MBDA offers cheap drone swarm as door opener for its pricey missiles

PARIS — MBDA, Europe’s largest missile maker, unveiled a cheap one-way drone at the Paris Air Show designed to saturate enemy air defenses en masse and clear the way for what the company calls high-value effectors such as cruise missiles.

The drone, for now named simply One-Way Effector, will be mass-produced and cost a fraction of the price of a cruise missile, said Hugo Coqueret, business development manager battlefield at MBDA. The company is partnering with an undisclosed drone maker and a French automotive company to be able to ramp up production to 1,000 drones per month.

The new drone was inspired by the war in Ukraine, where Russian and Ukrainian forces have been using dozens of one-way drones in single attacks to attempt to overwhelm and exhaust defenses. A lesson from the high-intensity warfare in Ukraine is the need for mass, and the new munition is one of the answers offered by MBDA, Coqueret told Defense News in a briefing on Monday

“The mission is really one of saturation,” Coqueret said. “It has been designed to meet this need for the return of mass in the armed forces, to cause saturation of enemy forces.”

The drone presented here on Monday is a new type of product for the missile maker, whose top-end products can cost millions of euros. Coqueret described the effector as “saturation munition” that complements MBDA’s existing portfolio, which includes several cruise missiles including the Scalp and the Taurus.

The jet-engine powered drone will be able to deliver a 40-kg payload at a distance of 500 kilometers, traveling at a speed of 400 kilometers per hour. Design of the new drone started from scratch in December, with the first test flight planned for September or October and a first production batch in 2027.

“It’s relatively fast and carries a significant payload,” Coqueret said. “All of that means that the enemy’s ground-based air defense is forced to destroy it with high value-added systems. Everything is designed to generate saturation.”

The design brief was for a low-cost munition that can be produced in large quantities, and “everything was designed with this in mind, from the parts to be manufactured to the operational procedures for assembly and the supply chain,” Coqueret said. The drone isn’t designed to be stealthy and many components are off-the-shelf to keep cost down.

“Once again, this is a very simple munition, there is no dialogue between munitions, but as they are fired in salvos with a grouping capability, they will be able to form a pack, and it’s this pack that will move towards the target and thus generate this attrition effect,” Coqueret said. “You’re going to use it in the same way as artillery.”

Part of keeping costs low is the production partnership with a French automotive manufacturer, according to the MBDA executive. MBDA is not naming the industrial partner at this time, though Coqueret said it’s not Renault. The French automaker said earlier this month it was expanding into the business of making unmanned aerial vehicles.

The One-Way Effector has been designed to address a need expressed by the French armed forces, and MBDA expects to start consultations with France’s Directorate General for Armament about buying the weapon “soon,” Coqueret said.

Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.

巴黎——欧洲最大的导弹制造商MBDA在巴黎航展上推出了一款廉价的单程无人机，旨在大规模渗透敌方防空系统，为该公司所谓的高价值效应器（如巡航导弹）扫清道路。

MBDA公司战场业务发展经理雨果·科克雷特表示，这款暂名为“单向效应器”（One-Way Effector）的无人机将进行大规模生产，成本仅为巡航导弹的一小部分。该公司正与一家未公开名称的无人机制造商和一家法国汽车公司合作，以期将月产量提升至1000架。

这款新型无人机的灵感来源于乌克兰战争。在乌克兰战争中，俄罗斯和乌克兰军队曾多次使用数十架单向无人机进行单次攻击，试图突破并消耗对方的防御力量。MBDA公司首席执行官科克雷特周一在向《防务新闻》发表的简报会上表示，乌克兰高强度战争的经验表明，大规模作战至关重要，而这款新型无人机正是MBDA公司提供的解决方案之一。

科克雷特说：“这次任务的真正目的是饱和式部署。它的设计是为了满足军队恢复兵力规模的需求，使敌军陷入饱和状态。”

周一在此展示的无人机是这家导弹制造商的新型产品，其高端产品售价可达数百万欧元。科克雷特将这款无人机描述为“饱和弹药”，是对MBDA现有产品组合的补充，MBDA的产品组合包括“风暴阴影”（Scalp）和“金牛座”（Taurus）等多种巡航导弹。

这款喷气式发动机驱动的无人机能够以每小时400公里的速度，将40公斤的有效载荷运送到500公里外的目的地。这款新型无人机的设计工作于去年12月从零开始，计划于今年9月或10月进行首次试飞，首批产品将于2027年投产。

科克雷特说：“它的速度相对较快，而且载弹量很大。所有这些都意味着敌方的地面防空系统不得不使用高附加值的系统来摧毁它。一切都是为了形成饱和攻击。”

设计目标是制造一种低成本、可大规模生产的弹药，“从零部件的制造到组装操作流程和供应链，所有环节的设计都围绕着这个目标，”科克雷特说。这款无人机并非设计成隐身的，而且为了降低成本，很多部件都是现成的。

科克雷特说：“再次强调，这是一种非常简单的弹药，弹药之间没有协同作战能力，但由于它们可以齐射并进行编组，因此能够形成弹群，正是这个弹群会向目标移动，从而产生损耗效果。它的使用方法与火炮相同。”

据MBDA一位高管透露，降低成本的部分原因是与一家法国汽车制造商建立了生产合作伙伴关系。MBDA目前尚未透露这家工业合作伙伴的名称，但Coqueret表示并非雷诺。这家法国汽车制造商本月早些时候宣布，将业务拓展至无人机制造领域。

科克雷特表示，单向效应器是为满足法国武装部队的需求而设计的，MBDA公司预计“很快”将与法国军备总局就购买该武器展开磋商。

鲁迪·鲁伊滕贝格是《防务新闻》的欧洲记者。他的职业生涯始于彭博新闻社，拥有报道科技、大宗商品市场和政治方面的经验。