L3Harris Announces New Variants of its VAMPIRE System

• L3Harris Technologies has expanded its VAMPIRE system, demonstrating the company’s ability to swiftly respond to the U.S. Department of War and allied partners’ urgent need to defeat small unmanned autonomous systems accurately and affordably. The expanded family of systems now includes specialized variants for land, maritime, air and electronic warfare operations.

VAMPIRE (which stands for Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment)  is a self-contained platform that delivers advanced reconnaissance and precision strike capabilities against drones and remotely piloted aircraft. The system has supported European combat operations since 2023.

“VAMPIRE users have successfully shot down hundreds of enemy drones,” said Jon Rambeau, President, Integrated Mission Systems, L3Harris. “Compared to traditional missile systems, VAMPIRE greatly reduces the cost per effect to defend against drone attacks.”

Building on the success of the baseline VAMPIRE system, L3Harris has incorporated additional sensor capabilities, precision weapons, electronic jammers and non-kinetic effects for use across several domains. The system uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to more swiftly detect, engage and defeat small and elusive unmanned threats.

VAMPIRE is one of several programs inside the company’s broader Counter-Unmanned Systems initiative. L3Harris has decades of expertise across the enterprise that will help continue to evolve the development of affordable and reliable solutions to combat the rapidly growing threat of unmanned systems across every domain.

The 14 Ukrainian VAMPIRE systems are mounted on Humvees, but the platform-agnostic nature of the system means it can be installed on most vehicles with a cargo bed.

In renderings that L3Harris has released showing the new VAMPIRE family, the systems are mounted on the M1301 Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV), but other vehicle options include the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), as used by the U.S. Marine Corps, and the U.S. Army’s Small Multipurpose Equipment Transport (SMET), an uncrewed ground vehicle. One of the ISV-mounted options is the VAMPIRE Stalker XR variant, with a launcher that carries 12 effectors, rather than the standard four, giving a significant increase in firepower.

Finally, as Black Wake, the system is mounted aboard an uncrewed surface vessel (USV, or ‘drone boat’). The drone boat in question is the Maritime Autonomy Surface Testbed (MAST) 13, a 41-foot high-speed vessel that uses L3Harris’ ASView proprietary autonomous control system. In this instance, the rocket launcher is mounted at the rear, with the telescopic mast for the sensor turret at the front, in a concept that is loosely reminiscent of rocket-armed USVs developed by Ukraine.

Compared to the baseline system, the new family also adds undisclosed new electro-optical/infrared sensor/laser designator capabilities from Wescam’s MX series, which can be elevated via the existing telescoping mast. The baseline version of the VAMPIRE, as provided to Ukraine, already uses a Wescam turret in the form of the MX-RSTA.

As well as rockets, the system can support electronic warfare and non-kinetic effectors, which provide an even cheaper way of destroying or disabling drones. At least one projected version of the system, VAMPIRE Killcode, does away with the kinetic effectors entirely and defeats drones using an electronic warfare system.

The armament for the baseline Vampire is the APKWS II, which takes an unguided 70mm rocket and turns it into a precision weapon via a laser seeker guidance section, a control unit that homes in on the spot generated by a laser designator, and a proximity fuze. They can be extremely accurate and cause minimal collateral damage. Each APKWS II round costs roughly between $20,000 and $30,000 all-included (rocket motor, warhead, and guidance kit).

Making the VAMPIRE system compatible with alternative precision weapons as kinetic effectors is also a very significant development, opening up the possibility of the end user integrating weapons already in their inventories. So far, L3Harris hasn’t said what other effectors have been integrated, with Tom Kirkland, vice president and general manager of the targeting and sensor systems sector at L3Harris, stating that “a majority of our customers, like the price-per-kill or price-per-effector of APKWS.”

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Overall, L3Harris says the new-look VAMPIRE family is optimized to target drones from Groups 1 to 3. The smallest of these weigh less than 20 pounds, fly below 1,200 feet, and operate at speeds of less than 100 knots. The higher tier, Group 3, consists of drones weighing less than 1,320 pounds that can fly at altitudes up to 18,000 feet and that have top speeds of 250 knots or less.

Sources: L3Harris; The War Zone; Naval News