Rafael and SpearUAV put a hard-kill drone interceptor on the vehicle itself

The Iron Dome maker is pushing aerial interception down to the individual vehicle, aimed at the fiber-optic FPV drones that shrug off jammers on the front.

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and the Israeli startup SpearUAV will co-develop Iron Wasp, a vehicle-mounted drone interceptor unveiled at Eurosatory in Paris, Calcalist reported. It fires a small interceptor from a canister launcher bolted to a combat vehicle's roof, then runs the engagement on its own.

The interceptor is built on SpearUAV's Viper I. A radar cues the launch toward an incoming drone; in the terminal phase the round flies itself, using an electro-optical seeker and machine vision to close on the target, per Interesting Engineering. Its launcher is low size, weight and power, so it bolts onto armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, main battle tanks, armored cars and unmanned ground vehicles with little modification.

What sets it apart is the kill mechanism. Iron Wasp destroys the drone physically, and that matters against fiber-optic FPVs immune to radio jamming. Roughly 80 percent of some hostile drones in recent fighting fly on fiber-optic guidance, according to The Defense News, a threat electronic warfare cannot touch. A Rafael promotional video shows FPV drones diving on an armored column as interceptors launch from a roof canister and the vehicles keep rolling.

Then there is the pairing. Rafael builds the Trophy active protection system, the Drone Dome counter-drone suite and the Iron Beam laser; SpearUAV brings the encapsulated drone. Iron Wasp slots a platform-level layer beneath those higher-echelon systems, handing each vehicle its own interceptor rather than leaning on area air defense. Neither company has set a production timeline.

Demand is tracking the threat. Rafael booked NIS 8.2 billion in new orders last quarter against a record NIS 76.4 billion backlog, the same Calcalist report noted, as Israel weighs a partial privatization that could value the firm near NIS 70 billion. The drone-versus-armor problem Iron Wasp answers is the one the war in Ukraine has spent two years writing down. Whether a canister of interceptors on every vehicle is the affordable answer is the bet those order books are now making.