By Andreas De Palmenaer, Head of Business Development

Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign is ramping up. In July, Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s largest oil refinery at Omsk, around 2,700 km from Ukrainian-held territory. In August, another long-range attack reached Yekaterinburg, more than 2,000 km from the Ukrainian border. Drones can fly extraordinarily long distances; we know that. The key development is that long-range drones are now serious strategic weapons, and that their value increasingly rests on whether they can survive the efforts of the radar and air-defence systems waiting for them to bring them down.

Why long-range drones need better radar countermeasures

The story of Ukrainian drone warfare began with first-person view (FPV) drones. Now, there are long-range strike systems capable of hitting targets hundreds of kilometres or even thousands of kilometres away. FPVs changed warfare by making infantry and armour more vulnerable; long-range drones let militaries strike logistics hubs, aircraft on the ground, ammunition depots, energy infrastructure and defence-industrial facilities far beyond the battlefield. Their relatively low cost means militaries can have an impact without relying only on costly crewed aircraft or cruise and ballistic missiles. But range alone is not the only thing that matters. A drone that can fly 2,000 km but can’t get through the final layers of an enemy air-defence network is only so useful.

Their protection is therefore essential. As long-range UAV technology improves, survivability is becoming as important as endurance. Defenders can move radar, electronic-warfare systems and surface-to-air weapons around valuable targets. They can also learn from previous attacks. So there is now a constant competition between better drones and better detection and interception. This is why lightweight, affordable radar countermeasures are vitally important for UAV designers.

How chaff protects drones from radar

Chaff is made of large numbers of precisely engineered conductive fibres which, when ejected, form radar-reflective clouds. Each individual fibre acts as a dipole antenna that reflects a radio frequency. By selecting fibre lengths for particular radar frequencies, manufacturers can create a strong radar return away from the aircraft or drone itself. Used correctly, chaff can make tracking harder, create false or competing radar returns and reduce the effectiveness of radar-guided threats. It is passive, lightweight and comparatively inexpensive – valuable qualities on a UAV where every gram, watt and cubic centimetre matters.

The possibilities go beyond protecting a single drone. One UAV can dispense chaff in support of others. Several drones can produce competing radar returns across an attack. Chaff can also form part of a wider network of decoys and other countermeasures designed to make it much harder for an air-defence operator to spot the real threat. As drone attacks become larger and more complex, the goal, rather than merely protecting a single drone or group of drones, is to make the whole drone picture harder for the defender to understand.

FibreCoat’s new FC-RR-170 chaff cartridge

FibreCoat has been working to solve this. We don’t just buy conventional chaff material and package it. Our technology allows metals to be coated directly onto fibres during the fibre-spinning process. We use our materials expertise to move progressively further up the system: from engineering the fibres themselves to producing finished chaff payloads and, now, developing the equipment needed to dispense them from UAVs.

Our latest chaff product, the FC-RR-170, is our third chaff innovation and our most complete chaff cartridge yet. Weighing just 125 grams, it’s designed to provide radar countermeasure coverage across frequencies from 2–40 GHz and to operate from -54°C to +71°C. We engineer our materials for consistent electromagnetic reflectivity and controlled dispersal; these are the two basic requirements if chaff is to perform predictably outside the laboratory and under real operating conditions.

A useful drone countermeasure must be effective without taking so much weight or space that it damages the aircraft’s range or payload. It must also be reliable: a defence customer needs the thousandth cartridge to behave just like the first. Our control of the process, from fibre development through to the creation of the finished cartridge, gives us direct control over material properties, quality and production.

From chaff fibres to a complete UAV countermeasure

We’re now taking the next step by developing a dedicated chaff dispenser for UAVs. We’re turning the material itself into a practical, integrated drone countermeasure: fibre, cartridge and dispenser engineered as parts of the same system.

That end-to-end approach brings another highly desirable advantage: supply. Chaff is expendable. Once a war breaks out, the armed forces don’t need a handful of beautiful prototypes: they need large numbers of reliable countermeasures that can be manufactured again and again and again. (This is one of the key lessons of the Ukrainian conflict.) By controlling more of the production chain itself, we can improve quality control, shorten development cycles and reduce dependence on fragmented suppliers. Our modular fibre-production technology is designed specifically to this end.

Can unmanned aircraft survive increasingly effective radar-guided air defences – and can the countermeasures that protect them can be produced at the same scale as the drones themselves? We say yes. FibreCoat’s FC-RR-170 and our work on UAV chaff dispensers address both aspects of the problem. We take a proven principle of radar countermeasures and redesign it around the demands of modern warfare and, specifically, modern unmanned systems: low weight, consistent performance, controlled dispersal, scalable production and secure supply.

Long-range drones have already changed what militaries can do. Now, they need to do it reliably. Better drone chaff and better UAV radar countermeasures will be – indeed, already are – an important part of that. We intend to be at the centre of that market, and to support our friends across NATO.

by Les Echos

by the Wall Street Journal

by UK Defence Journal

in EuroNews

in Resilience Media

in The Parliament

As reported by Composites World

Extending FibreCoat GmbH’s (Aachen, Germany) patented coating platform from metals to polymers, PolyCoat integrates thermoplastics directly at the filament level, enabling easier processing, faster impregnation and more consistent composite quality for thermoplastic composites (TPC) manufacturing.

According to the company, making TPC at scale is slow because it is hard to spread the polymer evenly between all of the fibers without trapping air — a production bottleneck. FibreCoat’s PolyCoat, however, coats glass filaments individually with polymer during fiber spinning, when the fibers are already separated. This avoids air gaps, simplifies downstream processing and results in faster production and stronger materials.

“For years, manufacturers have had to choose between good material quality and fast production,” says Dr. Robert Brüll, CEO of FibreCoat. “PolyCoat delivers both by getting the plastic exactly where it is needed, without slowing the process down, which opens the door to reliable production — in high volumes — of lighter, stronger and more sustainable composite parts.”

PolyCoat is designed for short and long glass fiber-reinforced plastics, noncrimp fabrics, unidirectional tapes and molded parts. It works in a similar manner to FibreCoat’s aluminum coating process for producing its flagship product, AluCoat, but uses a thermoplastic matrix instead of metal. With PolyCoat, FibreCoat’s goal is making the product at scale, testing it and producing samples for customers on a new in-house, large-scale glass fiber spinning line that also allows for customer trial and development.

Sustainability is also a core goal, Brüll adds. By removing processing steps and speeding up production, the process reduces energy use and cost, and makes lighter parts that last longer.

by Felix Schmidt, Application Engineer for Space

Space is not just Earth with fewer rules.

It is a hostile environment, and one that violates many of the assumptions that engineers make on the ground. Vacuum, radiation, extreme temperature swings, total remoteness – all of these combine to create a harsh environment and a corresponding set of challenges unlike anything encountered in terrestrial industry. As space becomes critical infrastructure, and standalone satellites are swept away by fleets with on-board data processing and, eventually, by such sci-fi concepts as lunar construction and planetary exploration, those challenges are becoming central rather than marginal. Materials are no longer an afterthought. They are a bottleneck.

This is the context in which FibreCoat’s work on advanced fibres for space has to be understood. Our core insight is a simple one, but also a powerful one: many of the trade-offs that have long constrained space hardware – trade-offs between weight and shielding, between cost and performance, between composites and functionality – are no longer unavoidable. In fact, with the right materials, developed by means of the right processes, they can be softened or removed altogether.

Why space breaks electronics

Radiation is one of the defining constraints for any space system. Outside the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field, electronics are exposed to a continuous flux of high-energy particles. Over time, these particles damage components, corrupt data, and shorten the lifetime of the systems in question. And the typical response has been to use ‘space-grade’ electronics: components designed with large feature sizes and conservative architectures that are inherently more tolerant of radiation.

The problem with this is the price. It’s extreme. Space-grade components routinely cost thousands of times more than their terrestrial equivalents, despite having far lower computational performance. Engineers therefore find themselves between a rock and a hard place: either they pay vastly more for less capable chips, or they surround more powerful chips with heavy, thick metal shielding. Both impose penalties in cost, mass, and capability. Neither is optimal.

FibreCoat is attacking this problem from a different angle. Instead of taking radiation-resistant electronics as a given, we have gone back to first principles and developed fibre-based shielding materials that can be integrated directly into composite structures. The aim is twofold: cut the cost of protecting electronics, and enable the use of more powerful, more modern chips in orbit.

This matters because the demand for onboard computing is rising sharply. Proposals for orbital data centres, advanced Earth-observation processing, and increasingly autonomous spacecraft all point in the same direction. More computation power in space means more heat, more radiation sensitivity, and tighter packaging – all of which exacerbate the materials problem.

Composites without compromise

With respect to how modern spacecraft are protected, composites – especially carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers – already dominate. They are light, strong, and well understood by manufacturers. The problem is that, unlike metal, composites offer little inherent electromagnetic or radiation shielding, and as systems become more densely packed, this creates issues not just for radiation protection but also for electromagnetic compatibility, RF interference, and signal integrity.

FibreCoat’s materials are designed to restore that lost functionality but without forcing a return to heavy metal structures. By embedding coated metal fibres, such as bismuth, within composites, we can offer radiation and electromagnetic shielding without adding to the weight or cost of the material.

Proving it in orbit

Testing space materials on Earth has limits. You can simulate aspects of the space environment, but the only definitive test is exposure in orbit. FibreCoat is addressing this by means of an in-space demonstration mission, designed and run in collaboration with the Spanish composite manufacturer Lofith.

The experiment is conceptually straightforward. A composite plate incorporating FibreCoat’s radiation-shielding fibres will fly with two sensors: one shielded, one unshielded. Over a mission duration of roughly one to two years, the sensors will gather radiation data, allowing a direct comparison of performance. The matrix material is PEEK, a high-performance polymer widely used in aerospace, ensuring relevance to real spacecraft structures.

The mission is not about publicity. It is about qualification. If the results match our expectations – and we’re confident they will – then FibreCoat will have something rare in the space materials world: direct, long-duration, in-orbit evidence of performance. That kind of data will give our customers in space the confidence they need to commit and to protect their spacecraft, knowing our materials won’t let them down.

Beyond orbit: building with lunar dust

Our ambitions are not limited to the Earth’s orbit. Through a project supported by the European Space Resources Innovation Centre in Luxembourg, we have been exploring the production of fibres from lunar regolith, the fine dust that covers the Moon’s surface.

The logic is straightforward. If humanity is serious about building sustained infrastructure on the Moon, which would include landing pads, roads, and shelters, then it cannot rely on transporting construction materials from Earth. Mass is cost, and cost is prohibitive. Local materials must be used.

Regolith on its own is a poor structural material; but processed into fibres, it becomes far more effective. Fibre-based structures are weight-efficient, mechanically strong, and versatile. Our project has focused on miniaturising the production process: designing a spinning line small and light enough to be launched, and ensuring it can keep working in lunar conditions.

At this stage, the work is developmental rather than operational. There is no committed lunar deployment. But the direction of travel is there. As plans for lunar bases stop seeming abstract and start to become more concrete, this ability to turn dust into durable structures will become essential.

Why now

What ties these threads together is timing. Space is no longer a niche domain of bespoke missions and one-off satellites. It is becoming critical infrastructure comprising dense constellations, always-on services, and systems designed to operate for years rather than months. That shift exposes the limitations of legacy material choices.

Our proposition is not that it has solved every materials problem in space. It is that, by rethinking how fibres are coated, combined, and integrated, some of the most painful trade-offs can be done away with. Lighter structures need not mean weaker shielding. Composites need not mean electromagnetic vulnerability. Performance need not be sacrificed for endurance over time. We’re positioning ourselves as enablers of the future of space, protecting the spacecraft proliferating in orbit so that we can enjoy a better quality of life here on Earth.