Finnish start-up Kelluu wants to use airships as floating drone defence platforms - FlightGlobal
AI Analysis
Finnish startup Kelluu is developing long-endurance airships equipped with sensors to provide persistent surveillance and early warning against drone threats. The company recently secured €15 million in Series A funding, including investment from NATO's Innovation Fund, to advance the project. These airships are intended to supplement ground-based systems, particularly against low-cost, long-range drones.
Key Takeaways
- Kelluu's airships utilize hydrogen fuel cells and modern sensors for multi-day endurance and wide-area monitoring.
- The platform is designed to detect and track incoming drones, cueing defensive measures and providing battlefield imagery.
- The system is intended to address the threat of one-way attack drones, as seen in Ukraine and the Middle East, which can overwhelm traditional air defenses.
- NATO's Innovation Fund investment marks the first time the fund has invested in a Finnish company.
- The airships are designed to operate effectively in GPS-denied and harsh weather environments, offering a cost-effective alternative to traditional surveillance systems.
Why It Matters
The development of persistent, airborne sensor platforms like Kelluu's addresses a critical gap in current counter-UAS capabilities. These systems offer a potentially cost-effective and resilient solution for early warning and situational awareness, especially against swarming drone attacks. The NATO investment signals a growing recognition of the need for innovative C-UAS technologies.
Finnish start-up Kelluu wants to use airships as floating drone defence platforms - FlightGlobal
Interview
Finnish start-up Kelluu wants to use airships as floating drone defence platforms
Kelluu says its generation two airship design will be able to offer "multi-day" endurance for persistant surveillance and monitoring against drone attacks Kelluu
The company’s founder envisions the long-endurance vehicles as airborne sensor platforms well-suited for detecting incoming threats and cueing defensive measures.
Finnish start-up Kelluu wants to use airships as floating drone defence platforms.
The company’s co-founder envisions the long-endurance craft as airborne sensor stations able to identify threats and cue defensive measures.
Reijola-based firm Kelluu is positioning its lighter-than-air dirigibles as the solution to the security challenge posed by one-way attack drones, which are being used to deadly effect in Ukraine and across the Middle East.
The small, low-cost drones can carry a significant explosive payload over distances greater than 540nm (1,000km) to strike soft targets like port facilities or energy infrastructure. The simple designs and cheap price tags allow aggressors to launch massed waves of attack drones, which can overwhelm traditional air defences at key sites like air bases.
While defenders have turned to low-cost guided rockets and even direct fire machine guns mounted on helicopters and fighter jets to intercept one-way drones, the threats still need to be identified and tracked first.
That is where Kelluu comes in. The company is taking a new approach to airship design, pairing modern sensors and hydrogen fuel cells with classic lighter-than-air lift to offer a persistent surveillance capability, both for collecting battlefield imagery and monitoring airspace.
“We bring the same sensors that are now used on the ground level to higher altitude,” says Jiri Jormakka, one of Kelluu’s co-founders. “When we use both, we can actually see pretty far away and provide information on what is happening in remote areas [or] across borders.”
Jormakka spoke to FlightGlobal on 18 May at the annual Special Operations Forces Week conference in Tampa, Florida.
Kelluu was founded in 2018 and just completed its Series A funding round in April of this year, raising €15 million ($17.5 million) with support from Finland’s state-owned investment company and the NATO alliance’s Innovation Fund (NIF) among other venture capital groups.
The NIF investment in Kelluu marked the first instance of the NATO fund taking a stake in a Finnish company.
“Kelluu offers NATO nations persistent, wide-area monitoring and data gathering in challenging environments,” says NIF partner Patrick Schneider-Sikorsky. “Their platform provides consistent coverage even when GPS is jammed or weather is harsh, at much lower cost than traditional systems.”
An aerial sensor platform could pair with ground-based systems to provide an extra layer of detection for