Guardian 3: US counter-drone maker Powerus removes the human from the final kill decision
Startup Powerus unveiled its Guardian 3 interceptor on October 12 at AUSA, the first in its line to detect and strike a drone with no human involved in the final engagement. Cardan-AI looks at what the Guardian 1-2-3 progression actually reveals about today's pace of military automation.
On October 12, at the Association of the United States Army's (AUSA) annual meeting, US company Powerus unveiled Guardian 3, the fully autonomous version of its counter-drone interceptor line. Guardian 1 mirrors Ukrainian-style interceptors, manually controlled end to end. Guardian 2 is semi-autonomous: once cued by radar, it flies toward the target on its own, but the operator still performs the final engagement. Guardian 3 goes a step further: detection and strike are handled by AI and navigation systems, with no human sign-off on the kill — "you kind of take the human error out of it," said Brett Velicovich, Powerus president and co-founder.
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