U.S. Marines and soldiers from the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence at Ft. Rucker have successfully tested a new warhead designed to be delivered by an unmanned aerial system.
The live-fire demonstration of the Bunker Rupture and Kinetic Explosive Round, called BRAKER, which took place at a Redstone Arsenal in Alabama on March 26, comes only weeks after the initial design and rapid prototyping of the system.
The BRAKER project, led by a team from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Armaments Center and Project Manager Close Combat Systems — a project office under the U.S. Army Capability Program Executive Ammunition and Energetics — aimed to create a lightweight, powerful and lethal warhead that could be deployed from a small, agile drone.
“Our Picatinny team went from concept to live-fire in two weeks,” said Col. Vincent Morris, Project Manager Close Combat Systems in a statement. “BRAKER proves our ability to rapidly develop and safely deliver devastating effects from small unmanned aircraft systems. We are now creating the architecture with Picatinny Common Lethality Integration Kit and the small universal payload interface for industry to scale this critical warfighter advantage."
The Picatinny CLIK is a safe method for integrating lethal payloads with UAS platforms, designed and developed by DEVCOM Armaments Center engineers.
The rapid development-to-testing timeline of BRAKER was made possible by the Army's emphasis on additive manufacturing.
Beginning in early March, Armaments Center engineers began design, explosive pressing, housing manufacture and integration of the warhead to be used on a low-cost and expendable one-way attack drone. Shortly thereafter, transfer and compatibility tests were conducted at Picatinny and approximately a dozen warheads were assembled, with one being tested on a makeshift bunker on one of the installation’s test ranges.
After proving worthiness and validating effectiveness, the prototype warheads departed Picatinny for Redstone where a live demonstration was conducted for U.S. Army leadership.
