Paris: Robin Radar got into drone detection in the early 2010s, when the company needed predictable targets to validate its bird-spotting radars, founder and CEO Siete Hamminga recalls.
The Dutch startup considered partnering with a pigeon club to release homing pigeons, the executive said at the DSEI UK defence show in London.
In the end, the company turned to drones, their controlled flight allowing to validate detection – a practical move that would prove to be fortuitous. Today, drone detection accounts for a majority of Robin Radar’s revenue, with defence applications dominant, Hamminga said.
As small drones and swarms becoming a staple of modern war, “you need to be able to detect a large number of targets simultaneously,” Hamming said. “Since we came from the bird-radar world, in which there are always huge amount of birds in the air, that was no challenge for us.”
Robin Radar was Europe’s second-fastest growing company in aerospace and defence behind Finland’s ICEYE, according to a Financial Times ranking published in March, with revenue jumping to €43 million ($51 million) in 2023 from €5.5 million in 2020.
Hamminga expects to scale up production capacity to at least six radars per week by the end of 2025, after the company increased the pace to four radars per week last year. Robin was producing around 20 radars annually about five years ago, the CEO said.
The Dutch Ministry of Defence in 2023 bought 51 of the company’s IRIS drone-detection radars to donate to Ukraine, then the biggest contract in Robin Radar history. The ministry ordered the same number of systems for Ukraine in 2024, with the newer radars equipped to be used on the move, and doubled that this year, according to Hamminga.
Roughly the size of a fat beer keg, the IRIS radar weighs 29 kilograms and can be mounted on a vehicle or a tripod. The radar costs less than $1 million per unit, Hamminga said.
The CEO says more than 200 of the company’s radars are now deployed in Ukraine to help detect Russian drones. He said Robin reached out to the Dutch MoD after seeing what drones were doing in the embattled country.
