NetSense system detects drones using 5G, AI; Lockheed Martin, Verizon, NVIDIA collaborate

The rise of affordable, accessible drones has created a significant gap in airspace defense—existing systems designed for military or high-altitude threats do not address the emerging risk of low-altitude incursions over populated areas and critical infrastructure. Lockheed Martin's NetSense system tackles this problem by repurposing infrastructure already in place: Verizon's 5G network and the radio frequency data it collects. By partnering with commercial technology leaders—NVIDIA for AI inference, ODC for software-defined radio access networks, and Keysight for RF modeling—the collaboration avoids the capital expense and deployment delays of purpose-built hardware, instead layering detection algorithms atop existing networks.

The July Miami demonstration is a key validation milestone, showing that the approach works across real-world scenarios including stadiums, power plants, airports, and municipal spaces. This breadth of use case suggests the system is neither over-specialized for military defense nor too general to be useful; it addresses the practical concern of protecting everyday civilian infrastructure from drone incursion. Notably, the system works without waiting for 6G standards to mature or new ISAC-capable hardware to deploy, a significant advantage in a threat environment where technology adoption speed may matter.