Helping armed troops with rifles, drones, mounted machine guns and even grenade launchers and rocket launchers are more easily identified and locked up on targets-it is the basic mission of the American company Aimlock, which has been developing automated targeting products for more than a decade.
At the SOF Week 2025, the CEO of the company, Bryan Bockmon, told Business Insider on how the company now focuses on autonomous weapons systems that could be crucial for future war, systems designed to defeat drones. The fight against drones is an expansion area of research and development, with a lot of work done in Ukraine, although this is not the only country where this technology is being developed.
The Ukraine War has shown that electronic warfare and GPS scrubning can be effective when it comes to defeating enemy drones, but having a kinetic option, the ability to pull it, as a last resort to destroy these systems is essential if other options fail.
And they can fail because some drones, such as fiber optic drones, become more common in Ukraine or in compatible AI systems, for example, resist the electronic war.
“If that doesn’t work,” said Bockmon about electronic warfare, then “it’s the last line of defense”.
Defeat drones
With the electronic war, the scrambling of the signal and the GPS usurpation, kinetic systems are a final line of defense of drones. Aimlock
Aimlock’s autonomous counter-ground systems are manufactured to detect the classification, and follow unrealized air systems, then decide on the best shooting solution to remove them.
One of the Aimlock counter-Uas systems was exhibited at SOF Week in Tampa, Florida. Bockmon said that the system was invulnerable to report the scrambling and other elements of the electronic war, because it is based on visual navigation and autonomous terminal advice.
“We are developing the specialized autonomy for the integration of weapons,” said the CEO, explaining that autonomy is to find targets, aim, follow and engage, or shoot the weapon on the target.
What makes the Aimlock development approach interesting is that “instead of manufacturing specialized systems which must then be reinvented 10 times to cover the entire need for mission”, said Bockmon, it manufactures “generalized modules which can be adapted in 10 different missions”.
Counter-Uas systems are at the forefront of industry conversations at the moment while DOD is growing in more capacities. Aimlock
So, if the Warfighter needs a different sensor or system of weapons, it can find a matching Aimlock product. It reduces the development cycle, said the CEO, reducing costs and simplifying the process.
Related stories
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
The main targeting module of society, or CTM, as it is called, is at the heart of Aimlock systems. It combines autonomy and shooting and targeting components to improve the speed and precision of firearms with unrelated systems.
The CTM equipment is, in some cases, just a small black box with a few plug-in sockets on the top.
Bockmon said that the modularity of IT and other weapons systems that Imlock makes allows him to “offer new solutions that can adapt to the rhythm of combat”, whether it is a low intensity fight or a high -intensity conflict of high intensity in distant or disputed environments with limited communications.
While the company has been working to refine all this for years, its current objective is its counter-ground systems.
Aimlock technology focuses on the research, monitoring and identification of targets before helping with precision shooting. Aimlock
Counter-Drone technology has been increasingly important for years with electronic warfare, directed energy (lasers) and other developments that are all aimed at defeating unrealized systems, but technology becomes critical as drones, especially inexpensive drones, become more prolific. The Pentagon unveiled its new strategy against-Uas to solve these problems last year, but there is a lot of work to do to respond to the threat.
“We finished our first counter-Uas systems in 2018,” said Bockmon at Bi, “and they had to sit on the shelves for a long time, because it was really the effectiveness of the electronic war in the future, then how fast will it be over.” It was not clear at what extent the electronic war would be effective, but it is clear now that it is not infallible.
The counter-drone mission was a big subject at the SOF 2025 week. Several exhibitors of the defense industry and managers of special operations spoke to the growing need for solutions for a variety of solutions to overcome hostile drones. The Ministry of Defense has made the development of a military level strategy to counter drones an absolute priority.
businessinsider
