Airbus’ uncrewed Hen of Prey interceptor autonomously engages kamikaze drone with Frankenburg missile – sUAS Information

The Airbus ‘Hen of Prey’ interceptor drone efficiently accomplished its first demonstration flight at a navy coaching space in northern Germany. In a sensible mission situation, it autonomously searched, detected and labeled a medium-sized one-way assault (kamikaze) drone. After profitable identification, the Hen of Prey interceptor engaged the goal with a Mark I air-to-air missile developed by defence tech start-up companion Frankenburg Applied sciences.

“Towards the present geopolitical and navy backdrop, defending in opposition to kamikaze drones is a tactical precedence that urgently must be tackled,” stated Mike Schoellhorn, CEO Airbus Defence and Area. “With our Hen of Prey and Frankenburg’s reasonably priced Mark I missiles, we’re offering armed forces with an efficient, cost-efficient interceptor, filling a vital functionality hole in right now’s uneven battle theatres. The mixing of Hen of Prey into Airbus’ air defence battle administration suite IBMS acts as a drive multiplier.”

“This can be a defining step for contemporary air defence,” stated Kusti Salm, CEO of Frankenburg Applied sciences. ”Along with Airbus, it marks the primary integration of a brand new class of low-cost, mass-manufacturable interceptor missiles onto a drone, creating a brand new value curve for air defence and enabling defence in opposition to mass aerial threats at a essentially totally different scale.”

The demonstration flight befell simply 9 months after the challenge began. Primarily based on a modified Airbus Do-DT25 drone, the Hen of Prey prototype used within the flight contains a wingspan of two.5 metres, a size of three.1 metres, and a most take-off weight of 160 kg. Whereas the prototype was geared up with 4 Mark I air-to-air missiles, the operational model will have the ability to carry as much as eight of them. The high-subsonic, fire-and-forget missiles have an engagement vary of as much as 1.5 kilometres, measure 65 centimetres in size and weigh lower than 2 kg every, making them the lightest guided interceptors developed thus far. They’re geared up with a fragmentation warhead designed to neutralise targets at quick proximity. This can allow the reusable Hen of Prey to have interaction and neutralise a number of kamikaze drones per mission, at a comparably low value per kill.

Hen of Prey is designed to seamlessly function inside NATO’s built-in air defence structure by way of established command and management programs centred round Airbus’ Built-in Battle Administration System (IBMS). Consequently, the counter UAS (Uncrewed Aerial System) answer Hen of Prey could be a necessary, extremely cellular and complementary constructing block of any built-in and layered air and missile defence answer.

Airbus and Frankenburg plan to conduct extra flights with a stay warhead all through 2026 to additional operationalise the system and show its full capabilities to potential clients.

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