A British company has showcased a new home-grown deep-strike system designed to give the United Kingdom an affordable, sovereign alternative to the cruise missile, as part of a Ministry of Defence drive to field long-range autonomous weapons more quickly, the company has said.
MGI Engineering displayed its TigerShark system this week at an industry event marking progress on Project BRAKESTOP, the MoD initiative to accelerate the development of long-range autonomous strike systems through closer work with the defence industry, bringing together senior officials, industry representatives and programme stakeholders to review the first two phases of the work.
The Oxfordshire firm has been awarded a development contract by the MoD and has been advancing TigerShark as the platform to be adopted under the programme. The system is described as a high-speed, long-range autonomous one-way effector, developed and manufactured in the United Kingdom for deep-strike missions against high-value targets, and intended as an affordable and scalable alternative to traditional cruise missile capability.
According to the company, TigerShark can carry a payload of up to 300 kilograms at speeds of up to 750 kilometres per hour out to a range of 900km, and is built to operate in contested environments, using advanced navigation that allows it to function in conditions where satellite positioning signals are jammed or spoofed. Its modular payload bay and open architecture are designed to allow new payloads, software upgrades and future capabilities to be integrated rapidly.
The chief executive of MGI Engineering, Mike Gascoyne, said Project BRAKESTOP was “a positive example of how the MOD and industry can work together to accelerate development” and get the right capabilities into service quickly. TigerShark had been developed, he said, to give the United Kingdom and its allies “a sovereign, affordable and scalable deep-strike capability” well aligned with the demands of modern conflict.
Project BRAKESTOP is a Ministry of Defence initiative designed to speed up the development and fielding of long-range autonomous strike systems by bringing together government, industry and technology partners through a faster, more agile procurement process, seeking to mature sovereign UK capabilities that can deliver precision effects at range in contested environments while applying the lessons of recent conflicts such as the war in Ukraine.
MGI Engineering, founded by the former Formula One technical director Mike Gascoyne, said it aimed to scale up production of TigerShark in the final quarter of this year and into 2027, drawing on engineering and testing methods from the aerospace, motorsport and defence sectors to shorten development timelines, and would continue to support Project BRAKESTOP as it moved forward.
Is Tigershark really going to see the light of day .🤔
Yeah, supposedly is going to supply Ukraine as well as us. Makes sense, get a hot production line at scale with tight feedback loops – while not using any American components.
It’s hard to criticise this if some of these details are accurate
I still think it’s a bit on the pricey side. From what I’ve seen it’s £400,000 for each effector yet doesn’t have performance much better than a Shahed which costs $7000-50,000 depending on what variant.
What I am looking forward to however is Nightfall, a ballistic missile of Mach 4.5, 600km range 200-350kg warhead and just £800,000 for each effector. Now that will be brilliant.
I’ve gained $17,240 only within four weeks by comfortably working part-time from home. Immediately when I had lost my last business, I was very troubled and thankfully I’ve located this project now in this way I’m in a position to receive thousand USD directly from home. Each individual certainly can do this easy work & make more greenbacks online by visiting
following website—.,.,.,.,.—>>> JobatHome1.Com
Good to have at scale, but, as shown in Ukraine and Russia, shot down in vast numbers for the few that get through, and how capable is its 300kg against hardened or buried targets?
An alernate to, not replacement on the cheap for real cruise missiles. As long as HMG accept that.
Storm Shadow’s warhead is not hugely bigger at 450kg and this doubles the range at the same speed. Behind the drone stuff Tigershark, the most out of the three Brakestop contenders, is really just a cheaper cruise missile. It’s a pity the wings and fins are fixed because it would otherwise be a good way of cheaply filling VLS cells with a reasonably effective strike weapon.
The other contenders are MBDA’s Crossbow, which is a super bare bones 1950s looking missile with an external engine and straight wings, and Rotron’s Sky Lance, which is propeller powered but carries the same payload in the same footprint as the others to 1200km and with a smaller payload can go 2700km. If we want to distinguish between Brakestop and Stratus, Sky Lance is the one to go for.
Personally for VLS cells cheaper option I’d say Nightfall would be brilliant.
Mach 4.5, 600km range, 200-350kg payload (changes every source I see) all for just £800,000. Brake stop is slightly longer ranged but at its speed far easier to intercept and still £400,000.
No one is suggesting these are a replacement for more hi end weapons. That’s FC/ASW. But we need the options to deploy these types at scale.
Agreed.
But you know my scepticism of politicians jumping on something cheap to avoid the inconvenience of paying for proper defence.
Look at Pollard the other week with his “1000 ship navy” of autonomous Pacific 24s, other Kraken types, and the bigger USVs talked about.
HMG cannot it seems even find the money for a handful of additional ships in the 2030s like a batch 2 of T31! And he babbles on about a 1000 ship navy.
Hello?
I’m waiting for those to do the multitude of tasks a Frigate can do or one of these small quadcopters deploying 1,000 miles into the Atlantic to take down a sub.
Without enablers, they cannot yet do that. In fact, what is even confirmed that they can do? Apart from the UKR experience in a closed sea with suicide boats?
Hi M8 I’m not entirely sure we have really taken a step back and looked at the wider Macro implications of the longer range affordable effectors and daft as it sounds it may come down to a cost / effect analysis.
Yes there are a high volume shot down but the mass of the attack ensures some get through and do a lot of damage, which is their immediate objective.
But unless it’s just a low cost Kinetic weapon (an AA gun), the interceptor weapon be that an interceptor drone or SAM costs more due to the need for accuracy and speed than the offensive weapon.
So if you attack with say 500 weapons and only 50 get through and the defender has used up 1000 weapons defending, what happens if they do the same the next day ?
This is I think one of the really BIG lessons from the Ukrainian war, the missile attacks on Israel last year and the recent war in the Gulf. The US, Russia and Israel have burned through a huge number of their most expensive sophisticated weapons and are struggling to produce / afford to replace them.
It’s a bit like the WW2 analogy of the German technically advanced Tanks losing out to the inferior but vastly more numerous Shermans and T34’s except without the crew loses.
I do wonder if we should just cut back on the number of ultra high end weapons (still have enough for high value targets) and churn out much larger volumes of cheaper disposable weapons after all as Stalin said “quantity ha a quality of its own”.
On another subject any death in the Rail industry is a tragedy, my wife works at the Network Rail control centre here in Derby planning and scheduling track maintenance (big very expensive machines). Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of the driver 😞
Let us hope the DIP will encompass this weapon in the numbers we will need.
I’m confused how is this not a missile? I keep seeing reference to suicide drones, one way drones and what ever this is but aren’t they all just missiles but slightly different? What’s the actual difference?
Vibes now. Really there’s no difference, we have jet powered missiles and jet powered drones. Seemingly price and whether they think they’ll get more sales by saying the D word is the only difference these days.
Speed and range in kilometers.
Perhaps because they will fly over countries that use kilometers.
Engineers use metric. They probably told the spokesperson the metric and spokesman couldn’t be bothered to convert into miles.
No.
I like mine better.
What is the delivery system for BRAKESTOP? Is it just truck-mounted?
Ignore.
What is the delivery system for BRAKESTOP? Is it truck-mounted?