Somewhere in northern Germany on March 30, a small drone the size of a dinner table locked onto a kamikaze UAV streaking toward its target. Without any human input, it classified the threat, selected a weapon, and fired. The missile — weighing less than two kilograms and measuring just 65 centimeters long — found its mark. The kamikaze drone ceased to exist. Welcome to the future of air defense, where drones hunt drones and the missiles are lighter than a bag of groceries. The hunter is called the Bird of Prey. Built by Airbus Defence and Space, it is an uncrewed interceptor designed for one purpose: killing the cheap, expendable attack drones that have reshaped modern warfare from Ukraine to the Middle East. Its first demonstration flight, completed just nine months after the project began, worked flawlessly.

The Economics of Drone Defense

The drone problem has a math problem at its core. A Shahed-type kamikaze drone costs a few thousand dollars. The missiles traditionally used to shoot them down — Patriot interceptors, IRIS-T rounds, even NASAMS munitions — cost anywhere from $250,000 to over $3 million each. Fire enough of them, and the defender goes bankrupt before the attacker runs out of drones. Airbus and its partner Frankenburg Technologies are attacking that cost equation head-on. The Bird of Prey prototype has a 2.5-meter wingspan, weighs 160 kilograms at takeoff, and carries four Frankenburg Mark I missiles — with the operational version designed to carry eight. That means a single reusable interceptor can fly multiple sorties and kill multiple drones per mission. Mike Schoellhorn, CEO of Airbus Defence and Space, put it bluntly at the announcement: defending against kamikaze drones is “a tactical priority that urgently needs to be tackled.” The Bird of Prey, he said, offers a cost-efficient answer that can scale.

Airbus Defence tweet

View tweet

The World’s Lightest Guided Interceptor

The real star of the show is the Frankenburg Mark I missile. At less than two kilograms and 65 centimeters long, it is the lightest guided air-to-air interceptor ever built. It flies at high subsonic speed, uses fire-and-forget guidance, and carries a fragmentation warhead designed to shred a drone at close range — up to 1.5 kilometers from launch. Kusti Salm, CEO of Frankenburg Technologies, called the demonstration “a defining step for modern air defence” that creates “a new cost curve.” He is not exaggerating. When your interceptor is reusable and your missiles weigh less than a water bottle, the economics flip entirely. Suddenly the defender has the cost advantage. The system is also designed to plug directly into NATO’s Integrated Battle Management System, meaning it can operate alongside existing air defense networks like PATRIOT, IRIS-T, and Gepard without requiring new command infrastructure. That interoperability is what turns a clever prototype into a deployable weapon system.

From Prototype to Battlefield

Airbus and Frankenburg plan more test flights throughout 2026, this time with live warheads, to push the system closer to operational readiness. The market for a weapon like this is enormous. Every NATO country with a drone threat — which is every NATO country — needs a cost-effective answer to the one-way attack drone problem. Ukraine has been begging for exactly this kind of capability for years. The Middle East conflict has reinforced the lesson. And the Bird of Prey, born from concept to flying killer in just nine months, shows that when the urgency is real, European defense can move fast. The age of drones hunting drones has officially begun. Sources: Airbus, Defense News, AeroTime