🇺🇸🚀U.S. Tests Inexpensive Kinetic Interceptor

At the Yuma Proving Ground (Arizona), tests of the Falcon Peak 26.2 system are underway, involving the launch of mini-interceptor rockets Mk-III, or Harpe, from Perseus Defense.

The Harpe is 61 cm long, has a range of up to 2 km for engaging drone groups (i.e., weighing up to 25 kg), and is launched from an eight-round launch container that weighs less than 36 kg.

The launch container is integrated with the Lattice digital system from Anduril – an AI-based air defense command and control system that combines sensors (detectors, cameras, radar), makes decisions, and guides interceptors. Lattice has already been sold to 🇰🇼Kuwait for organizing air defense against Iranian loitering munitions (drones).

The declared price of the interceptor is $2,500, and the launch container, detection, and guidance system is $10,000.

🇪🇪Previously, the Estonian company Frankenburg Technologies developed and tested a mini-rocket Mark I for $4,000, which is capable of engaging aerial targets at a range of up to 2 km, including those flying at jet speeds of up to 600 km/h. These rockets are already being used in Ukraine and have the potential for integration with maritime unmanned platforms.

✨Similar air defense systems, but with a warhead, are urgently needed in large quantities in border/frontline regions, as well as near energy, transportation, and telecommunications facilities, and logistics centers. And such developments already exist in large numbers with the "people's defense industry" and small defense enterprises. The issue of quickly saturating the rebuilt "small sky" defense system with them lies solely in the realm of eliminating a number of bureaucratic regulations. ❗️Because there are already proposals for the production of solid-propellant interceptor missiles at an affordable price, but so far, no one needs them. Until the Ukrainian "jet rooster" hasn't pecked too hard.

⚡️Two Majors