French Hornet has unveiled its Air Guard RCWS with C-UAS capabilities, thanks to a 40 mm automatic grenade launcher and jammer option during FEINDEF’25.
Air Guard is a development of the firm’s baseline Hornet RCWS but fitted with an airburst ammunition-capable 40 mm automatic grenade launcher and an independently moving pan system that can house a radar or jammer. So far, RCWS designs with small onboard radars have had the radar placed on a suitable spot, which limited the radar’s scanning envelope to the turret’s facing.
The pan mechanism located at the bottom can freely rotate the radar horizontally to keep a constant track on targets even when the main weapon is looking another way. Alternatively, the jammer can stay on one UAV while the grenade launcher is engaging another, allowing for simultaneous use of both soft-kill and hard-kill options against two targets at once.
An advantage of placing the radar/jammer on an onboard pan mechanism has the advantage of quicker integration, as placing the radar and other systems separately would normally require extra modifications on the platform. The downside to this approach is obviously the space being too limited for the use of radar and a jammer at the same time.
Author: Kaan Azman
Editor: Özgür Ekşi
