Coyote

The U.S. Army’s primary expendable kinetic counter-drone interceptor — jet-turbine powered, paired with KuRFS radar, and now deploying aboard Navy destroyers.

Overview

The Raytheon Coyote is an expendable, tube-launched interceptor purpose-built to destroy Group I and II unmanned aircraft systems at ranges of 10–15 km. It forms the kinetic layer of the Low, Slow, Small-Unmanned Aircraft Integrated Defeat System (LIDS), fusing a Ku-band radar, the Forward Area Air Defense Command and Control (FAAD C2) network, and a two- or four-round launcher into a mobile or palletized air-defense point. The interceptor itself is a rocket-boosted, turbine-sustained airframe with an RF seeker and a compact fragmentation warhead, optimizing a cost-exchange ratio that the Army sought after watching cheap Shahed-class drones overwhelm legacy SAMs. The Coyote has been the Army’s go-to counter-drone weapon in CENTCOM since 2019 and has now migrated to the U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, while Qatar and the UAE have ordered the system.

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