Robin Radar continues to move fast to close a widening gap in North American airspace defense, and the person driving that expansion built his instincts for urgent problem-solving in the deserts of Iraq. Kristian Brost (“KB”) joined a recent Dawn of Autonomy podcast to discuss his path from the U.S. Marine Corps to General Manager of Robin Radar USA, and what it takes to bring the company’s IRIS drone detection radar to homeland security, law enforcement, military and critical infrastructure customers across the country.
Autonomy Global previously covered Robin Radar’s origin story and North American ambitions through an interview with founder and CEO Siete Hamminga in conjunction with the company’s Sterling, Virginia grand opening. That conversation traced how a Dutch bird-radar research project became a counter-drone company now expanding significantly into the United States. KB’s episode builds directly on that foundation, moving from the company-level growth story into the operational reality of running IRIS deployments, choosing which markets to chase next and preparing customers for a threat environment that keeps outpacing expectations.
Iraq Comms Officer Turns Radar Executive
A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who played Division I football there, KB commissioned into the U.S. Marine Corps as a communications and cybersecurity officer with 2nd Marine Division. He led a 62-Marine detachment during the opening phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, supporting the networks that 1st Marine Division relied on in combat.
That deployment reshaped how he thinks about technology under pressure. Standard-issue radios failed once distances exceeded the doctrine they were built around. When that happened, KB’s unit turned to commercial satellite communications to bridge the gap. “This is really what helped me open my eyes to the commercial arena,” KB said, as he described how his team abandoned government-issued gear that “everyone swore would be perfect” once the desert exposed its limits. The unit turned to Iridium and Viasat data modems to keep communications alive over “very thin straw comms links.”
That experience became KB’s career inspiration. He recalled thinking, “I can just turn to the commercial market and buy some things and totally transform my mission.” That realization stuck with him through every job since. After Iraq, he moved to Headquarters Marine Corps at the Pentagon, where he led Joint Blue Force Situational Awareness efforts to track coalition forces including Royal Marines and Dutch marines, and briefed NATO on interoperability lessons from the war.
He left the Marine Corps after seven years and spent the next two decades building government technology teams at L3Harris, Inmarsat Government, and Clearspeed, working across the Marine Corps, SOCOM, the Navy and the broader national security community. KB landed at Robin Radar as its first US employee, a role he stumbled into after applying on LinkedIn. “The minute I met the people and found out more about what they did, I thought, wow, this was amazing,” KB said. His onboarding involved repairing a radar in his own garage while the entire Robin Radar team watched.
Why Legacy Radar Cannot See the Threat
Robin Radar’s roots trace back to a Dutch research institute called TNO, where the technology began as a project to detect birds near airports and wind farms. KB explained that heritage now underpins the company’s counter-drone edge, because distinguishing a bird from a drone requires the same fine-grained signal analysis either way.
The company’s flagship product, IRIS, exists because conventional air-defense and surveillance radar was never built for what small drones actually do. These systems were designed around aircraft and missiles, not objects that fly low, move slowly, hover in place, and present a radar signature a fraction the size of a manned aircraft. “If everything’s a drone, then nothing’s a drone,” KB explained as he described the alert fatigue that swamps security teams when a radar cannot tell a seagull from a quadcopter.
Robin’s answer to this problem is its micro-Doppler classification, paired with a deep neural network trained on labeled data drawn from IRIS deployments worldwide, including systems operating in Ukraine and across Europe. KB said the network specializes in reading the movement signature created by spinning propeller blades, calling that capability the company’s “bread and butter” and its clearest differentiator against competitors. Because the system trains on real detections from live deployments, KB said the company gets “better and better the more analysis we have in a particular area.”
That fidelity matters because customers do not just want to see a blip on a screen. They need to know where an object is, how fast it is moving, whether it is likely hostile and how that data feeds into the rest of their security stack. KB said IRIS was built around that operational reality from the start. It provides 360-degree, 3D coverage that can support a layered counter-UAS response as well as a stand-alone sensor.
Long-Range Mode and a Lesson From Ukraine
At Robin Radar, the customer shapes the product. One of the clearest examples of customer feedback shaping the roadmap came directly from the war in Ukraine. KB explained how a Ukrainian customer using IRIS against smaller Group 1 and Group 2 drones came back with an urgent request. “These Shaheds are a big deal,” he said, relaying the customer’s blunt assessment of larger, longer-range drone threats. “What can we do? We love your radar for the Group ones, Group twos, but for something larger, we need more time to react.”
Robin responded by more than doubling the system’s instrumented range, from five kilometers to twelve, through a software update the company now calls Long Range Mode. KB emphasized that existing IRIS units in the field can be upgraded without swapping hardware. That distinction matters for customers who already invested in deployed radar infrastructure. The trade-off is calibration toward larger radar cross-sections, which KB said means the extended mode is tuned for bigger threats rather than the smallest drones close to a site. It requires operators to strike what he called “a fine balance.”
IRIS has also gone mobile. KB pointed to a recent demonstration at Scarlet Dragon, an exercise at Fort Bragg, where the company equipped a Jericho vehicle with IRIS to support on-the-move detection. Robin has extended that same concept to maritime environments through IRIS On-The-Move at Sea, aimed at ports, vessels, and harbor infrastructure. “We have a creative adversary,” KB said, so static installations alone may not be enough. “You cannot underestimate them.”
Expanding Beyond Sterling and Into Every Domain
KB described Robin Radar USA’s move into its new Sterling, Virginia facility as a functional base for demonstration radars, customer training and coordination. He also noted the team has grown to roughly ten people in the U.S., and expects that to double within the next year, because the customer base keeps widening.
KB said Robin’s early traction came from Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology testing, along with law enforcement adopters like the Virginia State Police and departments in New Jersey.
Military traction has accelerated too. KB confirmed Robin’s first Department of War contracts and pointed to the Marine Corps’ Installation Counter-Small UAS contract as a leading indicator for what other services will eventually need. He also teased some upcoming work with the Air Force through a partnership with Heightened Senses, an announcement not yet ready for release.
Critical infrastructure, particularly data centers and sensitive military sites, has emerged as the next major growth area. KB said the urgency in that market shifted noticeably between last year’s ISC West conference and this year’s, moving from early education to active investment.
Integration Over Isolation
KB opined that in the counter-UAS market, no single sensor wins alone. “This is the ultimate team sport,” he said, as he described how Robin positions IRIS as the detection and partial identification layer within a broader detect, track, identify, and defeat framework, working alongside cameras, remote ID, ADS-B, and command-and-control platforms from integration partners. He noted that sophisticated customers increasingly dictate their own sensor combinations rather than deferring entirely to integrators. Robin supported counter-UAS operations tied to the FIFA World Cup in this manner.
That integration philosophy is already visible in Robin’s 2026 partnership with DroneShield, which makes IRIS available within DroneShield’s aerial defense ecosystem. IRIS connects to the DroneSentry-C2 command platform to combine Robin’s radar with a broader sensor and effector network.
A Market Still Being Written
Robin is also testing new business models, including radar-as-a-service arrangements for customers without capital budget but available operating funds. It also prepares to launch a Robin Radar Training Academy to get new operators up to speed quickly. KB framed those moves as details inside a much bigger shift already underway.
He compared the current moment to the early days of the commercial satellite industry, when demand outpaced standards and every organization tested its own approach before the market matured into something more coordinated. He expects counter-UAS to follow the same arc, with state, local, and federal agencies aligning more closely as the threat becomes harder to ignore. “It’s a great market to watch,” KB said. “You learn something new every day. I’ve never been on this fast of a moving train before.”
For an industry racing to keep pace with drones that are cheaper, faster and more capable every year, urgency is the point. KB’s own path, from a Marine communications officer improvising with commercial satellite gear in the Iraqi desert to an executive building out the sensors now guarding American airspace, reminds us that the best counter-drone technology still depends on companies, and the people that drive them, willing to move as fast as the threat does.