BlueHalo said on Oct. 9 that it has developed a Next-Generation Missile (NGM) for the U.S. Army Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office’s (JCO) Long Range Kinetic Interceptor prototype effort to defeat Group 3 drones–those having a maximum gross takeoff weight above 55 pounds and below 1,320 pounds–as well as larger Group 4 and Group 5 UAS.
The JCO’s Long Range Kinetic Interceptor other transaction authorities effort is to develop and field a $200,000 or less unit cost counter UAS missile rapidly.
BlueHalo expects that, as with other company Counter UAS, NGM may expand to other uses, such as downing enemy rockets and mortar rounds.
Among the visitors to the BlueHalo exhibits at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) annual conference on Oct. 9 was Maj. Gen. Curtis Buzzard, the commander of the Army Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Moore, Ga.
DoD and the military services have explored diverse Counter UAS options. In August, Army Maj. Gen. Sean Gainey, the JCO director, said that RTX‘s [RTX] Coyote kinetic interceptor has been “very successful in theater”–U.S. Central Command and Africa Command (
Defense Daily, Aug. 8).
Coyote is an expendable fixed-wing drone that can slam into other small UAS or down them with warhead blast fragments.
In April, the Army awarded BlueHalo up to $75.9 million to provide the LOCUST laser weapon system for the Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) program to integrate a 20KW laser capability on Infantry Squad Vehicles (Defense Daily, April 11).
Also in April, BlueHalo said that it had bought Northern Virginia-based Verus, the developer of the SkyView family of passive RF-based detection, identification, tracking and telemetry extraction of small UAS.
BlueHalo, a portfolio company of Arlington Capital Partners, also offers the artificial intelligence and machine learning-enabled RF-based Titan C-UAS system, used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the ARGUS perimeter security system for physical security.
“As we started to build out a broader, comprehensive Counter UAS strategy, we knew from deep intimacy with our customers to first hand experience, whether it’s Ukraine or other [places], where is the threat evolving from today to tomorrow, looking forward to, hopefully never, environments like Taiwan, what are we gonna need to keep people safe and bring people home?” Jonathan Moneymaker, Blue Halo’s CEO, said in an interview on Oct. 9 at the AUSA conference.
“We have a full complement [of Counter UAS] now, from a straightforward RF [radio frequency] detection where you just want situational awareness of what’s around me–Group 1 [UAS] to Group 2 to bigger,” he said, “Then, it’s how do we get engagement and defeat out of that from an RF standpoint? So we have multi-effectors across the board–our Titan product. That originally started with a 360 degree spherical perimeter of defense. That was largely focused on–think of SFTs [Special Forces teams] and others in austere areas that need that 360 degree visibility.”
“When I was in Ukraine in November and then again in April, I continued to get feedback on how we needed to adapt that particular system to more of a border conflict when you have directional engagement; etc.,” Moneymaker said. “Our teams were able to cycle very quickly within two months [to] be able to tune that system to be able to address what they were looking for. Now, we’re one of the most successful solutions for the new first-person drones that are being deployed out there.”
This year, Russia and Ukraine have turned to use of cheap, first-person view (FPV) drones, which provide headset-equipped operators with a concurrent drone’s eye view of the battlefield and which are able to fire rocket-propelled grenades against tanks, other vehicles, and personnel.
Moneyaker said that BlueHalo has delivered more than 1,000 RF systems, including Titan and SkyView.
BlueHalo has offices and plants in the Washington, D.C. area, Huntsville, Ala.; and Albuquerque, N.M., where the company has 250,000 square feet of research and development and production space.