MBDA demos Sky Warden advances at FIA2024
MBDA has demonstrated a new effector concept for its Sky Warden counter-uncrewed aerial systems (C-UAS) modular solution at the Farnborough International Airshow (FIA) 2024.
Image courtesy MBDA
The new effector concept on show is a ground launched anti-air munition targeting threats that include Class 1 & smaller Class 2 small uncrewed aircraft systems (sUAS) and Loitering Munitions. Collaborating with Fortem Technologies and utilising their DroneHunter technology, the concept enables the rapid incorporation of a warhead on a drone to defeat threats at lower cost. Tests of the munition has proved its effectiveness and lethality.
Éric Béranger, CEO of MBDA, said: “Our flagship Sky Warden modular C-UAS system is designed to evolve at the same rapid speed as the drone threat the world now faces, as demonstrated so effectively in recent trials. This latest effector solution shows MBDA in our best light: innovative and agile, adapting to the environment around us, and anticipating our customers’ needs. The exciting advance MBDA have made with this effector is in creating an independent warhead design that operators can add to a drone in the battlefield. It demonstrates our collaboration DNA, partnering with an emerging technology company to create a new low-cost counter drone effector.”
The company will also draw on its recent successful operational demonstration, where MBDA’s flagship C-UAS solution demonstrated its capabilities to 17 customer delegations.
These recent customer demonstrations saw Sky Warden faced with a wide range of offensive drone threats - with varying kinetic characteristics and in realistic operational scenarios - neutralising them all. Using artificial intelligence (AI) to assist its human operators to identify and classify the different threats from its full set of sensors (e.g. radar, passive RF and electro-optical cameras), Sky Warden automatically assigned to the most appropriate and available effector maximising the efficiency. In the threat scenarios Sky Warden faced, it blocked attacking drones with jammers, captured them with hunter drones, neutralised them in rapid sequence by laser, and destroyed a ‘shahed-like’ drone with a Mistral 3 missile at very long distance.
With the tests of its new effector concept and the recent demonstration in Italy, MBDA sees an RF guided drone-style effector with a directional fragmenting warhead complementing the effects that Sky Warden already provides, giving customers more options to adapt it to their preferred needs.
Drawn from MBDA’s wide experience in air defence and effects management, Sky Warden is a scalable system that can effectively neutralise any form of threat, from tactical drones to reconnaissance mini-drones, as well as other traditional ‘air breathing’ threats. The system manages the full C-UAS kill chain from detection to neutralisation and is designed to operate both as an integrated component in a layered air defence architecture, or in a standalone configuration. Using a networked eco-system of constantly evolving sensors and effectors, Sky Warden matches the UAS threat and its evolutions.
Vehicle mounted or dismounted, Sky Warden provides mobility and deployment. Being modular, scalable and evolvable, it can be tailored to specific requirements.