19MAR

Pulsar jammer unveiled in Riyadh

3 min read

08:30UTC

A tripod-mounted electronic warfare system unveiled at Riyadh's World Defense Show targets Gulf states facing sustained drone bombardment — and pairs with the C2 platform the Pentagon just adopted.

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Key takeaway

Pulsar's Riyadh debut exploits compressed Gulf procurement cycles driven by active Shahed-class drone attacks.

Anduril unveiled Pulsar at the World Defense Show in Riyadh — a tripod-mounted electronic warfare system providing 360-degree RF detection and jamming against small drones. The system is self-contained and portable, designed for rapid deployment without integration into existing air defence networks. The venue and timing are calculated: Riyadh's biennial show is the Gulf's primary defence procurement event, and the region is under active drone and missile attack from the Iran conflict.

The demand signal is concrete. The UAE has intercepted over 1,350 drones and 230 missiles since hostilities began; Israel reports over 500 drones and 290 missiles launched against it. Gulf states need point-defence counter-drone systems that deploy in hours, not months. Pulsar targets the gap between integrated systems like Patriot — effective but expensive, slow to reposition, and designed for larger threats — and handheld RF jammers carried by individual soldiers, which lack the range and automation to protect fixed sites. The counter-UAV market, valued at $4.93 billion in 2025, is projected to reach $36.42 billion by 2035 at 22.14% CAGR according to GlobeNewswire research — and Gulf procurement is a disproportionate share of near-term growth.

The commercial logic ties directly to . Anduril's pitch bundles Pulsar with the C2 platform now designated as the Pentagon's counter-drone standard. For Gulf buyers evaluating interoperability with US forces — a consistent procurement criterion for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain — a system feeding into the command layer used by American counter-drone units carries weight that a standalone jammer from a smaller vendor does not. Anduril is selling a network position, not just a hardware product.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Anduril brought a new drone-jamming device to an arms show in Saudi Arabia specifically because Gulf countries are under active drone attack and want to buy defensive technology fast. The device — called Pulsar — sits on a tripod and disrupts the radio signals controlling enemy drones within a 360-degree radius. The timing was deliberate. Countries under active attack buy defence equipment far faster than countries running peacetime procurement reviews. By showing up with an off-the-shelf product during a live threat, Anduril is converting a regional crisis into a contract opportunity — before the urgency fades and normal evaluation timelines reassert themselves.

Deep Analysis

Synthesis

Pulsar's Riyadh launch illustrates a commercial model unique to active-conflict procurement: the demonstration-to-contract cycle collapses when buyers face live threats. Anduril is applying a ship-and-iterate philosophy to defence hardware. Pulsar was launched publicly before independent performance verification, on the logic that a deployed system attracting urgent buyers can be refined faster than a perfected system awaiting a peacetime request for proposals.

Root Causes

Gulf states' counter-drone architecture was designed around two threat tiers: high-end ballistic missiles addressed by Patriot and THAAD, and aircraft threats addressed by fighter interceptors. The Shahed-type one-way attack drone exploits the gap between these tiers. It is too cheap and numerous for cost-effective Patriot intercepts, and too small for fighter engagement at scale. Pulsar targets this architectural gap directly — one that Israeli systems such as Drone Dome partially fill but cannot address at Gulf-scale drone volumes.

Escalation

Gulf state counter-drone procurement has shifted from a planning exercise to an emergency acquisition cycle. Active-conflict procurement compresses evaluation timelines from 18–24 months to weeks — a dynamic that historically favours vendors with deployable, tested products over developmental programmes. The UAE's 1,350+ interceptions indicate threat volumes that structurally exceed existing point-defence capacity, sustaining procurement urgency beyond a single conflict event.

What could happen next?

Opportunity
Active conflict in the Gulf creates a procurement urgency window that may allow Anduril to win contracts months ahead of normal evaluation timelines.
Immediate · Assessed
Consequence
Pulsar's entry into the Gulf market directly competes with established Israeli electronic warfare counter-drone systems, potentially disrupting procurement relationships built over a decade.
Short term · Assessed
Risk
Deploying an unverified system during an active conflict creates significant reputational risk if Pulsar's field performance does not match its launch positioning.
Immediate · Suggested
Precedent
A successful Pulsar Gulf contract would validate the active-conflict go-to-market model for US defence technology companies, incentivising similar crisis-timed product launches by competitors.
Medium term · Suggested

Source Landscape

This story draws on mixed-leaning sources from United States and Uganda

United States

Uganda

LeftRight

Primary parallel: Raytheon's Coyote counter-UAS system was accelerated for Gulf procurement following the September 2019 Aramco attacks, establishing a pattern in which Gulf conflict events compress counter-drone procurement timelines from years to months — and reward vendors with deployable, tested products over developmental programmes.

Counter-parallel: Despite active Houthi drone and missile attacks from 2016 onwards, UAE adoption of Israeli point-defence systems was delayed for years by normalisation politics — demonstrating that active threat urgency does not always override geopolitical constraints, and that a vendor's national origin can create procurement friction even during live conflicts.

Why it’s relevant now

The Coyote precedent suggests Anduril could move Pulsar from demonstration to Gulf contract within months given active Shahed-type attacks. The Israeli counter-case warns that Anduril's US origin does not guarantee frictionless procurement in states with complex ITAR frameworks and existing bilateral technology arrangements with Israeli counter-drone suppliers.

Consensus view: The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) has assessed electronic warfare as the most cost-effective counter-UAS layer against RF-guided drones, citing Ukrainian data where jamming-based intercepts cost a fraction of kinetic equivalents — directly supporting Pulsar's positioning against the Shahed threat.

Counter-view: The Emirates Policy Centre in Abu Dhabi has observed that Gulf procurement is increasingly shaped by local manufacturing requirements and offset agreements, which US vendors cannot fully satisfy without regional production partnerships. Established Israeli counter-drone vendors — with post-Abraham Accords relationships and existing Gulf industrial partnerships — may hold a procurement advantage that raw technical performance cannot overcome.

Key tension: Technical superiority in electronic warfare performance competes with established procurement relationships and offset obligations that favour entrenched regional vendors.

Sources:Breaking Defense·New Vision

First Reported In

Update #2 · UK startup tops Pentagon's drone gauntlet

Breaking Defense· 19 Mar 2026

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Different Perspectives

UK Ministry of Defence

BAE Systems' 7-9% sales growth guidance and named drones priority, combined with UKDI's high-volume-of-proposals counter-drone call (ID:2934), confirm UK procurement is accelerating across both offensive and defensive drone categories. The absence of a specific BAE drone revenue line will draw investor questions at the next results call.

NATO procurement institutions

Red Cat's first NSPA-routed Black Widow order draws on pooled alliance budgets rather than bilateral Foreign Military Sales, changing which procurement officials can release follow-on contracts. The NSPA routing creates a replicable template for small-UAS procurement outside individual nation budget cycles.

Chinese defence-industrial base

Telefly jet engines, fitted in Geranium-3 and Geranium-5 variants, are the identified engine-side failure mechanism in Russia's drone quality collapse. Whether Beijing allows Telefly to continue supplying Russian production or restricts exports under diplomatic pressure will determine Russia's ability to adapt within one to two production cycles.

Russian Defence Ministry

Russia reported 347 Ukrainian drones downed across 20 regions on 8-9 May while shutting down mobile internet across Moscow and ringing the parade route with 101 air defence systems. The shutdown confirms operational acceptance that civilian signals infrastructure leaks GPS spoofing and drone telemetry.

Ukraine armed forces and civilians

Ukraine's 347-drone Victory Day strike against Moscow confirms offensive capacity has scaled to saturation-strike level; the Spetstechnoexport partnership with Red Cat shows Kyiv prioritising frontline drone development over export income. Russian Geranium-2 launches above 50,000 per year still impose systematic civilian infrastructure risk even as accuracy degrades.

European defence procurement

The EU AGILE 115 million euro single-company pilot (ID:2308) is now calibrated for a pre-$18 billion world. Germany's 4.3 billion euro combined drone awards were the contract floor that made Dragoneer's lead possible; Brussels faces pressure to revise the AGILE ceiling upward before it closes.