The Whale Active Protection System is the world’s first non-lethal, radar-guided active protection system designed specifically to defend individual whales against harpoon strikes. It is not a weapon in the conventional sense. It does not harm people. It is not designed to sink ships or injure crews.
It is a defensive system. Its purpose is to detect an incoming harpoon, calculate its trajectory, and neutralize it before it reaches its target.
WAPS is the product of years of research, engineering, and testing by the Whale Defense Agency’s Defense Systems Division to target the whalers single point of failure - their harpoon used to hunt. It is built on a custom FPGA radar processing core, a phased-array beamformer, and a fire-control architecture that operates on a 20-millisecond loop that can be adjusted at any time, for any requirement. It is a system that was designed to work in the real world, not in a laboratory, not in a simulation, but in the open ocean, under real conditions, against real threats.
The system operates in four stages.
Detection
WAPS uses a custom, in house built AESA radar array to detect incoming projectiles. The radar operates in the X-band and is capable of tracking small, fast-moving objects at ranges exceeding 2,000 meters. The system’s signal processing chain, built around staggered-PRF Doppler processing, dual 16-point FFTs, and Hamming windowing, filters out sea clutter, wave noise, and other environmental interference. What remains is a clear track of the incoming harpoon.
Classification
The radar data is fed into an AI classification engine. The system distinguishes between harpoons, birds, debris, and other objects. It does not engage until it has reached a specific, undisclosed confidence level. The system is designed to avoid false positives. It does not fire at anything that is not a confirmed threat.
Trajectory Solve
Once a harpoon is confirmed, the system calculates the Incoming Projectile Calculated Point of Terminal Impact, the exact point in space and time where the harpoon will intersect with its target the whale. This calculation is performed in under 300 milliseconds.
Interception
A non-lethal interceptor is launched. The interceptor is designed to deflect or disable the harpoon before it reaches the whale. The system does not use explosives. It does not use lethal force. It uses kinetic energy and precise timing to neutralize the threat.
To further prove WAPS systems. WAPS has been tested in live operational conditions. It has been used to track and intercept simulated harpoon launches, including military platforms from the Icelandic Coast Guard. Like any radar, despite being used to intercept inbound harpoons, WAPS can still detect and track Coast Guard assets both at sea and in the air. It has been validated against real-world radar data, and engineered with global volunteer engineering support.
The system has been tested against targets moving at 90 to 100 meters per second, the approximate speed of a modern harpoon in flight. It has been tested in clutter, on land, sea, in high winds, and in low-visibility conditions. It has been tested against multiple simultaneous targets coming from multiple angles, showing that it can intercept multiple harpoons at once. It has been tested against targets that are not broadcasting transponders, including military vessels, aircraft and drones, and can accurately detect and track them at range.
The results have been consistent. The system detects, classifies, solves, and intercepts. The reaction pipeline, from detection to fire-control solution—has been verified at well under 300 milliseconds. The system has been tested with autonomous intercept enabled, with PIN-authenticated human authorization, and with manual override. It has been tested with the radar operating in active mode and in passive mode. It has been tested with the system connected to the vessel’s future upcoming AegirX and WhaleMind command-and-control network and with the system operating in standalone mode.
WAPS is no longer a prototype. It is no longer a concept. It is not a simulation. It is an operational system that has already been tested and will continue to be validated, and deployed, and contains real-world radar processing capabilities. For decades, the harpoon has been the defining tool of the whaling industry. It is the weapon that kills the whale. It is the instrument that makes commercial whaling even possible.
WAPS changes that. It does not ban whaling. It does not outlaw harpoons. It simply makes the harpoon ineffective. It ensures that a whale, once detected, can be defended at the moment of attack. Those who are interested can reach out to info@whaledefenseagency.org for additional information, including media.