AeroVironment [AVAV] on Tuesday said it conducted the first successful drop of multiple GPS-guided live-fire Shryke munitions from the company’s VAPOR 55 MX unmanned aircraft system (UAS), demonstrating the potential punch of the man-portable system.
The December 2023 demonstration was done in collaboration with L3Harris Technologies
[LHX] and Corvid Technologies, the two companies that developed the lightweight precision glide munition. The multi-drop consisted of four Shryke munitions, allowing multiple targets to be engaged during one flight.
The Shrykes, equipped with active payloads, were fired at target mannequins and a vehicle with an accuracy of one to two meters, an AeroVironment spokeswoman told Defense Daily.
“The lethality of a 40mm anti-armor modular warhead paired with a lightweight glider provides a highly effective, low-collateral damage solution to the front lines,” Kyle Bowen, business development director at Corvid, said in a statement.
The defense variant of the VAPOR 55 MX is a Group 3 UAS having a maximum gross take-off weight of 67 pounds. The six-foot long vertical take-off-and-landing aircraft, which looks like helicopter with long tail boom, has a 20-mile range and a 20-pound payload capacity.
Shryke has a 1.7-pound mass, including a one-pound warhead, and can be released as high as 5,000-feet, according to an AeroVironment data sheet on VAPOR MX and Shryke.
VAPOR has previously demonstrated drop capabilities with third party vendors at the request of AeroVironment’s customers but the recent demonstration was the first with the aircraft using fully-fused and live fire munitions, the company spokeswoman said.
L3Harris was responsible for the fusing.
“Collaborating with our partners to develop the multi-drop Shryke payload to integrate seamlessly with the modular open systems approach design of the VAPOR 55 MX gives us a real market advantage,” Jason Wright, senior product line manager at AeroVironment, said in a statement. “Quick integration for the warfighter continues to be our top priority.”
AeroVironment’s live-fire test follows a demonstration Boeing’s [BA] Insitu business unit conducted with the drop of inert Shryke munitions from a Group 3 Integrator fixed-wing UAS, which has a gross take-off weight of 165 pounds, a 40-pound payload capacity, and a 24-hour-plus endurance (Defense Daily, Dec. 13, 2023).