Arlo Industries builds passive sensor networks that track drones and missiles in 3D. No radar, no emissions, no single point of failure. The sensing layer for Air Defense. Congrats on the launch, @DeoArlo! https://ycombinator.com/launches/QWQ-arlo-industries-we-track-drones-and-missiles-without-radar…

Launch YC: Arlo Industries: We track drones and missiles without radar 🚀 | Y Combinator

Source: https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/QWQ-arlo-industries-we-track-drones-and-missiles-without-radar

Hi, I’m Deo, founder ofArlo Industries.

https://youtu.be/2F0cugbrq3A

The problem

Modern air defence depends on active radars: expensive, emitting, and targetable. A single ground-based radar unit can cost tens of millions, broadcasts its location to anything listening, and leaves massive coverage gaps against low-altitude threats like drones.

This architecture was built for a different era. Today’s threat, swarms of cheap drones and cruise missiles flying below radar coverage, exploits every weakness of centralised, active sensing.

What we’re building

Mentat is a passive, distributed sensing network.

• Tracks aerial objects in 3D without emitting: invisible to the threats it detects
• Accurately track smaller threats: our mesh works together to better pinpoint small targets
• Scales via many low-cost nodes: instead of a few high-value targets, we employ asymmetric economics where adding nodes grows linearly in cost but tracking accuracy increases exponentially

We’re the sensing layer, the force multiplier for every interceptor and C-UAS system in the market.

What we’re really building

Drone detection is our wedge, not our ceiling. The real innovation isn’t in any single sensor, it’s in the network that ties it all together. We’re building the foundational sensing and communications infrastructure layer for frontline defence. A distributed, resilient network that future defence technologies will plug into. Like theStarlink before the Starship.

📍Counter Drone meetup - Kyiv, Ukraine

Why now

Low-altitude airspace is increasingly contested. Ukraine, Nordics, Eastern Europe, & Middle East, operators everywhere are discovering that the cost curve of traditional radar doesn’t scale against distributed drone threats. At the same time, edge compute, distributed systems, and passive optical sensing have reached the point where a fundamentally different architecture is viable.

Backstory

I spent 6+ years in Israel, living through multiple conflicts and seeing systems like Iron Dome operate against ballistic missiles and drones firsthand. When a Shahed drone exploded near my apartment, the gap between what exists and what’s needed became personal. Since then, I’ve been in Ukraine and across Eastern Europe, working directly with military operators and validating in real conflict environments.

📍Field Test - Ukraine

Traction

• Active technology demonstrations with Ukrainian military on the frontlines
• Partnerships and military relationships across USA, Ukraine, Finland, and Estonia.
• Team includes a PhD in drones/autonomy and military domain experts

Our asks

🔧**Hiring:**We’re looking for engineers in optics, signal processing, long-range comms, mesh networks, and off-grid embedded systems →Jobs page

🤝**Intros:**Defense operators, C-UAS companies, or critical infrastructure partners (airports, energy, borders) dealing with aerial awareness gaps → please reach out onLinkedin