Danish defence and aerospace manufacturer Terma has secured multiple launch customers for its artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced Scanter Sphera 3D counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) radar, which the company initially launched in May 2025.
Speaking to ESD at the DSEI 2025 defence exhibition in London on 11 September, Lasse Due Jørgensen, Terma’s global commercial lead for drone detection and C-UAS systems, explained that, while signed contracts have yet to be secured, Terma has lined up multiple European customers for the Scanter Sphera radar.
Operating in the X-band, the Scanter Sphera is a 3D pulsed Doppler radar with advanced digital beamforming that is stated in Terma literature to have instrumented/detection/classification ranges of 10 km/6 km/3 km for a NATO mini-UAS target size and 10 km/3.1 km/1.9 km for a NATO micro-UAS target size, as well as being able to track 250 targets concurrently.
Explaining how the Scanter Sphera came about, Jørgensen noted that Terma first stated using AI-based algorithms to give its existing naval and coastal surveillance radars a drone detection capability about six years ago. This has allowed naval vessels and coastal facilities to be protected against the threat from smaller drones and also allowed drug-smuggling drones to be intercepted, for example. Since the onset of the Ukraine War, however, Jørgensen said Terma decided that it needed a dedicated C-UAS radar system.
However, unlike Terma’s existing radar range, which are 2D systems (ie giving just bearing and range) that do not require significant numbers of upgrades over their lifetimes, the company’s C-UAS system needed to be a 3D system that could constantly upgraded to take account of the rapidly evolving drone threat, Jørgensen explained.
“So we have basically taken eight antennas from our existing graders, put them on top of each other and then you get 3D by correlating in between these eight individual beams,” he said, adding that most of the system’s signal processing capability has been separated from the antenna unit to facilitate constant updating via software as the drone threat evolves.
Development of the Scanter Sphera system was initially focused on protecting military facilities such as airbases and civilian critical national infrastructure, so at first the system was just integrated with jamming systems as a soft-kill C-UAS solution. However, Jørgensen said Terma was surprised to find out that potential military customers were looking to use the system in a much more forward-deployed capacity, either at deployed bases near the front line or to protect forward-deployed troops themselves. As a consequence of this, Jørgensen confirmed that Terma is now in talks with companies that could lead to Scanter Sphera being integrated with hard-kill effectors and is looking at the system being vehicle mounted, rather than only deployed statically, and able to be put into operation immediately rather than requiring any set-up time.
In terms of further customer for the Scanter Sphera radar, Jørgensen said Terma is receiving a lot of attention from countries such as the Baltic states and Poland and as a consequence is actively marketing in those locations.
