Millibeam was founded in 2021 by Dr Venkata Gutta in Sydney. It builds a drone jammer light enough for one soldier to carry.
Why it’s different
Most jammers bolt together off the shelf parts. Millibeam designed the chips and antennas together. That lets it hit widely separated frequencies at once, so a drone cannot simply hop to a clean one.
Where it’s at
Still a prototype at Technology Readiness Level 5, so field testing is next.
The backing
- $4.6M in federal grants
- Backed by Main Sequence, CSIRO’s venture arm, and Breakthrough Victoria
My read
Drones have changed how wars are fought, and the answer to them is a hardware problem as much as a software one. For once, the chips in the answer might be designed here.