As reported by Sam Skove in Defense One, SAIC is among contenders for a crash U.S. Army effort to help Ukraine to fight Russian drones, some (most?) of them being made in Iran.
BAE Systems’ APKWS kit includes advanced Distributed Aperture Semi-Active Laser Seeker (DASALS) optics located on all four guidance wings, which are protected by wing-slot seals prior to firing, avoiding adjacent fire damage that can interfere with a nose mount seeker. Once the rocket is fired, the APKWS kit’s wings deploy and the optics lock on to designated targets, guiding the rocket to the target )
On April 4, the U.S. Department of Defense announced a large package of military aid to Ukraine, including what it called “10 mobile C-UAS laser-guided rocket systems”. That follows a January competition held by the U.S. Army, which was seeking a system to fight off Iranian-made Shahed-136 suicide drones, Sam Skove writes. SAIC, which participated in the competition, is in the running to send ten of its weapons to Ukraine, a company representative told Defense One on the sidelines of the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium last week. Contracting documents provided by the U.S. Army indicate that the test objective was to destroy Class 3 drones—that is, aircraft that weigh more than 55 pounds. The Shahed-136 weighs about 440 pounds.
Ukraine has downed many of the Iranian-made drones, which cost about $20,000 apiece, but sometimes is forced to use $500,000 air-defense missiles to do so, a (very) expensive weapon to destroy somewhat cheap targets.