L3Harris turns handheld radios into counter-drone jammershttps://breakingdefense.com/2026/05/l3harris-turns-handheld-radios-into-counter-drone-jammers/WASHINGTON — With small drones inflicting massive losses on both sides in Ukraine, defense electronics maker L3Harris is reprogramming its widely used Falcon IV handheld radios to generate a personal protective electronic-warfare “bubble” for the soldiers carrying them, company executives said.
Branded as Wraith Shield, the capability doesn’t require any new hardware, the company said, just a software upgrade to the existing Wraith communications waveform, which is compatible with over 100,000 Falcon IV radios in service worldwide.
“At the cost of a software upgrade … single-digit thousands of dollars … you can add this capability to a radio they’re already carrying,” Chris Aebli, the company’s president for Mission Critical Communications, told reporters this morning. “[It’s] their own protection bubble for counter-UAS.”
“It’s ready to be delivered,” he said, although international sales are still awaiting export approval from the US government. ...
L3Harris is net of the merger of L3 Communications and Harris. IIRC, Harris was a spin-off from RCA. L3 Communications was formed by several investors who bought divisions of various companies that worked in microwave communications, but were not part of the original parent companies' core business. An example would be the former Litton Industries group bought from Northrup that became L3's Electron Devices Division. Northrup was focused on aircraft, while the Litton Industries group made klystrons, coupled cavity, and helix microwave tubes and microwave power modules for the military.
L3Harris is a major defense contractor, and they have the chops to do the localized protection mentioned in the article and much more.
