← BackCounter-UAS

Aerial Architecture: Drone-Proofing the 2026 World Cup

Inside the race to secure packed stadiums — Ondas's Sentrycs takes over hostile drones while Fortem's DroneHunter nets them midair.

6/5/20269 min read

The Stadium Is the New Front Line

This summer, while 48 nations chase the World Cup across 16 North American host cities, a second contest plays out above the stands. The cheap, autonomous drones that reshaped the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are now a domestic-security problem — and the 2026 FIFA World Cup has become the largest live test yet of America's ability to defend crowded venues from the sky.

Key Fact

Forbes frames the 2026 World Cup as a ~$365M test of U.S. counter-drone readiness, spanning host venues from MetLife (New Jersey) to AT&T Stadium (Dallas) to Seattle's Lumen Field. Ondas's Sentrycs has been selected for multiple venues under contracts from federal, state, and local agencies.

Two Layers, Two Philosophies

The defense splits into detect-and-identify versus pursue-and-capture — and the World Cup deploys both.

Ondas's Sentrycs subsidiary handles the first. Rather than jamming — which knocks out police radios and nearby communications — Sentrycs passively listens to the radio link between a drone and its pilot. That lets it fingerprint the aircraft, locate the operator, and, if the drone is hostile, take over its autopilot and land it in a designated zone. No broadband interference, no collateral RF damage.

Fortem Technologies handles the second. Under a Department of Homeland Security contract, its radar scans the sky; when an unknown drone appears, an AI-guided DroneHunter launches, fires a net to ensnare the target midair, and carries it away by tether or parachute so law enforcement can recover it as evidence.

One system talks the drone down. The other reaches up and physically pulls it out of the sky. At a packed stadium, you want both.

Why Sentrycs Fits the OAS Stack

Sentrycs isn't a standalone bet — it is the cyber/RF layer of Ondas's system-of-systems. The same protocol-level approach that makes it safe to run over a crowd (no broad jamming) is what lets it slot beneath Ondas's air and ground assets without interfering with them.

Technical Detail

Sentrycs uses Cyber-over-RF (CoRF): it decodes the drone-to-controller protocol to detect, identify, and geolocate both the aircraft and its pilot, then can assume control of the autopilot to land it safely. Because it never transmits broadband interference, it operates inside dense urban airspace alongside first-responder communications.

The Bigger Signal

The World Cup is a showcase, but the real story is the migration of security upward. Stadiums, ports, borders, and critical infrastructure now carry a vertical threat surface that did not exist a decade ago — and the companies that can detect, identify, and neutralize across that surface are building a durable position. For Ondas, drone-proofing the World Cup is both a contract and a proof point: the OAS stack, operating live, in front of the world.