Northrop Grumman has given a name to the 50mm gun-based air defence system it has been developing to shoot down cruise missiles and drone swarms, calling it Raid Hunter, and says testing through the rest of this year will support accelerated fielding.

The system pairs the company’s Chain Gun with precision-guided 50mm ammunition and a networked system controller. Its purpose is to handle raids large enough to saturate conventional defences, which is a problem missiles alone cannot solve because a magazine of interceptors runs out faster than an attacker runs out of drones.

That economic point is the one the company keeps returning to. A high rate of fire, deep magazines and fast reloads are what it offers against massed threats, in place of expending an interceptor worth several hundred thousand pounds on a target worth a few thousand.

Kenn Todorov, vice president and general manager for command and control and weapons integration, said: “Raid Hunter addresses a critical short-range defense gap by delivering rapid, high-capacity protection against complex, mass aerial threats like cruise missiles and drone swarms. It provides warfighters with a cost-effective, flexible tool to decisively defeat evolving threats now and in the future, strengthening the security of vital bases and infrastructure.”

He said: “War has evolved. Air Defenders need the ability to defend against large, complex raids designed to overwhelm traditional defense solutions. Raid Hunter addresses this critical need by delivering a cost effective and deep magazine solution which can be rapidly delivered to the warfighter at scale.”

The system is built on a modular palletised form factor sized for transport aboard a C-130, with vehicle-mounted and container-based variants planned. Northrop Grumman has not said when those variants will appear, nor which customers it is working with beyond a reference to government and allied partners.

Guns had largely been written off for air defence by the 1990s, displaced by missiles that were more accurate at greater range. What has brought them back is the arithmetic of the drone war. Russian and Ukrainian forces launch small uncrewed aircraft in numbers that make missile defence unaffordable, and the same problem has appeared in the Red Sea, where Western warships have fired multi-million pound rounds at Houthi drones costing a fraction of that.

Guided ammunition is what makes the return viable as unguided cannon fire against a small manoeuvring target requires a large volume of rounds and a very good fire control solution, whereas a course-correcting projectile allows hits at longer range with fewer shots, while keeping the cost per engagement far below that of a missile.

Raid Hunter sits within what the company calls Raid Defense Solutions, its portfolio of layered kinetic counter-drone and air defence products, which combines fielded programmes with command and control software and sensor fusion.

Similar thinking is visible across the industry and among European governments. Rheinmetall has continued to develop its Skyranger turret in 30mm and 35mm forms, several armies have brought older self-propelled anti-aircraft guns back into service, and Britain has pursued the problem through directed energy work on DragonFire alongside a series of counter-drone trials.

The 50mm chain gun itself is not a new weapon. Northrop Grumman developed the XM913 in that calibre for the US Army’s optionally manned fighting vehicle programme, work that produced a gun capable of firing airburst and guided rounds from a mechanically driven, externally powered action of the kind the company has built since the Bushmaster series entered service in the 1970s.