Army seeks information about miniature aircraft that can take out drones

Gear & Tech

By Hope Seck

July 28, 2025

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Weapons designed to meet the military’s growing counter-drone threat have taken an impressive array of forms, from shoulder-fired blasters that look pulled out of some sci-fi universe with hostile aliens, to high-powered microwave rays beamed from a shipping container.

Now, the Army wants to add to that list miniature planes that Soldiers can carry and send airborne in order to intercept and neutralize small drone aggressors. In a request for information published in June at the U.S. government’s contracting site, the Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, or RCCTO, asked companies to provide their solutions for an affordable and adaptable “man-portable interceptor aircraft intended for a Counter Unmanned Aerial System … solution.”

These interceptor aircraft would need to be able to intercept drones in Classes 1-3, which covers everything from small commercial quadcopters to UAVs weighing up to 1,320 pounds and traveling at up to 250 knots, or nearly 290 miles per hour.

As the number of off-the-shelf drone components has expanded, “the concepts of employment and field modifications of commercially available drone technology are also evolving at a fast pace,” the RFI states, noting that this trend can be witnessed on the battlefield in Ukraine and in other operational contexts.

“These dynamic conditions necessitate nimble technologies and capabilities where upgraded or more cost-effective [commercial off-the-shelf] and [nondevelopmental item] components can be rapidly modified, upgraded, and integrated into fielded UAS to meet changing operational realities at the tip-of-the-spear,” it continues.

RCCTO, it states, wants to understand the range of companies that build man-portable drone-interceptor technologies that can integrate rapidly with government equipment, evolve quickly to fulfull requirements, and work with U.S.-based supply chains.

The office also wants to find options that have the potential to be assembled rapidly in the field or built with additive manufacturing at forward bases and outposts, the document states.

While it’s not clear from the solicitation how the Army plans to move out on the information it collects, the theoretical end user would be light infantry units, according to documents. The payload for these interceptor aircraft, it adds, would be provided by the government from an existing munition source. The government would also provide support for autonomous operations.

Interceptor Medium Range counter drone — Render of MARSS’ Interceptor Mediun Range taking out incoming drones. (*European Defense Review Magazine* via MARSS)

Companies that respond should be able to develop their ultimate solution within 27 months while “tightly integrated with operational units.” And they may be asked to deliver up to 1,000 units per month when production gets underway.

The Army is seeking a range of miniature aircraft solutions in its RFI, but across the Atlantic, U.K.-based company MARSS has come up with a unique such aircraft that can ram drones out of the sky.

First announced in 2022, the Interceptor-Medium Range is a propeller-powered air vehicle that weighs about 18 pounds and has a three-foot wingspan. According to European Defence Review Magazine, it’s designed to travel at up to 180 miles per hour – about double the speed of the smaller drones it would be targeting, a feature intended to maximize damage on target.

The company said that the Interceptor can knock out multiple drones in a single mission and use AI-powered targeting for a precise hit, and autonomous threat detection thanks to a vertical smart launcher mounted with sensors. Executives told EDR that it would come to market sometime in 2025.

The Army’s interest in a relatively low-cost kinetic weapon to defeat drones – for comparison, the Interceptor-MR reportedly costs between $30,000-$40,000, although how much solutions submitted to the Army will cost is unknown – may reflect the increasing challenge of keeping up with the enemy when it comes to radio frequency jammers.

Mary-Lou Smulders, chief marketing officer at counter-drone defense company Dedrone, told me last year that combatants in Ukraine were outsmarting jammers by sending swarms of drones, each programmed to a different frequency.

“Anything that’s not in the band doesn’t get jammed, and they get through,” she said.

While sophisticated counter-drone weapons are very much still in demand, the Army’s interest in drone-ramming aircraft shows that kinetic effects remain a major part of the counter-drone equation.

Feature Image: A swarm of 40 drones operated by the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and the Threat Systems Management Office during a 2019 exercise. (U.S. Army Photo by Pv2 James Newsome)