The Airbus "Bird of Prey" interceptor drone successfully completed its first demonstration flight at a military training area in northern Germany. In a realistic mission scenario, it autonomously searched, detected and classified a medium-sized one-way attack (kamikaze) drone. After successful identification, the Bird of Prey interceptor engaged the target with a Mark I air-to-air missile developed by defence tech start-up partner Frankenburg Technologies.

The demonstration flight took place just nine months after the project started. Based on a modified Airbus Do-DT25 drone, the Bird of Prey prototype used in the flight features a wingspan of 2.5 metres, a length of 3.1 metres, and a maximum take-off weight of 160 kg. While the prototype was equipped with four Mark I air-to-air missiles, the operational version will be able to carry up to eight of them. The high-subsonic, fire-and-forget missiles have an engagement range of up to 1.5 kilometres, measure 65 centimetres in length and weigh less than 2 kg each, making them the lightest guided interceptors developed to date. They are equipped with a fragmentation warhead designed to neutralise targets at short proximity. This will enable the reusable Bird of Prey to engage and neutralise multiple kamikaze drones per mission, at a comparably low-cost per kill.

Bird of Prey is designed to seamlessly operate within NATO's integrated air defence architecture via established command and control systems centred around Airbus’ Integrated Battle Management System (IBMS). Consequently, the counter UAS (Uncrewed Aerial System) solution Bird of Prey can be an essential, highly mobile and complementary building block of any integrated and layered air and missile defence solution.
 
Airbus and Frankenburg plan to conduct additional flights with a live warhead throughout 2026 to further operationalise the system and demonstrate its full capabilities to interested potential customers.