The brains behind the ever-popular Switchblade 600 loitering munition are back with some fancy new go-boom tech.
This morning, AV ($AVAV), the artist formerly known as AeroVironment, unveiled the Mayhem 10, an air, ground, or sea-launched autonomous Group 2 drone designed for ISR, electronic warfare, and (especially) precision-strike missions.
Go boom: AV’s Switchblade family of loitering munitions—standalone, one-way strike systems rather than networked “launched effects” like Mayhem 10—have been a hit with the US military. That’s especially true for the Army, which recently shelled out $186M for them.
The Mayhem 10 is “like a sister” to the Switchblade 400 loitering munition AV launched last fall, AV’s SVP of Loitering Munitions Brian Young told reporters this week. Conveniently, it also uses a lot of the same hardware.
“We’ve been doing loitering munitions at AV for the better part of 20 years, and that heritage and reliability that comes along with it is built into this system,” he said.
Causing mayhem: Let’s get into the nitty-gritty.
- The Mayhem 10 weighs about 29 pounds and has a 10-pound payload capacity. It’s designed to be modular and adaptable to ISR, comms, and EW systems, but it’s really built for precision strike.
- It can carry a number of warheads, including the Javelin Multi Purpose warhead to “definitely [make it] anti-armor” and “a tank killer,” Young said.
- It has a range of about 100km, a cruising speed of 80mph, and a “dash” speed of over 120mph.
- It’s built to be launched from air, ground, or sea-based platforms and is fully autonomous (they worked with autonomy hotshot Applied Intuition on autonomy and swarming testing).
- AV will kick off low-rate initial production (LRIP) this year, and “based on the backlog in demand, we’ll be ramping that pretty aggressively for both Mayhem 10 and the Switchblade 400.”
“We’ll be ready to push this into the domestic services, the Army and Marine Corps in particular, over the coming years. We’re really excited to introduce a brand new product line—the first time this business has done so since the beginnings of Switchblade,” Young said. “It’s all about tailoring the effect to the threat based on what we’re seeing on the battlefield currently and what we believe is going to happen in the future.”
They’re also exploring options to scale up size and payload capacity based on demand.
Hold your horses: But before we get ahead of ourselves—AV doesn’t have any orders on the books for Mayhem 10.
However, Young says, “that’s one nice thing about AV—we actually go out and buy material at risk in advance of orders.”
“We’ve done that for years and years, perhaps more than any other defense tech company, and that’s what we’ll be doing here,” he added. “I don’t have to have a firm order, [but] I’m confident in the product, and we’re going to go and build these.”