Sentrycs Bets on Protocol Manipulation Where Jammers Can’t Go

Acquired by Ondas Holdings in November 2025, the Israeli-origin C-UAS firm has built a non-jamming drone takeover capability across ~200 deployments in 25+ countries — but faces real limits against encrypted and DIY threats.

The Core Proposition

Most counter-UAS systems defeat drones by brute force: jamming RF links, spoofing GPS, or intercepting kinetically. Sentrycs takes a different path. Its Cyber over RF (CoRF) technology operates at the protocol layer — passively analyzing drone communications, identifying the specific aircraft by serial number within seconds, then manipulating the control protocol to execute geofencing enforcement, controller disconnection, home-point reprogramming, or forced safe landing. No jamming. No GPS spoofing. No collateral RF interference.

That distinction matters in a growing slice of the C-UAS market. Airports, urban critical infrastructure, and dense civil airspaces across most jurisdictions prohibit or tightly restrict RF jamming. Sentrycs’ non-interference approach is legally deployable in environments where the majority of competing effectors are not. The Davos World Economic Forum deployment in March 2026 — protecting a high-density civilian event through Swisscom Broadcast’s DroneDefence programme — is a representative use case. A $6 million order from Middle East defense and homeland security customers announced in March 2026 signals demand extending into harder security environments. MODERATE CONFIDENCE on both figures based on company and trade press reporting without independent financial verification.

Product Portfolio — Sentrycs

Signal Activity — Sentrycs

Competitive Positioning — Sentrycs

Technology Stack

The Sentrycs Platform runs on standard Intel-based hardware in Docker containers, achieves a claimed five-minute setup time, and is offered in fixed, mobile, vehicle-mounted, and tactical configurations. The open C2 architecture accepts plug-and-play integration with third-party radars, sensors, and effectors — a design choice that reduces customer switching costs once installed.

Product	Platform	Status	Key Function
Sentrycs Platform	Software	FIELDED	Detect, ID, localize, cyber-takeover via CoRF
Horizon Engine	Software	LIMITED	AI-driven RF analytics; real-time protocol adaptation
Iron Drone Raider	UAV	FIELDED	Autonomous kinetic interception (defeat layer)

The Horizon Engine, introduced in 2025, is the most operationally significant recent development. Protocol-manipulation systems carry an inherent vulnerability: they depend on recognizing known drone communication protocols. DIY builds, modified firmware, and encrypted links can bypass the approach entirely. Horizon Engine addresses this by continuously learning the RF environment and autonomously updating protocol recognition models in real time. It is currently at limited deployment status, and field validation against genuinely novel or adversarially modified protocols has not been independently confirmed. LOW CONFIDENCE on operational effectiveness against sophisticated adversarial adaptation.

Market Position and Competitive Context

Sentrycs occupies a narrow but defensible niche. The non-jamming approach is a genuine differentiator versus volume competitors including DroneShield, Dedrone (now Axon), and RF-jamming-based systems from established defense primes. Serial-number-level identification — enabling friend-or-foe discrimination and legal attribution — is an operationally meaningful capability that jamming-based systems structurally cannot replicate.

The moat, however, is narrow. Protocol manipulation has a ceiling: it cannot address drones that do not use recognizable commercial protocols. The accumulated protocol library from ~200 global deployments provides a data advantage for Horizon Engine training, but that advantage erodes if adversaries shift to non-standard or encrypted communications. Jurisdiction-specific legal authority to take control of drones also varies significantly, creating go-to-market friction in key markets.

The November 2025 acquisition by Ondas Holdings — a micro-cap public company trading on Nasdaq — created Ondas Autonomous Systems (OAS), pairing Sentrycs’ detect-identify-takeover layer with Iron Drone Raider’s autonomous kinetic interception. The system-of-systems architecture addresses the protocol ceiling: when cyber takeover is insufficient or legally unavailable, Iron Drone Raider provides a kinetic defeat option. OAS Co-CEOs Eric Brock and Oshri Lugassy have articulated this as a coherent detect-to-defeat continuum targeting Tier-1 defense and aviation customers.

Outlook and Key Risks

The structural tailwind is real. C-UAS infrastructure investment is accelerating across Europe and the United States, driven by documented drone incursions at airports, military installations, and critical infrastructure. Sentrycs’ regulatory positioning in civil airspaces aligns with where a significant portion of near-term procurement demand is concentrating.

The critical unknowns are financial and technical. Sentrycs’ standalone revenue, margins, and contract backlog are not independently verifiable — investors must work from Ondas Holdings’ consolidated SEC filings, which have not yet provided segment-level Sentrycs data. No independent third-party performance validation — detection probabilities, mitigation success rates, range envelopes in cluttered RF environments — has been publicly disclosed. The “combat-proven” language in company materials remains an unverified assertion. HIGH CONFIDENCE that absence of public test data will remain a friction point with sophisticated defense procurement offices.

Three catalysts to watch: Ondas 10-K/10-Q filings providing first Sentrycs segment financials; independent government evaluation results; and a named, multi-site program win with a Tier-1 defense or aviation customer. Until those materialize, Sentrycs is a technically differentiated operator in a high-demand market — with the validation gap that characterizes most companies at this stage of institutional adoption.