Aviation Runs on Radio
Every phase of flight depends on the electromagnetic spectrum. Aircraft navigate on VOR, ILS, DME, and GNSS, are seen through secondary surveillance radar and ADS-B, and talk to controllers on VHF voice. Those signals are weak by the time they reach a receiver, and the spectrum around airports keeps getting more crowded with 5G, new UAS command-and-control links, and consumer electronics that were never meant to share it.
In September 2026, the Government Accountability Office reported that the FAA had identified spoofing and jamming threats to aviation but lacked a defined, real-time capability to monitor and detect all of them. That gap is not unique to one agency. Most airports and aviation organizations find out about interference the same way: someone reports it.
From Report-Driven to Sensor-Driven
The EMSO capability turns that model around. Sensors stare at the protected bands continuously, the platform learns what normal looks like for each frequency and sensor, and deviations are scored in seconds. When something changes, the nearest sensor records raw I/Q for evidence, and the alert arrives with a classification, a location estimate, and the context needed to decide whether it matters.
Awareness comes before detection. You cannot spot an interferer until you know what belongs on the air, so the first product is a living inventory of every emission around the site, matched against licenses and assignments. That inventory has value every day, not just on the bad day: unauthorized transmitters surface on their own, a known NAVAID that drifts or goes quiet gets noticed, and new deployments get a documented baseline before they change the environment.
The Drone Problem Is Also a Spectrum Problem
Interference sources increasingly fly. A drone-borne jammer or a rogue control link shows up in the spectrum picture and the air picture at the same time, which is why Empyrean fuses them on the same platform. Air Domain Intelligence & UTM brings in ADS-B, Remote ID, radar, and EO/IR camera tracks, and the Fusion Engine correlates them into one track per object with airspace classification, NOTAMs, TFRs, and FAA regulatory context attached.
For airports, that means distinguishing the authorized survey flight from the intruder automatically, cueing a PTZ camera for visual confirmation, and producing one timeline that the airport, the FAA, and law enforcement can all work from. With on-prem Dronetag Scout receivers, Remote ID detection runs on the airfield network in real time instead of waiting on a cloud service.
Built for the Airfield
Airports are not data centers. Empyrean deploys as a site core on an edge server or compact kit at the airport, with low-cost sensor nodes for coverage and higher-end receivers at key locations. Local alerting keeps working if the backhaul drops, and sites share assessed objects, not raw I/Q, with a central picture over mutually authenticated connections. Everything is single-tenant and air-gap capable, with a full audit trail from sensor to decision.
For broader hub security across ports, rail, and logistics, see Transportation & Logistics Security.
