Editors' Pick|85,737 views|May 7, 2020,09:41am EDT
See Raytheon’s Jet-Powered Interceptor Drone In Action
David HamblingContributor
Coyote 2 is Raytheon’s RTN latest weapon in the fight against small drones. It may look like a missile, but it’s really something quite different: a miniature jet-powered interceptor.
Small drones are a growing battlefield threat. Some are garage-built projects, others simply commercial quadcopters modified to drop grenades. They can do tremendous damage – as the attack which knocked out the Abqaiq oil processing plant last year showed – and proved frustratingly difficult to shoot down with small arms when used by ISIS in Mosul.
Raytheon are the premier makers of surface to air missiles for the U.S. military, producing everything from long-range Patriots to shoulder-launched Stingers. But when it comes to tackling swarms of $2,000 drones, a new approach was needed. In 2018 the U.S. military deployed Raytheon’s Coyote for drone defense. This is a tube-launched interceptor, driven by an electric propeller and cruising at 60 mph which destroys targets with an explosive warhead.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/05/07/raytheon-coyote-drone-jet-powered-interceptor/#4ce2e7934885
