Developing US Variant of Viper

Leonardo DRS and SpearUAV are to co-develop a variant of the Israeli company’s Viper nano-scale aerial loitering munition for the US market, the companies announced on 6 October.

Developed rapidly in response to lessons learned in recent major conflicts, Viper is a vertical launch, quad-rotor munition that provides an affordable, simple-to-use, and effective organic aerial munition against a variety of targets, including those in defilade.

Small aerial munitions like Viper are revolutionising small unit tactics, by putting precision lethality literally in the hands of the individual soldier. Viper provides organic, responsive, precision fires at the squad level, allowing operators to destroy immediate threats, such as snipers and RPG teams, without having to call on higher-level assets. The system’s precision also minimises potential collateral damage in complex urban terrain.

“We continue to prioritize investments to meet critical unit capability gaps and user-identified requirements. We then design, build and test integrated solutions that are mature, affordable, and rapidly available to meet accelerated customer demands,” said Aaron Hankins, SVP/GM of DRS Land Systems. “We recognized Spear as a leading-edge AI and unmanned technology company, and we are very excited about this new partnership. Viper expands our current sUAS efforts and brings a much-needed lethal munition capability to warfighters now.”

“We want to provide the user the ability to treat Viper the same way they would any other piece of combat equipment or munition, such as a bullet or a grenade. It’s a battlefield tool; it’s ready and meant to be used at any time and without hesitation. And that could be for an infantry soldier or for land or naval platform crews,” added SpearUAV CEO, Gadi Kuperman.