U.S. defense contractor Raytheon says the U.S. Army has begun buying a version of its expendable Coyote drone that can operate alone or in a swarm, along with a compact fire control radar, to bring down small hostile unmanned aerial vehicles. Since the unmanned defenders have a small warhead, the service may also be able to readily employ them as loitering munitions and the entire system could eventually take on other roles. The Massachusetts-headquartered company announced that it was in the process of delivering the Coyote Block 1B variants to the Army in response to an “urgent operational need” at a press conference on July 17, 2018, at the biennial Farnborough Airshow in the United Kingdom. At present, the firm has provided more than 32 drones to the service and it is set to fulfill the full order of an unspecified number of the unmanned aircraft by the end of 2018, according to Shepard.

“We modified these vehicles to have small warheads to take down a quadcopter, for example, or other types of Class I or Class II UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles],” Thomas Bussing, Raytheon's Vice President for Advanced Missile Systems, said at Farnborough. The two categories of drones he mentioned cover designs that are less than 55 pounds heavy, can’t fly higher than 3,500 feet, and have a top speed under 280 miles per hour, per the U.S. military’s official definitions. The complete system consists of two four-tube launcher on the back of a standard Army 6x6 tactical truck, along with Raytheon’s own Ku-band Radio Frequency System, or KRFS, and a generator to provide the necessary power. This fire control radar cues the unmanned aircraft to intercept their targets.

Raytheon A low-quality image showing the KRFS-equipped launch vehicle Raytheon developed for the US Army.

“First, you’ve got to see it, but then you need to track the target with high accuracy,” Don Williams, in charge of Raytheon’s Multi-Function Radio Frequency System, or MRFS, product line, which includes the KRFS, said in a company statement. “It’s a true multi-mission radar.” Coyote, by itself, weighs less than 10 pounds. Operators otherwise fire it like a traditional missile from a launch tube that is readily adaptable to air-, sea-, and ground-launched applications. After leaving the launcher, the drone’s six-foot wide main wing, rear stabilizers, and signature twin tail all pop out. An operator remains “in-the-loop” at all times and can make course corrections or issue other commands.

The firm said that in tests, the KRFS-directed modified Block 1B versions successfully hit 11 out of 12 targets, according to Military.com. It is unclear whether or not the drone can spot and engage threats autonomously or if it requires some user input, if even just to get it into the right general area. It’s also not clear how long the warhead-equipped Coyotes can fly or how far away from the control station they can go. As of 2016, Raytheon had developed a version with approximately 1 hour of loiter time and a 50-mile range, but this might be the more advanced Block 2 rather than the Block 1B version the Army is buying. Raytheon offered few details about the Army’s specific requirements, but the company suggested that the complete system would supplement existing point defenses at potentially remote and austere forward operating bases.

Raytheon A Coyote in flight.

“Enemy unmanned aircraft are among the biggest threats facing our ground troops today,” said Bussing, the Raytheon VP, said at Farnborough. “Our small expendable Coyote provides the army with an affordable and highly effective solution for countering the growing UAS [unmanned aerial systems] threat.” The ability for small unmanned aircraft to observe friendly forces and even launch harassing attacks is very real and will only become more ubiquitous as time goes on. The Army has already begun including examples in official manuals, along with instructions for how soldiers should respond, and troops playing mock enemies now employ quadcopter style drones during training exercises for increased realism.

US Army A graphic from a 2016 US Army manual warning about the threat of small unmanned aircraft conducting indirect attacks.

The conflicts in Iraq and Syria have shown that this capability is well within the reach of non-state actors, as well as nation-state military forces, as well. In January 2018, a mass drone attack on Russia’s main outposts in Syria – the Khmeimim air base and the naval base in Tartus – demonstrated that these improvised attacks could still be relatively sophisticated and launched from a stand-off distance. The potential for more mass attacks, as well as the danger of hostile autonomous or semi-autonomous drone swarms, will only add to the list of emerging threats the Army and other military forces have to defend against. “It's almost impossible to defend against [swarms of UAVs],” Pete Mangelsdorf, Director of Unmanned Air Systems at Raytheon's Missile Systems, said in another company statement.

US Army A US Army soldier, playing the role of a member of the enemy forces, pilots a quadcopter style drone during a training exercise in Germany.