Drone UXO Detection System.
Keep Your Team on Safe Ground.
Find Unexploded Ordnance From Air.

A drone flies low over a survey area carrying a magnetometer sensor that measures disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field. Buried ferrous objects (shells, bombs, shrapnel, mortar rounds) create measurable anomalies. After the flight, the data is processed into a georeferenced map with GPS coordinates for every detected object. A ground team then investigates only the marked locations. The drone does not remove or detonate anything. It tells you where to dig.

Approximately 1 hectare per hour with a single-sensor magnetometer at standard UXO parameters (0.5m to 1.0m line spacing, 1-2 m/s flight speed). A dual-sensor setup like the SENSYS MagDrone R3 can cut that time roughly in half. In a real field deployment in Latvia, SPH Engineering surveyed a 6-hectare farm field in 6 hours, including a 76mm WW2 artillery shell found at 30cm depth. Foot-based magnetometer crews typically cover 1-2 hectares per day, making drone surveys roughly 5-10x faster.

It depends on the object's size and ferrous mass. Large items like aerial bombs produce detectable anomalies at several meters distance between the sensor and the target. Mid-size ordnance like 105mm shells can be detected at approximately 1.5-2.5m. Small items like hand grenades are detectable at roughly 0.5m. These are sensor-to-target distances, so actual detection depth from the surface equals the detection range minus the flight altitude. Flying lower always improves results: in the Oklahoma State University controlled test, MagNIMBUS detected 57 targets at 0.2m altitude versus 20 targets at 1.0m over the same field. SPH Engineering publishes a full detection distance reference table by ordnance type on its website.

Open terrain with relatively low vegetation works best: farmland, grassland, coastal areas, mudflats, shorelines, cleared construction sites, and desert. Drones are particularly valuable for sites that are difficult or dangerous to access on foot, such as suspected minefields, flooded areas, steep slopes, and heavily contaminated zones. Performance decreases in areas with tall, dense vegetation (forests), significant metallic debris (scrapyards, industrial sites), or strong electromagnetic interference (directly under high-voltage power lines, near railways). Urban and built-up areas are generally not suitable for drone magnetometry due to the density of ferrous infrastructure.

A complete drone UXO detection system consists of five components: a magnetometer sensor (such as the MagNIMBUS atomic total-field magnetometer or SENSYS MagDrone R1/R3 fluxgate), a drone capable of carrying the sensor (DJI M350 RTK is the most common platform), an onboard computer for geotagged data logging (SkyHub), a laser-based terrain following system to maintain precise altitude above ground (True Terrain Following), and flight planning software to design and execute automated survey missions (UgCS). Data processing after the flight is typically done in Geosoft Oasis Montaj or similar geophysical software. SPH Engineering is the only vendor that provides the magnetometer, onboard computer, terrain following, flight planning, and training as a single integrated system.

Zero personnel in the hazard zone during the survey. The drone enters the suspected area, the operator stays at a safe distance. This is the primary reason demining organizations and survey firms worldwide have adopted drone magnetometry for the non-technical survey (NTS) and technical survey (TS) stages of the land release process.

Beyond safety: drone surveys are 5-10x faster than foot-based methods, cover terrain that ground crews cannot access, produce RTK-geotagged anomaly maps with precise coordinates for every target, and deliver repeatable results because the automated flight path can be re-flown with identical parameters. The cost per hectare drops significantly on large survey areas because one pilot and one drone replace a multi-person ground crew. Most drone UXO operations worldwide already run on SPH Engineering technology.