FARNBOROUGH, the UK (BulgarianMilitary.com), 19 July 2018, Editor: Galina Zdravkova, Photo credit: Raytheon
The U.S. Army will operate Raytheon’s Coyote UAVs (unmanned air vehicles) as counter-drone defence with Ku-band radio frequency system fire control radars, learned BulgarianMilitary.com
The quantity purchased by the U.S. Army is undisclosed as of the moment.
The Coyote UAV is a tube-launched vehicle developed for chasing down enemy UAVs and destroying them in flight with a small fragmentation warhead. Fire control radar directs the Coyote to the target.
Thomas Bussing, Raytheon’s vice-president of advanced missile systems, commented the deal at Farnborough, “We are currently under funding by the US Army to develop and deploy these devices by the end of this year. We had a demonstration with the army where we flew 12. Eleven were successful. One had a launch misfire, but the other 11 all hit their targets.”
Bussing explained that he armed drones are may take down quadrotor helicopters and other Class 1 and Class 2 unmanned air systems and added that knocking down quadcopters from the sky turned out to be more challenging than expected.
“These quadcopters are actually fairly challenging. They have a resin structure, which is actually very difficult to penetrate. They are very resilient to small arms fire and so forth. But the warheads are very capable of destroying them,” further clarified Bussing.
The Coyote UAVs allow launching from a ship, land, or air. That unmanned air vehicle may be flown individually or in swarms. It is a good solution for electronic warfare, surveillance, and counter-UAV missions. As a swarm Coyote UAVs may be used for attacking groups of vessels or targets ahead of a shore assault.
Bussing underlined that the Coyote airframe is exportable, but its electronics and warhead are not.
The Raytheon’s Coyote can operate up to 1 hour and is developed for interchangeable payloads. It is operated by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration for hurricane tracking and is assessed by the U.S. Air Force and Army as an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance asset.
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