiums, urban areas, and airports). Their RF-cyber “takeover” systems detect small drones via their radio signals, “hacks” them, and lands them instead of jamming or kinetic defeats. Their product lineup includes: “Cyber takeover enables the operator to define and execute the drone’s behavior upon mitigation,” the company’s president, Yaniv Benbenisti, told Tectonic last year. “This approach ensures continuity of airspace operations, protects bystanders, and minimizes disruption.” That takeover tactic has proven pretty popular: D-Fend’s won contracts with the US military, the Department of Homeland Security, and a range of commercial customers vulnerable to the drone threat. Full-stack: For Motorola, the deal makes a lot of sense—they already have deep roots in the public safety space, and snapping up a company that specializes in countering drones in places where flying robots dropping out of the sky is, well, less than ideal fits cleanly into their broader command layer. They also got a pretty good deal for it, buying D-Fend at an 8X revenue multiple in a time where counter-drone companies are raking it in. They also got a pretty good deal for it, buying D-Fend at an 8X revenue multiple in a time where counter-drone companies are raking it in. By buying D-Fend, Motorola’s goal is to pretty much create a full-stack counter-drone system focused on homeland security that integrates detection, comms, their operator command layer, and, now, a way to take them out of the sky without causing too much chaos. That should be music to the ears of everyone from FIFA to public safety agencies and the US military, which, ICYMI, has been dealing with a lot of rogue drones buzzing around installations lately.