The Army is in the initial stages of testing new, specialized bullets to shoot down small drones, Army officials said on Monday. The service is developing both 30mm and 25mm rounds to be carried by AH-64 Apache attack helicopters and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, both of which the Army views as a primary system for protecting troops from future drone threats.
The ongoing war in Ukraine has shown that “the character of war is changing,” said Army Maj. Gen. John T. Reim, Jr., Joint Program Executive Officer Armaments & Ammunition and commanding general of the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey.
A major lesson from the conflict is that the U.S. troops need tactical solutions to deal with the vast proliferation of first-person view drones, Reim said during the annual Association of the U.S. Army conference in Washington D.C.
“There’s not enough air defense assets out there,” Reim said. “We want all our formations to have the capability against small UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] and also make them more lethal from increasing threats that we’re seeing from our adversaries.”
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U.S. military air defense units have been tasked in recent years with defending Israel from ballistic and cruise missiles as well as drones, while the Navy has spent months knocking down missiles fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen.
But one major issue the U.S. military faces is that interceptors can be far more expensive than the drones they shoot down. A top Pentagon official told reporters in April that the U.S. military was spending more than $100,000 each time it destroyed a drone.
“We’re doing some great work in our air defense community with interceptors and that’s super awesome,” Reim said. “But when you look at the scale, you look at the expense, you look at it from a cost curve perspective of interceptor to $1,200 one-way attack capabilities, we’ve got to think about that differently.”
That’s why the Army is testing a 25mm round for Bradley Fighting Vehicles and a 30mm round for Apache helicopters that use proximity sensors to detect and destroy drones, said Army Lt. Col. Saleem Khan, product manager for medium caliber ammunition.
The XM1228 Bradley Aerial Defeat Group Enhanced Round, or BADGER, is a 25mm round that is meant to provide mechanized units protection against drones, Khan told Task & Purpose on Monday.
The BADGER is “really in very early stages of development,” Khan said. The Army will be conducting developmental testing on the BADGER next month, and it is scheduled to undergo live-fire testing this summer, Khan said.
Separately, the Army is testing the XM1225 Aviation Proximity Explosive, or APEX, a dual-purpose round for Apache helicopters. Khan said. The 30mm round is designed to airburst so that it can take out drones.
The XM1225 would be the first major enhancement for the Apache helicopter’s 30mm cannon in 30 years, Khan said.
The timeline for fielding the rounds has not been determined, an Army official told Task & Purpose.
Both rounds would provide tactical solutions to the problem of one-way attack drones, Khan said.
“Ultimately, it’s a cost savings,” Khan said. “It puts in the hands of multiple formations using existing weapons systems with either no modification or light modification.”
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