Australian start-up MILLIBEAM has unveiled its RAKURAI counter-uncrewed aerial system (C-UAS) built on proprietary radio frequency (RF) architecture. RAKURAI overcomes the weight, battery life, and narrow frequency coverage that prevent today’s handheld C-UAS jammers from scaling to every soldier and first responder, the company said.
Radio frequency technology has not fundamentally changed in a century, yet the systems Australia and its allies depend on – including critical defence infrastructure – are still built on it. Because these legacy systems rely on off-the-shelf catalogue components, they are capped in weight, power, range and band coverage, leaving a widening gap as drone threats evolve faster than conventional counter-measures can keep up.
“Every counter-drone system on the market today is built by bolting together off-the-shelf parts – and that ceiling is exactly what’s letting drone threats outpace our defences,” said Mike Nicholls, Partner, Main Sequence. “To deliver the performance needed to put this capability in the hands of individual warfighters and security teams, the MILLIBEAM team had to design and match the entire RF architecture from the ground up, including the chips and the antennas.”
MILLIBEAM has closed that gap by rebuilding RF and mmWave capability from the chip up, right here in Australia. Rather than assembling catalogue parts, the company co-designs four subsystems – antennas, RF front-end, power electronics and signal generation – as a single, integrated system. It is this chip-level design that allows RAKURAI to overcome the limitations of catalogue-built systems, transmitting simultaneously across widely separated frequency bands to hold the link where single-band systems are jammed, degraded or defeated.
“For a century, the world has built more on top of legacy RF communications networks without ever rebuilding the foundation itself. Every autonomous and defence system currently depends on architecture designed for a different era. Australia has a narrow window to own that foundation rather than import it,” said Venkata Gutta, Founder and CEO, MILLIBEAM. “Designing from the chip up, here in Australia, is how we field sovereign capability at the speed and scale the National Defence Strategy demands.”
RAKURAI is being unveiled at a pivotal point in its development, having recently achieved a Technology Readiness Level of 5 in preparation for field testing. The reveal follows a series of grants awarded to MILLIBEAM: $2.6 million under the Federal Government’s Industry Growth Program, which directly supports the National Reconstruction Fund’s focus on building Australia’s future manufacturing capability; and $2 million under the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative to support the development and commercialisation of next-generation beamforming semiconductor chipsets for mmWave 5G. Both support development of the underlying technology that powers RAKURAI and other applications.
“That’s the kind of sovereign capability we back: hard technology, deep IP, and a founder who’s proven – across 15 tape-outs – that he can ship high-performance silicon and systems. Rakurai gives Australia a foundation that can keep pace as drone threats evolve,” Nicholls added.
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