Aevex Aerospace has finally unveiled its secretive Phoenix Ghost kamikaze drones at the Association of the US Army’s (AUSA) main annual symposium in Washington, DC. The company confirmed that Phoenix Ghost is not a single design but a family of increasingly larger and longer-ranged one-way attack munitions, The Warzone (TWZ) reports.
The Pentagon first announced the transfer of Phonex Ghost drones to Ukraine back in April 2022. To date, the US military has pledged at least 1,800 Phoenix Ghosts to Ukraine, with approximately $576 million obligated for their purchase as of August. AEVEX was shipping around 230 loitering munitions each month at the height of its deliveries and is still delivering fresh weapons every two weeks, according to the company.
Elizabeth Trammell, senior director of business development at AEVEX, told TWZ,
“It’s been a long time coming. This has been around for a while … We’ve been able to receive specific permission to talk about it.”
The Phoenix Ghost family includes drones with distinctly different forms and performance capabilities. Some designs were derived from aerial targets originally developed for testing counter-drone systems. The development of these drones predates Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with AEVEX being ahead in the US in working on one-way-attack drones.
According to AEVEX’s website, their loitering munitions use visual-based navigation to autonomously identify and follow landmarks or features, enabling precise positioning and pathfinding without reliance on GPS. The systems can also be fitted with line-of-sight links and mesh networked radios, as well as electro-optical and infrared sensors, to provide some degree of direct control.
Among the specific kamikaze drones disclosed as part of the Phoenix Ghost family are Dominator and Disruptor, both in the Group 3 category.
According to TWZ, the US military classifies Group 3 drones as weighing between 55 and 1,320 pounds (25-599 kg), capable of flying at altitudes between 3,500 and 18,000 feet (1,067-5,486 meters), and reaching speeds of 100 to 250 knots (185-463 km/h).
Disruptor and Dominator
The Dominator drone, dimensionally identical to Disruptor by weight and wingspan, features a different twin-boom configuration with an inverted v-shaped tailplane. It has similar endurance and range capabilities to Disruptor.
Atlas and Dagger
A smaller Group 2 drone, the Atlas, is part of the Phoenix Ghost family, featuring a maximum takeoff weight of 20.9 pounds (9.5 kg, including a 3.6 kg payload) and an endurance of one to two hours.
Additionally, AEVEX has introduced a new drone called the Dagger, which appears to be a Group 2 analog to the larger Disruptor, likely designed to offer similar capabilities on a smaller scale. Dagger has a maximum takeoff weight of 35 pounds (15.88 kg, including an 3.63 kg warhead).
Trammell indicated that the Phoenix Ghost family includes multiple other assets that the company is keeping under wraps for now. AEVEX is continuing to evolve its product line, in part based on experiences from the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war.
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- Forbes: High-stakes tech race unfolds in Ukraine’s drone-dominated skies
- Ukraine tests advanced auto-targeting system for FPV drones
