L3Harris wants to apply VAMPIRE anti-drone system to the maritime environment

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Military contractor L3Harris is modifying one of its ground-based drone defense platforms for the maritime domain in an effort to thwart low-cost systems with other low-cost systems.

The company has sought to outfit its Vehicle Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE) to small unmanned surface vessels, Jon Rambeau, who leads the Integrated Mission Systems business at L3Harris, said in an interview at the annual WEST conference in San Diego.

VAMPIRE has already been deployed to Ukraine to help counter Russian drone attacks, and officials from the vendor view it as a potentially key system in thwarting other unmanned threats, such as those from the Houthis, a group backed by Iran that has controlled portions of Yemen — including the capital — since 2014. That group has been firing missiles and drones at Navy and commercial ships in the Red Sea in response to U.S. support for Israel’s war against Hamas.

“In the Red Sea to take out these very low cost, attritable threats, this is an alternative that has an interceptor that is between $20,000 and $30,000 a shot, so just vastly more affordable. These could be set up as a picket line as a standoff to either commercial ships or military vessels,” Rambeau said.  

The Navy has expended multimillion-dollar missiles to shoot down enemy drones in the Red Sea, resulting in an expensive cost-per-kill ratio. Service officials have noted this isn’t sustainable, and they’ve called for the development of better, more cost-effective countermeasures against them, such as non-kinetic methods.

The adaptation of VAMPIRE to the maritime domain is part of L3Harris’ strategy to get systems to the battlefield faster. Rambeau noted that the expectation with the new administration is there won’t be a lot of patience for lengthy and expensive developmental efforts.

In his first message to the force, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he wants to rapidly field emerging technologies.

Utilizing systems that have been proven in one domain, such as VAMPIRE, and making slight modifications to bring them to another, is a prime example of using what’s already out there to speed delivery, Rambeau said.

“I think L3Harris has a lot of very affordable, relevant, mature capability on the shelf that’s right here now … Single-digit millions off the shelf ready to go,” Rambeau said, regarding VAMPIRE as well as other offerings the company is looking to modify. “I’ve said this very directly to a number of our stakeholders in government, there are relevant, operationally proven, mature capabilities available off the shelf today for what’s [a] rounding error on cost of a ship or a satellite or a couple of radar arrays or fill in the blank. Very, very, very affordable and can be delivered in time to be relevant in 2027. We’re anxious to provide as much of that capability as possible.”

Rambeau said they’ve written algorithms to adjust for the maritime domain for VAMPIRE already, which is the challenging aspect of it. Now, they’re waiting for range time to test it, which should take place by the end of April.