PICKET
Detect · Cue
Passive RF and EO/IR watch above and around the structure. The crew is cued long before the threat is audible from inside.
Window-mounted defensive drone nest
Yellow Jacket is a hardened nest case that emplaces inside a building, extends a launch shelf through an aperture that is already there, and holds a close-in defensive envelope over the structure. The crew stays under cover. Nothing is bolted to the roof. Nothing about the position changes shape from the outside until the swarm is up.
Why this exists
Small FPV and loitering munitions have flipped the cost of attacking a building. The counter-UAS answers that scale are fixed sites, vehicle-mounted, or need a mast, a generator and an exposed crew — none of which a squad occupying a structure for seventy-two hours can put up and keep alive.
Move the defense inside the structure the unit already occupies. Yellow Jacket needs one ground-level opening, two people, and under ten minutes. It launches, recovers and recharges its own air vehicles from a shelf that folds back behind the wall, so the envelope persists as long as the position does.
Non-kinetic by design
Detect · Cue
Passive RF and EO/IR watch above and around the structure. The crew is cued long before the threat is audible from inside.
Mask · Deny
Obscurant and physical masking placed between the threat and the building, so the operator's terminal video lock never closes.
Pull Off
RF and thermal false returns draw terminal guidance onto open ground, clear of the occupied structure.
Capture
Entanglement recovery for leakers. No warhead, no fragmentation, nothing that comes down as ordnance.
Non-kinetic by design. Yellow Jacket carries no warhead, no fragmentation sleeve and no explosive train. That is a deliberate product decision, consistent with every DoD Tech concept: we build the deployment and sustainment layer for uncrewed systems — the picks and shovels, not the ordnance.
Sequence · Design targets
Two-person carry into any covered room. No mast, no tripod, no exterior work.
The shelf clamps into an existing window, vent or embrasure. Nothing is anchored to the structure.
The nest cycles air vehicles onto station while the crew stays under hard cover.
Rolling relaunch and recharge on the shelf. Coverage persists as long as the position is powered.
Engineering targets — not measured performance
These are the numbers the concept is designed against. No flight-test data is claimed, and nothing here should be read as tested performance. The full target set ships in the data sheet.
Concept design · Rev A
Yellow Jacket is a concept design, not a fielded product. We are looking for the partner who wants the prototype and the first article build.