It's called the Bird of Prey, ironic considering it's based on their drone targets to test missiles and stuff. It'll be armed with four Mark 1 missiles from the Estonian startup Frankenburg, which have a range of 1,5-2km and are meant to shoot down larger UAVs like Shaheds. These are super cheap mini-missiles. The idea is to have a very cheap platform you can spam out to intercept drones, it could then land itself and be reused to further reduce costs. Here's a video of the first test flight:https://x.com/Jeff21461/status/2038586664847606264?s=20
>>65025174>Mark 1 missiles cost 50K USD per shot btw. Once again boomers fail to understand the necessity of cheap interceptors
>>65025180what if they give that V1 kino a 50 cal?? or better an autocannon but that may be too heavy
>>65025174is it remotely controlled by a pilot ???
>>65025180Boomer shareholders need big numbers so they can milk defense companies for dividends.
>>65025185I hope so, you can't trust software vibe coded by a jeet
>>65025180Do they? The Shaeds cost 50k per drone and Frankenburg said their missile cost "significantly less than that".
hard to believe that after 4 years of shaheed spam they couldnt came up with a decent cost effective solution to them
>>65025191possible but still limited to 2 shots, still think a big gun is better in every way
>>65025182make it front mounted like pic rel
>>6502518050k per shot down drones is still miles ahead compared to using fuckin' Patriot or SM-6 interceptors
>>65025174Defense companies inflate prices by 10-100x.
>>65025197>but still limited to 2 shotsUp to 8:>The demonstration flight took place just nine months after the project started. Based on a modified Airbus Do-DT25 drone, the Bird of Prey prototype used in the flight features a wingspan of 2.5 metres, a length of 3.1 metres, and a maximum take-off weight of 160 kg. While the prototype was equipped with four Mark I air-to-air missiles, the operational version will be able to carry up to eight of them.
Is the decision to use missiles instead of machine guns for interception because they anticipate that kamikaze drones will begin to acquire evasive maneuvers and other capabilities in the future?
>>65025203Ukrainian P1-Suns are quoted as costing 1-2.5K.MIC retards trying to profit off of a system that's supposed to be as cheap as an ordinary arty shell.
>>65025174Any news on the range of the new missile? If it's not long enough it will get shot down by the shasneeds themselves. Some of them are already carrying AA missiles so that hunting them with slower aircraft/helos is risky
>>65025187Akchtually, Blumpf said no more dividends from defense contractors. >https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/01/07/trump-dividends-stock-buybacks-defense-companies.html
>>65025220Russia already equipped UAVs with rear-facing cameras, and mixed AAM-armed Gerans into their attack waves to shoot at aircraft going for an intercept (these versions had starlink so they were remotely piloted)Also, if you can mount a missile you can probably mount a gun pod. Just stick an MG-3 or something similar into a 3D printed plasitc case with a 250 round belt.
>>65025180Price will go down as production ramps up. Trust.
>>65025182>>65025199
>>65025223>Ukrainian P1-Suns are quoted as costing 1-2.5K.Part of it is lack of automatic guidance (although they are developing this), part is just the cheapness of ukie labor, part of is lack of profit margin.
>>65025293The whole of it is that they're an actual wartime weapon system produced at the price it has to be produced to be a competitive tool for the current battlefield.All these other, Western systems are just things built out of greed, which can not and will not stand the test of modern warfare.
>>65025310>just things built out of greed>in EstoniaMy contrarian friend, you are full of shit.Finns, Balts and Poles are the ones who actually understand what the fuck is going on.Swedes, Danes and Germans are slowly waking up. Too slowly, probably, but I'll take what I can get.
>>65025327>Finns, Balts and Poles are the ones who actually understand what the fuck is going on.As a Finn I can tell you that's patently false.We just today had a couple Ukrainian drones stray onto Finnish soil and the system at large proved it's not at all prepared or understanding how shit works.Peacetime militaries do not adapt.They're full of closeminded idiots whose only purpose is maintaining pre-existing systems.
>>65025310>All these other, Western systems are just things built out of muh rules & regulationsfixed that for yaremember kid, pretty much everything is tied to the state and its retarded regulations
>>65025339>Peacetime militaries do not adapt.Sad, but true. t. knower, had friends from ukie MIC visit western armies, the conclusions is that all of them, even on the front edge (e.g. Baltics) are clueless retards
>>65025182>>65025259How hard do you think it would be to build/print a large (about human sized) drone for this purpose?
>>65025180When your budget is 100x your opponent's you can afford to overspend by 2-5x per interceptor.
>>65025383you stupid retard in europe our budget is near 0 compared to brownoids fucktards with economies built on doing terrorism that don't care about what their population thinks and can pivot to a wartime economy without any repercussions
>>65025383That doesn't even apply to the US and its primary future foe.
>>65025389US military spending is more than double Iran's entire GDP.1/4 of their GDP and 80% of their exports is oil. Stop that and they become unable to import any parts and tools needed to sustain production of advanced weapons.
>>65025174Err?
>>65025259>>65025199Reichsflugscheibe is de wei. Quad copter encased in a lift body plus a turret each on the top and bottom.
>>65025191Only number I've been able to find is "90% less than existing air defense missiles" (presumably IRIS-T given the context, which costs roughly $435,000). It's less than a sneed (barely), but still double the cost of APKWS.
>>65025174These thing look really fucking cool.And even if shaed start widespread mounting aa missiled then they won't be that cheap anymore.My personal stupid wish is seeing them carried by big long ranged craft for force projection. (Maybe make them have a baloon hover mode for the pickup?)
>>65025344>t. knower, had friends from ukie MIC visit western armies, the conclusions is that all of them, even on the front edge (e.g. Baltics) are clueless retardsThat is my conclusion too after reading the demented boomer theories that are produced by the swedish armys war college staff. These guys are pretty much useless because they are not educated, they are miseducated, and they need to be deprogrammed before relearning, and deprogramming a normie is much harder than to program him, which is why its fastest to just send them into the fire and have them killed so they can be replaced by new properly programmed normies.The cringiest thing I read was a high ranked boomer senior who wanted to go back to L/39 howitzers because they had a lower minimum range (when firing indirectly) because of steeper rifling. That idiot doesnt understand that you cant park your 155 mm 7-8 km from the front and shoot shells high in the air. This "close combat mentality" that they have is from the 1960s when they were young and did their conscription, 15 km was a huge distance and communications consisted of a field telephone. A similar thing can be seen in the purchase of obsolete weapon systems like the Mjölner self propelled mortar. This abortion carries two m/1941 120 mm muzzle loaded mortars (with an autoloader). It has an effective range of 6 km (9 km with rocket assisted ammo) and the mortars are mounted in a hand cranked casemate. And it can not do direct fire. Its drone bait. And it has been sold to the dutch army. These guys are no better. The general european idea is that America is going to win and we are just going to ride their coat tails so we do not really need to take this seriously."I mean, look at the TV, America has railgunz and lasors that they shoot evil robots with!""But thats Hollywood cgi!" "Yeah but its based on real gear you know!" "Bullshit!" "Nu uh thats what you say!"From an american POV euros are useful only as rear area security.
>>65025180Brainlet take. $50k missile kills a drone worth $30k that was about to do $2 million worth of damage.
>>65025450Do you think China and Russia gives a fuck about your oil sanctions you stupid fuck ?
>>65025450Do you think China and Russia gives a fuck about your oil sanctions you stupid fuck ?>>65025555yeah true but still 50k for an anti drone missile is ridiculous
>>65025592$50k for a missile is okay. Using a $4M missile for a drone is not.
>>65025589>>65025592mb for the duplicate I'm phoneposting
>>65025589>>65025592You think I'm talking about sanctions? Just bomb the terminals
>>65025180>once again a /k/tard fails to understand that MIC executives need money pouring in to afford their Bentleys and Daimlers
>>65025599Don't even have to do that, just announce that you've mined the Iranian side of the gulf.
>>65025555meanwhile
>>65025180the west unironically wipes its ass with 50Kone drone killed is dozens of lives saveddozens of average salaries add up to much more than 50K10% of one dozen average salaries add up to more than 50K
>>65026368that one doesn't explode
>>65025174It looks like something from the thunderbirds
>>65025555Trade efficiency doesn't stop mattering just because you have lots of expensive and vulernerable targets. I think your take is the real brainlet take.
>>65026815You will quickly run out of toilet paper when the enemy can mass manufacture inexpensive drones and you yourself are a post industrial service based economy.
IMO the best thing on the market are the Ukranian STING drones. Cheap as fuck and you can build millions. They even have AI to take over the 'wheel' for the last 10 meters.
>>65026846How big does the manufacturing sector have to be in your imaginary universe for it to make a difference? Western manufacturing is extremely efficient which is why the service industry is able to be so big. Like the agricultural sectors. Less than 1% of people do it and feed over 150% of people. You should move to the west before the populist parties shut the door.
>>65026869>Western manufacturing is extremely efficient which is why the service industry is able to be so bigNo, it is because all the factories making the products Westerners use are in China.
>>65025174>50k a missilelmao USA lost.tiny hats won.pay up, goyim!
>>65026891It's funny you should bring this up in a discussion about toilet paper, since Chinese toilet paper accounts for a fraction of a percent of the US TP market.
>>65026846>post industrialmidwit moment
>>65026891no, most of the feedstock of advanced parts for those final assembly factories gets imported from taiwan, japan, south-korea, europe, and the US.the majority of chinese manufacturing is final assembly and highly dependent on parts from other countries.about 15-20% of global industrial output comes from europe alone, in terms of the actual monetary value of what's being produced, they're not far behind china, because it's all higher end shit that china would need years of focused government attention, effort and planning to replicate. the people who obsess over meme reality like "le deindustrialisation" are not living in the real world, they imagine the west as some sort of cornucopia of restaurants, server-rooms and financial centers with a little workshop that shits out two car engines per year, but reality is a little more complicated.oh, and along with all of this, there's the fact that china has been repeatedly proven to lie about it's statistics in order to boast, like counting civil engineering an construction projects as "industry", lying about population numbers, and lying about their average IQ.i'm not saying china isn't a manufacturing powerhouse, but that powerhouse is reliant on a massive logistical chain that they will not be able to replicate even given another 50 years time. the notion that china is the sole manufacturer on the planet and everyone else is hopeless because they can shit out low quality drones that can be easily destroyed by low quality defenses, it's dumb.
>>65026891What a fascinating imagination you have. Tell me more.
>>65025174So is this now the cheapest new build guided missile on the market?Skipping gunfighters and moving straight to third gen air warfare is a smart move in my opinion, the thirdies will never be able to build something like this in a million years so there interception capabilities will forever more be at least a generation behind
>>65025174>looks like a v1krauts still haven't got over losing the war have they?
Holy shit. In Estonia there is an air alert, FAF has scrambled at least 10 Hornet's and Finnish navy is in full combat alert ready to defend the air space. Drone warfare has come into the north. We might need those soon.
>>65025197>still think a big gun is better in every wayIt's clear you're not a pilot.
>>65026952yuropoors can't produce shit anon. I'm French and I had to move most of the production to Taiwan and even there it's around 1.5* the price of doing it in China, it's just better for ip protection >>65026891He's right, especially for plastics and metallurgy, anyone aware of the current situation in Europe and the US would be sad about it. Fortunately /k/ is so full of shit that you can cope in peace and tell yourself that china can only make cheap toys. A few years back at least we could say they were our cheap slaves and we were the smart ones doing the design, but now they produce more engineers than my country has in total every year and have been dominating a lot of high tech industries. Niggers will call me a chink shill even tho I live in Taiwan. Check the smarter everyday video you'll understand the problems I had
>>65026973What I'm talking about is shit like the guy running this channel/companyhttps://www.youtube.com/@christopherhelmke/videosTo me it seems like he has a brilliant product but in the videos he straight up says that it is impossible to find customers since almost nobody actually needs a bolt sorting machine in Europe since this sort of nuts and bolts manufacture has become almost completely extinct outside of defence. Same as the talk of $10/pcs bolts for aeroplanes in America, nobody other than defence contractors is making something as basic as fasteners in the West.
