The Airbus-made “Bird of Prey” interceptor drone prototype has completed its first demonstration flight, involving a mission against a kamikaze drone.
Bird of Prey autonomously searched, detected, and classified the one-way attack drone. It then engaged the medium-sized target with a Mark I air-to-air missile, developed by the Estonian defense tech startup Frankenburg Technologies.
The demonstration flight, held at a military training area in northern Germany, took place just nine months after the project started, responding to the urgent need for defense against kamikaze drones.
Frankenburg CEO Kusti Salm described the event to mark “the first integration of a new class of low-cost, mass-manufacturable interceptor missiles onto a drone, creating a new cost curve for air defence and enabling defence against mass aerial threats at a fundamentally different scale.”
Additional flights with a live warhead are planned throughout the rest of the year to further operationalize the interceptor drone and present its full capabilities.
Bird of Prey
Based on the modified Airbus Do-DT25 drone, the 3.1-meter (10.2-foot) prototype has a maximum take-off weight of 160 kilograms (353 pounds).
Bird of Prey is designed to seamlessly integrate into NATO’s air defense network, with Airbus’ Integrated Battle Management System (IBMS) at its core for coordination, complementing a layered architecture for defense against enemy drones.
“With our Bird of Prey and Frankenburg’s affordable Mark I missiles, we are providing armed forces with an effective, cost-efficient interceptor, filling a crucial capability gap in today’s asymmetric conflict theatres,” said Mike Schoellhorn, CEO of Airbus Defence and Space.
“The integration of Bird of Prey into Airbus’ air defence battle management suite IBMS acts as a force multiplier,” he added.
Mark I Missiles
The prototype was equipped with four Mark I air-to-air missiles, while the operational version will be capable of carrying up to eight of the missiles.
Each missile measures 65 centimeters (25.5 inches) long and weighs under 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds).
Equipped with a fragmentation warhead to engage targets at a range of up to 1.5 kilometers (nearly 1 mile), the Mark I missile travels at high subsonic speeds and features fire-and-forget capabilities.
Earlier this month, Frankenburg Technologies partnered with Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa to produce the Mark I anti-drone missiles in Poland.
