Robin Radar Systems

Robin Radar Systems builds radar for things that are small, slow and low, which is the hardest target class for conventional radar and the one that matters most for both bird strike prevention and drone defense. The technology started at TNO, the Dutch applied research institute, in 1980, under a project called ROBIN, short for Radar Observation of Bird INtensity, set up to keep birds out of Royal Netherlands Air Force engines. The European Space Agency later supported the work through its FlySafe initiative. Siete Hamminga spun it out as a company in June 2010 and still runs it. Parcom, a Dutch private equity firm, took majority ownership in 2024.

The civil side came first. MAX is a full 3D avian radar with 360 degree coverage, a one second scan and classification by bird size, used by airports, air forces and wind farm operators to understand what is flying through their airspace and when. Schiphol became the first major customer in 2012. Scarecrow, a British bird control specialist acquired in 2021 and now sold as a Robin brand, covers the other end of that problem with bio-acoustic dispersal systems that move the birds once the radar has found them.

The drone side is what changed the company's size. ELVIRA, a 2D drone radar, was the first product and has since been retired. IRIS replaced it with a 3D system in a 29 kilogram package, classifying targets using micro-Doppler signatures and a deep neural network, certified to military environmental standards, and usable static, on a tripod or on a moving vehicle. Detection range has been pushed from around 5 kilometers to about 12, which is the difference between seeing quadcopters and seeing Shahed-type loitering munitions and fixed wing drones in time to react.

Ukraine is why the numbers moved. The Netherlands Ministry of Defence bought 51 IRIS systems for Ukraine in 2023, another 51 with mobile capability in 2024, and doubled that order again in 2025. More than 200 Robin radars are now in country. Revenue went from 5.5 million euros in 2020 to 43 million in 2023, production from roughly twenty radars a year to four a week and climbing, and headcount from 25 people in 2020 to over 200.

Robin has been careful about where it sits in the supply chain. Rather than bidding against the primes for whole air defense contracts, it sells IRIS as a sensor into systems built by Thales, Saab and other integrators, alongside direct sales to governments and infrastructure operators. That has kept it a component supplier with more than 25 documented system integrations and an open API, instead of a would-be systems house competing with its own customers.

The company runs from Laan van Waalhaven in The Hague, with a US office opened in Ashburn, Virginia in 2024. It holds 29 registered patents and has more than 300 radars fielded worldwide. Its markets now split across civil and military aviation, defense and counter-UAS, wind energy, ecology and government infrastructure protection, which is a wider spread than most counter-drone specialists manage.