On March 20, 2026, Lockheed Martin Corporation, one of the world’s largest defense contractors, announced a cooperation agreement with Fortem Technologies, a company focusing on counter-UAS technology. The two parties will jointly build an autonomous counter-UAS defense system for critical infrastructure.
The cooperation combines the software integration capabilities of traditional defense giants with the practical experience of hardware counter-UAS technology, outlining the basic structure of the future air defense system for critical infrastructure.
The cooperation follows a clear complementary capability structure. Fortem provides two core hardware systems: the TrueView radar sensor system, which can accurately detect, track and classify low-altitude small drones in complex electromagnetic environments; and the DroneHunter autonomous interception drone, an “anti-drone with drone” solution. Guided by AI, the interceptor drone autonomously tracks intrusive targets and physically captures them using a net system, without manual intervention and producing no shrapnel, making it suitable for crowded environments such as cities and airports.
Lockheed Martin provides the Sanctum C-UAS mission management software platform, which integrates detection data, threat assessment, interception scheduling and multi-target coordination to build a unified command and control interface. Its core value lies in system integration capability: it can integrate and process intelligence inputs from different sensors, automatically generate engagement priorities, and issue precise instructions to DroneHunter.
The combination of the two systems achieves a “fully automatic closed loop” for counter-UAS operations: the radar detects targets, Sanctum completes threat judgment, and DroneHunter launches and captures autonomously, with no real-time manual intervention throughout the process.
The focus on full autonomy stems from the inherent characteristics of drone threats: high speed, large quantity and low cost. In modern battlefields and security threat scenarios, opponents can deploy dozens or even hundreds of drones for saturation attacks at very low cost. Traditional defense systems relying on real-time manual decision-making have obvious bottlenecks, as human perception speed and multi-task processing capabilities are far insufficient to deal with multiple high-speed targets appearing simultaneously.
The system jointly developed by Lockheed Martin and Fortem aims to fundamentally solve this problem: through the combination of AI and autonomous hardware, it compresses the reaction time to the millisecond level and achieves real multi-target parallel disposal, which is a core technical proposition for future air defense of critical infrastructure.
Fortem Technologies has completed practical deployment in multiple high-specification defense and security scenarios before the cooperation. In January 2026, it was selected by the U.S. Department of Defense for the “Replicator” counter-UAS acceleration project; in February 2026, it won a contract from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to undertake the security of 2026 FIFA World Cup venues; in November 2025, it obtained authorization to sell systems directly to the U.S. Army; it also previously provided protection solutions for critical government infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.
These deployments show that Fortem’s technical route has been recognized by multiple high-value customers and is not a conceptual product in the laboratory stage, which is the fundamental reason for Lockheed Martin’s cooperation with it.
The cooperation also involves a strategic dimension: the right to formulate industry standards. Currently, the global counter-UAS market is still fragmented, with various technical routes coexisting and no recognized mainstream architecture. As the world’s largest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin’s endorsement of a specific technical route often has market influence beyond commercial significance. Once the integrated architecture of “Sanctum+TrueView+DroneHunter” is verified in multiple high-profile projects, it may become an industry reference standard for counter-UAS defense of critical infrastructure.
