Auriga Space, a defense startup company, successfully conducted the first in-field test of its electromagnetic containerized counter-drone defense system, called Hermes.
The system, which can be powered using either a diesel generator or solar panels, is outfitted into a 10-foot shipping container. They put a Hermes system on the back of a flatbed truck and drove it from Orange County, California, to the Mojave Desert for the test.
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“The test met expectations,” Winnie Lai, Auriga founder and CEO, told the Washington Examiner. “We did a number of supersonic launches. They were all repeatable. We also tested different shaped projectiles because that’s some of the beauty of our system is that we can actually accommodate different types of projectiles and also different types of effectors. So as the threat evolves, we’re able to counter that effectively.”
Transporting it on the back of a truck and operating it in over 100 degrees also demonstrated its durability in transport and extreme climates.
Auriga fired the Hermes more than a dozen times at supersonic speeds above Mach 1, targeting a watermelon, glass panes, a flying but stationary drone, and more.
The key distinction between the Hermes and other air defense systems is that the Hermes does not need a rocket motor to propel the interceptor. There is an increased demand for propellant-based weaponry, and the Pentagon is trying to expand the solid rocket motor industrial base to undo “a bottleneck in SRM production,” Undersecretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael Duffey said in December when the department announced two earlier investments totaling more than $32 million to two companies to expand munitions manufacturing.
The Hermes provides an alternative strategy with its electrically powered launch capabilities.
“We can actually eliminate the use of solid rocket motors and use a fully reusable electrically-powered launcher to deliver the effectors,” Lai said. “So in a traditional missile, you have one solid rocket motor for a single effector. In our case, you can use one Hermes launcher to deliver thousands of effectors. So it’s game-changing in the sense that, ‘Hey, we’re not having to mass manufacture these like large missiles, but rather we’re only manufacturing these tiny little projectiles.'”
The projectiles the Hermes fires do not need the motors, and as a result, are much smaller than traditional missiles, making them easier to store and transport. The system can only launch one interceptor at a time, but it can fire rapidly and reload without human involvement.
It’s currently designed to hit incoming projectiles within a few kilometers, though they intend to keep expanding its range.
Auriga also has plans to try and use the electromagnetic propulsion for larger interceptors to take down bigger incoming threats.
“We’re starting off with counter-drone capability, but over time, we are scaling the energy so that we can take down larger-size threats and also farther away,” Lai said.
The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with Auriga to develop electromagnetic-powered interceptors, the company announced in July.
The Pentagon is looking to find several different types of kinetic and non-kinetic counter-drone systems that are both cheap and scalable. They want a layered defense that gives defenders optionality in the event of an incoming attack, and nonkinetic options are important due to the nature of America’s congested airspace. The goal is for the drones to be cheap and expendable to produce hundreds of thousands of them.
The department has several different initiatives, including the Drone Dominance competition, designed to allow nontraditional and smaller defense companies the opportunity to win contracts. These efforts also include, but are not limited to, providing financial investments for scaling and more.
U.S. troops in the Middle East have faced Iranian drone attacks during the war. One drone got through U.S. air defenses during the opening hours of the war, killing six service members in Kuwait. Three U.S. service members were killed in January 2024 in Jordan in an Iranian-aligned Iraqi militia drone attack as well.
