Podcast: DSEI Dissected—Drones, Directed Energy And Defense Tech

The DSEI arms expo provided the backdrop for companies to unveil new weapons and for government buyers to drive home a sense of urgency to develop systems at pace. Aviation Week editors discuss what they observed and covered in their reporting. Aviation Week analyst Sonny Butterworth also joins to share his observations on the land domain.

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Robert Wall: Welcome to Check 6 from the DSEI defense expo in London where we dive into drones, directed energy and other defense tech. DSEI has a way of having its twists. And this year was really no different. The host UK government replaced its defense procurement minister on the eve of the show and the public transport strike made it a bit of a logistic nightmare to get here. That said, there is plenty to talk about and not just all things drones and counter-drones, but there was an abundance of that too. Here to talk you through what we found particularly interesting at DSEI this year are Tony Osborne, Aviation Week's European defense editor, and making his Check 6 debut, Sonny Butterworth, an Aviation Week analyst for our Defense Market Analyzer product. DMA is multi-domain covering land, sea, air and space with its market profiles, contract and budget data. So he brings particular expertise for DSEI. I'm your host and Aviation Week's executive editor for Defense and Space, Robert Wall. Sonny, you keep an eye on those things that Tony and I tend to charitably think of as launch platforms and perhaps somewhat less charitably as targets. Welcome to your Check 6 baptism of fire. Why don't you kick us off and tell us what you thought was particularly interesting in the domains you keep an eye on that Tony and I deal with a bit less here at DSEI.

Sonny Butterworth: Well, thanks Robert. One of the targets I found most interesting was looking at the GD stand, General Dynamics. Now most of us land people really anticipated that they would have something big to show at the show, but still seeing it in person makes all the difference, right? So at the show they were showing a technology demonstrator for the Ajax showing where the future of the platform might lie. So the Ajax is the tracked vehicle the British Army is procuring. Now most people have probably heard of it in terms of a procurement disaster because it was in the news quite a lot for not very good reasons. But just recently they started to turn the program around, they're now delivering vehicles to the British Army. I think they've delivered about 140 so far. And so this was a way to show perhaps if it remains in service for many more decades to come where they could perhaps take it to make it more appealing to the British Army in the future and perhaps export customers as well.

So it had some quite interesting features like the UK-developed modular integrated protection system or MIPS. And so that kind of integrates lots of different sensors like laser warning receivers, active protection system from Israel as well. On there they had composite rubber tracks, which are very good. They reduce noise vibration, improve fuel consumption, so all positive things to have on there and lots of C4I-related things as well to do with the architecture. So that was really interesting to see. And then similarly, they also showed alongside it an IFV variant of the Ajax. So infantry fighting vehicle. So again, one of the problems with the program at the moment is it was made for a reconnaissance vehicle requirement, which means that in the back and because of the big turret, it doesn't really have any space to accommodate any personnel.

So the British Army needs capability like that because it's going to retire its Warrior armored fighting vehicles soon, it needs to have people in the back and be able to take them onto the battlefield. So this was GD showing that in the future we could perhaps make the Ajax fill this need. Now shouldn't get too excited of course, because it's not the same as there being a firm contract or firm interest. It's really the British Army probably has some kind of desire for this type of vehicle and GD has shown what it potentially could do. So I don't want to get too excited about it, but it was nice to have some optimistic news to see from GD. Another I think armored vehicle highlight that I was perhaps not expecting so much was the UK confirmed that it's going to join a program called CAV.

So a Common Armored Vehicle system. This is a multinational program to procure a vehicle from Patria, a 6x6 vehicle that can be again, used to carry people around or other kind of various tasks like ambulance, mortar carrier, that sort of thing. So the UK and Norway were confirmed to be joining the technical arrangement of the program, bringing it up to seven members so far. And unusually for an armored vehicle program that's able to deliver vehicles sometimes within a year of a contract being signed. Quite a very low price point as well, reportedly. So the thing we will need around Ukraine and the British Army has a lot of vehicles to replace. So that does seem, again to be some quite positive news on the armored vehicle front, although I would caution that again, it's not the same as a full contract being signed, it's really a statement of intent as to where they might go rather than this is definitely going to happen. But yeah, either way I think good to have some positives.

Robert Wall: Yeah, no, it's interesting. I think you kind of touched on two themes that we've kind of seen throughout DSEI, which is basically people talking about a lot about pace and doing things quickly and then somewhat unfortunately, certainly with the home country, no money to actually do anything. Yeah, exactly. I mean that seems to be the theme throughout the speeches we got from the senior ranks, ministers, whatnot. We need to do things quickly, we need to do things quickly, we need to move at greater pace, but we need to wait until we can actually award any contracts.

Sonny Butterworth: Exactly. And yeah, I think it'll be interesting to see if this does progress this way or whether we run into financial barriers a bit later on and we'll have to wait and see what happens.

Robert Wall: Yeah, for sure was really not much different in the domain that Tony and I really spend most of our time. Tony, kind of take your equivalent on Sonny's overview please.

Tony Osborne: Sure. I mean, fair to say, this isn't an air show. I mean aviation is sort of tagged onto the side. I mean previously it was a hotbed for helicopters and drones, but this year we saw some sort of moves around the Global Combat Air Program that is the tri-national project to produce a sixth-generation fighter in which the UK, Japan, and Italy are involved. So this year we saw some moves around the subsystems area around engines as they gear up to support the newly established joint venture of BAE Systems, Leonardo and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries who are going to be the lead players in developing that aircraft. So we saw Leonardo UK, Leonardo Italy, ELT Group of Italy and Mitsubishi Electrical, a company called MELCO. Essentially they're joining forces to start working on the sensors and communication suite for the aircraft and they've created a consortium called G2E.

And so that will then bid in to do the work on those elements of the aircraft into Edge Wing. So we're going to see a British-Japanese radar system in there. The Italians will work on the infrared search and track and the Japanese will also work on the communication suite, particularly around satcoms. And of course there'll be lots of other things and they'll of course be tested on a trio of aircraft including the 757, which we've discussed on here before. That's based in the UK. And then of course we saw Rolls-Royce, IHI and Avio also sort of setting up their own consortium but without a name so that they can then deliver the engine that's being prepared for the aircraft. Currently that's in the demonstrator phase. Metal is now being cut for that demonstrator engine. So that was sort of the big step in terms of GCAP. We're also seeing a lot of activities around drones, around missiles in particular weaponry for F-35 for the UK, given the delays in that program about getting weapons like MBDA Spear 3 and MBDA Meteor beyond visual range air-to-air missile onto the aircraft.

Robert Wall: Yeah, I mean maybe go briefly back to GCAP and the demonstrator aircraft. We did have a bit of the news there in a sense that we kind of knew the Japanese were also looking at having a flying demonstrator for the technology, but the Italian thing was a bit new that they're looking at that too. Maybe just expand on that a bit, Tony.

Tony Osborne: Sure thing. So it seems that obviously we have this Boeing 757 in the UK called the flight test aircraft, and that's going to basically bring together the entire, what they call the ISANKE suite of systems. Again, that's the radar, that's the communication systems and other sensors that will be distributed around the fighter aircraft. And they'll be tested on this 757, but it's now emerged that subsystems of that wider suite will be tested on test aircraft in Japan and Italy. So Japanese officials have told us that that will probably be the Kawasaki C-2 platform, which we know has been used as a test bed for other systems in the past. But the Italian one was particularly interesting, which will be a Gulfstream G550. We're not sure if that aircraft currently exists, if it's one that they're buying in. They were quite vague on that, but it certainly means that you're going to have three test aircraft now involved in this massive effort to develop this sixth-generation fighter. Plus we also know that other aircraft have also been involved in the UK around that with the Royal Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office using a small aircraft to go and test certain aspects of the technologies that will go into the GCAP. So yeah, it's a sizable effort going into this.

Robert Wall: Yeah, for sure. And for online I am making fun of drones and counter-drones. I do think we should take a few seconds to talk about that because it really was such a dominant theme here. So maybe what struck me is actually I was going by one of the UGVs, the company, Estonian company that Edge bought and they have installed on it a counter-drone interceptor launch system and it just seemed like everywhere we saw

Tony Osborne: One of the companies I saw today is a company called Nordic Air Defense. I wrote the story on these guys, I think back in sort of April, May. And these guys are preparing basically a very small size, 50-centimeter-long electrically powered missile that will go off and defend everything from vehicles to other perhaps air defense sites. And it's an intriguing situation. The thing is designed to go after small quadcopters with a weapon on it, FPV drones, but it's able to use an electric motor propeller, but that's canted and it gives it a level of thrust vectoring so that every time if it needs to vector its thrust, it spins in a certain way and then propels itself in that direction and has low-cost seekers, it's laser guided. So you're sort of eliminating some of those really costly elements associated with expensive missiles produced by some of the big makers.

And they're also now looking at other ways of doing beyond visual range engagements using imaging seeker that has to define the difference between a drone and a bird. So it's using thermal imaging. So presumably a bird will show up hot and the drone will just show up hot in certain corners of it where the motors are. And there's all sorts of little projects like this now emerging that need for serious low cost to deal with swarms is really quite impressive and some companies are really going at it on a very small scale, but really thinking big.

Robert Wall: Sonny, maybe you can talk a bit more about what you observed on the land vehicle side in relation to this, because obviously in Ukraine we've seen these caged vehicles operating to try to deal with this threat. It seems like it's gone beyond putting cages around them, but just trying to be far more aggressive in trying to defeat these loitering munitions or FPV drones that might be going after these vehicles.

Sonny Butterworth: Yeah, I think cages don't look too good on the exhibition floor. So they were proposing some more technical solutions, let's say, but we definitely saw this on the armored vehicle side as well. So a couple stand out, I mentioned actually the Ajax earlier. So the gun system on that was modified to have a higher elevation and they can fit it with airburst ammunition. So again, that's a way to add some kind of dual-purpose capability to the Ajax to allow it to engage some of those targets if they get through. We also saw a collaboration between GD and Moog with the Foxhound Mark Two, which is the lighter vehicle from the UK users, and they put their, what's called the RIwP, it's an integrated weapons platform is basically what it is. So you can switch out, depending on the mission, put various pods on it.

So you could have Brimstone missiles if you want to use it in the armor role, you could put HVM or LMM on it for anti-aircraft. And also you got a 30-millimeter cannon and coaxial machine gun as well. So there was lots of focus on that kind of close-in defense against mini drones that might get through. I think perhaps the bigger question though will be do you go for this on the vehicles themselves or do you produce dedicated platforms and try to really do it that way or is it kind of a mixture of both? And I think everyone's still trying to figure out exactly the right way to do this. So industry is trying a few different things.

Robert Wall: And I said in the opening comments, DSEI is a way to have certain twists to it. And of course while we were here we had the Russian drone that strayed into or flew into — well, it definitely flew into Polish airspace whether deliberately or not, we can't tell. And then the Dutch were there, F-35s shooting at least some of them down with an air-to-air missile. So again, a pretty pricey way to shoot down a drone, which I think sparked some questions here. Again, what are lower cost ways to do it? And obviously the U.S. has started using APKWS also off its Apaches to find a lower cost interceptor and we've kind of got some noise here as well that maybe there's some things in UK bubbling up on that front, right?

Tony Osborne: Yeah, APKWS and Typhoon, I mean I believe the RAF has sort of previously said that it wasn't particularly interested in this capability, but BAE Systems has revealed that there is some sort of studies going into not just APKWS, but actually probably several different types of laser-guided rockets to try and deal with that. Just as we've seen with the U.S. Air Force working on the F-15, there's been some pretty cool pictures of F-15Es loosing off APKWS just to give them a low-cost ability to go and hunt this stuff down. And the French were also doing the same at the Paris Air Show with a rocket system. That does seem to be the emerging choice of some of the air forces to go and look at cheaper ways to down this stuff. I mean, I think when the RAF assisted in the shooting down of drones, which were attacking Israel last April, I think we shot down several drones using AMRAAM missiles, but I think it was only three Shaheds that were downed compared to the colossal numbers that were engaged by the strike aircraft out of Akrotiri and other bases.

Robert Wall: We also heard for the first time from the new Air Force chief of staff and first he was very scripted and he wouldn't take questions, but any takeaways?

Tony Osborne: It's very cool actually to have Hal Smyth as the chief of the air staff. He knows Aviation Week. We've done lots of stories with him in the past and he makes no secret of his Harrier background as all Harrier pilots will always tell you that they are a Harrier pilot and he even puts up a PowerPoint presentation image of one of his 4 Squadron Harriers at low level through Wales and clearly making the point of this very proud Harrier background. And he's a strong choice as chief, I think he's been very keen to try and get the RAF back into initiatives such as ACE, that's the ability to go and operate from other airfields distributing operations and so on. And he's been a very vocal advocate of some of those efforts. What was really interesting I thought was he spoke very eloquently about bringing back the RAF's nuclear role with the plan to buy 12 F-35As and how several nations that were already involved with F-35 dual-capable aircraft mission had already started talking to the RAF about how to get involved in this. The RAF is I think the first air force in probably a good 30 or 40 years to actually come into DCA. There's never been really any new entrants into that mission. I think Poland's expressed a wish to go into it, but UK will be the first new entrant into DCA for many, many years.

Robert Wall: Yeah, of course he has some background with military space. And I thought also interesting that he is very clear. He thinks counter-space is something that the UK needs to take seriously, but more counter-space in a moment. But anyway, yeah, I thought it was very interesting and hopefully he'll be taking questions once he is a bit longer in the job. I think it's been a week right now, so we'll give him a pass this once. Before we go, let's maybe do a quick round of, besides what we talked about, what did you see that you thought was curious, interesting, bizarre, or just noteworthy? Sonny, why don't we start with you.

Sonny Butterworth: Okay, well, one thing that I thought was I wasn't expecting to see was the FJ vertical launch system. So this was unveiling from IAI. They had a 6x6 armored vehicle again with a 24-cell VLS in the back. You could use this for basically mass semi-autonomous missions. You could fire the missiles in salvos if you detected an enemy tank formation or something like that in the vicinity. So that was very interesting. I mean it does build on earlier concept work we've seen from Lockheed Martin in the past, but still something I wasn't expecting to see at this DSEI must say. And just another quick one, I guess the elephant in the room that we didn't see perhaps was any kind of indication on what the British Army's Artillery Replacement Program is, how it's progressing really, because we know that Boxer RCH 155 has been selected for that, that was last year. But again, we've not had any word of a contract and KNDS wasn't shown on their stand. In fact, there weren't as many Boxers to be seen. I mean it is a big vehicle to get in, but still it didn't seem to be as big as it has been in previous shows at DSEI. So I'll keep my eye on that one and see if we get any more developments on that soon. Perhaps with the defense investment plan we will hear more about what's going on. That's quite critical.

Tony Osborne: I thought, I mean, tank destroyers are back, right? I mean it was so cool to see a land-based vertical launch system normally associated with warships, but yeah, I thought that was one of the coolest things I've seen. But I think, I mean Poland's played around with that sort of capability as well with Brimstone, they've been talking about something very similar for a long time, but yeah, I thought that was pretty cool as well.

Robert Wall: Yeah, I think probably all of us did. And on a more mundane side, obviously that also underscores the relationship, how tight the relationship is growing between IAI and Lockheed Martin on missiles where they're looking to partner on production. But yeah, I think we all thought that was pretty cool. And as I said, we do care about these things with tracks and wheels when they do something cool like fire missiles. Alright, Tony,

Tony Osborne: I think the coolest thing I've seen was from my neck of the woods. So I'm not originally from London. I'm from sort of further west along the M4 corridor, place called Swindon and nearby is a town called Witney, which is basically home or very nearby. It's basically home to nearly all the big Formula One teams in the UK. And there's a company here at the show called MGI who basically they've earned their crust working with Formula One, but clearly somehow got bored of it. So they started developing cruise missiles, low-cost ones, and they actually had one of these missiles on display and I presume it's going to be one of those proposals going in for the UK's need to find, basically they're trying to build their stockpiles up to 7,000 long-range missiles and this could be one of those options. And they have a couple there that are sort of turbojet powered and they're working on those. But what they've been doing is test flying them. So they've put wheels on them and apparently they fly like remote-controlled starfighters, really extraordinary sites where they've been flying them. But yeah, really interesting to see that you've got a small new emerging complex missile weapons business emerging away from the likes of MBDA.

Robert Wall: Pirelli tires.

Tony Osborne: They didn't mention the Pirelli tires, but yeah. Yeah, probably maybe on the wheeled landing gear. Yeah,

Robert Wall: Very good. Okay, well from my side, I told you I would get back to counter-space. I was talking to DroneOS, the Australian company that does counter-drone systems and has been now recently announced that they have a first contract from a European country for their laser-based counter-drone system and are looking to put that into production. While talking to the CEO here, they're also working on, they've already been using lasers for space situational awareness, but they're now looking to use their high-energy laser with a slightly different beam director to basically put a functional kill into a satellite, so burn a hole into the satellite and make it inoperative. And then on top of that, they could be able to use the same laser to eventually deorbit the satellite. So they would basically fire the laser perpendicular at the spacecraft to burn the hole in it. And then as it remains on its orbit and comes around, they can fire the laser as it arcs over the horizon and induce drag and slowly cause the satellite to come down and eventually then obviously burn up in the atmosphere. And they're hoping to demonstrate that I think in the next 18 months, he said. So anyway, I thought that was a pretty cool system to hear about and frankly, I'm really wondering how that demo will go.

Tony Osborne: Hopefully it doesn't induce Kessler syndrome someplace.

Robert Wall: Yes, I mean he was pretty clear that they are not looking to blow up the satellite, but we will see, I guess. So they apparently have a test satellite up there that has allowed them to do some measurements and ensure that they can actually get sufficient energy precisely enough on target. Anyway, we'll wrap it there since we're about to get kicked out of the ExCeL center, which is wrapping up here for us on day three of DSEI. Thanks Sonny and Tony for all your work and your insights here at the podcast. Thanks to our podcast producer for putting this together and hopefully minimizing the background noise we had so it's a better experience for you all. And thanks to you, our audience for taking the time to check in with us. And as always, please check back soon for another episode of Check 6.