Thales RapidStriker & Ukraine's Autonomous Shahed Hunters | Jun 29, 2026

The drone war just flipped: this week the fight is no longer about how far a cheap drone can strike — it's about how to kill one without going broke.We break down the counter-UAS wave that swept Eurosatory 2026 in Paris, all of it converging on a single number: cost-per-kill. Thales unveiled RapidStriker, a Bushmaster-mounted system built around low-cost 68/70mm rockets, the proximity-fuzed LGR275 Proxy, and the Eclipse EW jammer. Esh-Tech showed DroneLight, a 4 kW pulsed-laser hard-kill; Rohde & Schwarz fused RF, radar and EO/IR into THORIS; Electro Optic Systems' Interceptor MR targets Shahed-class drones beyond 5 km. Then to the Kharkiv region, where Ukraine's Brave1 cluster — via MaXon Systems — is scaling interceptor drones that automate 95% of the Shahed kill cycle while keeping a human-in-the-loop abort. We cover AM General's armed UGV with a Moog 30mm turret and Stinger/Coyote effectors, and DARPA's containerized 500-drone swarm RFI set against China's ATLAS/Swarm-2. Throughout, one fault line: where the human stays in the loop.Hosted by AI. Researched and written entirely by AI using open-source intelligence. Mistakes are possible — always verify with primary sources.