Thales Anti-Drone Rockets Now Being Used In Ukraine

AEuropean-made rocket tailored to destroying Shahed-series long-range one-way attack drones is being used in Ukraine. The 70-millimeter (2.75-inch) laser-guided rocket from Thales is broadly similar to the U.S.-made Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II), but has an FZ123 airburst warhead that disperses a cloud of thousands of steel pellets. It is intended for air and ground launch, part of an expanding inventory of weapons in the Ukrainian campaign against the Russian drone threat.

Thales is now stepping up production of its 70mm guided rockets with FZ123 warhead at its plant at Herstal in Belgium. The warhead is comprised of two pounds of high explosives, which detonates and radially spreads out the steel pellets, creating a lethal cloud with a diameter of around 80 feet. The photo below shows how the steel pellets are densely packed around the periphery of the inside of the rocket warhead casing, for maximum dispersion, - TWZ.

According to Thales, the rocket can bring down Class II and Class III drones at a range of up to 10,000 feet. Broadly speaking, the NATO Class II classification covers medium-sized, tactical systems, including the Shahed, while Class III encompasses medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE)/high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) drones.

The airburst warhead increases the lethality of the rocket, also allowing it to bring down multiple drones in one shot, if they are flying in a swarm or grouped close enough together.

So, we have anti armour FPV, anti personnel FPV, SEAD/DEAD FPV, and now C-UAS FPV. pic.twitter.com/Jako0TQYVh

— Cᴀʟɪʙʀᴇ Oʙsᴄᴜʀᴀ (@CalibreObscura) June 1, 2024

The laser guidance system requires the target to be illuminated until the rocket gets close to it, at which point it detonates with a proximity fuze; this replaced the impact fuze used on earlier versions of the rocket. Laser guidance presents something of a challenge for the operator, especially when being used in poor weather, when Russian drone barrages are frequently encountered. If the laser beam is broken, the rocket continues to fly toward its last-known target for five seconds, then adopts a ballistic trajectory.

A Thales spokesperson told Business Insider that the rockets are already being deployed in Ukraine, launched from Mi-8 Hip helicopters adapted to carry NATO-standard launchers. It’s unclear how the laser is provided to designate the target, but some kind of turret-mounted device is a likely solution. So-called buddy lasing, where one aircraft designates the target for another, could also be useful in this case, with one Mi-8 keeping the target steadily lazed while the other makes its attack run. This is typically how the APKWS II rocket is used for air-to-air applications, too.

The Thales rockets are also being fired from the ground, using the U.S.-supplied VAMPIRE counter-drone system. A batch of 14 of these systems, which are mounted on Humvees, has been delivered to the Ukrainian military. Normally, the effector used in the VAMPIRE system is the laser-guided APKWS II rocket, fired from a turreted four-round LAND-LGR4 70mm launcher. The VAMPIRE is also fitted with a sensor turret (mounted on an extendable mast to give it a better line-of-sight), and a fire control system. VAMPIRE has also been used to attack targets on the ground.

Meanwhile, Thales is also working on its own ground-based launcher with five tubes for the 70mm rockets, which has reached the prototype stage, and is seen in the final photo in the tweet embedded below.

It’s unclear how many of the rockets have been supplied to Ukraine, but Thales says that Kyiv is asking for more.

In terms of cost, which has long been a prominent discussion point when it comes to counter-drone systems, Thales says that the rocket is equivalent to “kind of a low-cost missile.”

For comparison, a current generation Block II subvariant of the AIM-9X Sidewinder missile is just under $420,000, according to Pentagon budget documents. Meanwhile, the price tag for the AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) is more than $1 million each. At present, a single APKWS II guidance and control section costs around $15,000, with another few thousand dollars required for the warhead and motor.

The cost of the Thales rocket is likely much closer to the aforementioned APKWS II, a rocket guidance kit originally developed to engage targets on the ground, and now also being used by the U.S. military as a lower-cost, more numerous air-to-air weapon. The APKWS II costs between $15,000 and $20,000 for the guidance and control section, with another few thousand dollars required for the warhead and motor.

However, the Thales rocket will be costlier than the interceptor drones that Ukraine is also now increasingly using against Russian drones. They typically cost around $500 each, with only some of the most expensive models having a price tag of over $5,000.

Potentially, Thales could churn out significant quantities of the rocket for Ukraine.

The company has the production capacity to build 30,000 unguided versions of its 70mm rocket each year, with the possibility to double this by moving to two daily work shifts. Since not all of the rockets it builds are guided, and with plenty of them being produced to fulfill contracts signed with other countries, the number of rockets available to Ukraine would be proportionally fewer.

However, Thales has said it plans to build around 3,500 of the FZ123 guided rockets by the end of the year, with the aim of producing 10,000 annually by 2026.

Ukraine’s demand for cost-effective anti-drone weapons, especially to counter Russia’s waves of increasingly sophisticated Shahed and Geran series long-range one-way attack drones, is well known by now.

Production of these attack drones is set to expand drastically in the near term and, as we have discussed in the past, it’s very possible that 2026 could see Russia build over 50,000 of these drones annually.

There are signs that the Thales anti-drone rocket could also see more interest from NATO nations in Europe, countries that had previously generally neglected to invest in robust counter-drone strategies.

The picture has now changed, following the incident last month in which Polish authorities said 19 Russian drones entered the country’s airspace, with some of them being shot down by Polish and Dutch combat aircraft. You can catch up to our reporting on the incident in our story here.

This incident has been followed by a spate of high-profile, but still-mysterious, drone incursions recorded in Denmark and Norway.

Alain Quevrin, country director for Thales Belgium, told Business Insider that “all the European countries are showing interest” in the rocket. “They are really raising questions,” Quevrin added.

The company has already expanded its workforce at Herstal in anticipation of new orders.

At the same time, the U.S. military’s experience using the APKWS II rocket in an air-to-air role, primarily to down Houthi drones, in the Middle East, has hardly gone unnoticed. The U.S. Air Force first announced it had demonstrated the ability to use APKWS II rockets as lower-cost, more numerous air-to-air weapons back in 2019, but this was just in testing.

A 96th Test Wing F-15E Strike Eagle tests Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II) laser-guided rockets. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Thomas Barley Staff Sgt. Thomas Barley
Subsequently, a U.S. military official exclusively confirmed the use of APKWS II in the air-to-air role to TWZ, after the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen began launching drone, missile, and other attacks against foreign warships and commercial vessels in and around the Red Sea, as well as targets in Israel, in October 2023. Now, the APKWS II is also due to get an optional upgrade, adding an infrared seeker, which will provide something like a fire-and-forget capability, as you can read about here.

Putting all this together means that Thales may well be bringing its laser-guided 70mm rocket with its dedicated anti-drone warhead onto the market at a very opportune time, as various armed forces look at how best to counter a taxing threat and one that is only set to proliferate.