KNDS France has been working for some years on loitering munitions, exploiting its expertise in warheads and system integrator, working together with several French UAV manufactures. The aim was primarily to answer French military requirements. At the last editions of the Paris Air Show and Eurosatory the company exhibited its development products, that now come under a single brand, together with some new systems
At the Abu Dhabi exhibition KNDS France announced that all its loitering munitions will now come under the Mataris brand. This led to a renaming of existing products, the new acronyms describing precisely what the system is. Names all start with an “M”, as Mataris, followed by a second letter that indicates the type of airframe; “T” for rotary wing, “V” for fixed wing, and “X” for multicopter; a hyphen is followed by a number showing the system range.
The MV-25 is therefore a Mataris fixed wing loitering munition with a 25 km range. It is in fact what was known as Colibri, the name given by the French Defence Innovation Agency to the invitation to tender issued some years ago. Based on the Delair UX11, a low-cost polystyrene airframe with a flying wing architecture with winglets. Powered by an electric motor located at the rear activating a two-blade pushing propeller it has a mass at launch of 2.3 kg, of which 550 grams are represented by the payload.
In the case of the MV-25 this is the fragmentation warhead designed by KNDS as part of the Colibri project, aimed at engaging personnel and light vehicles, which is being installed on all Mataris short-range loitering munitions. Hand-launched, the MV-25 has an operational endurance of 40 minutes, its range being obviously 25 km, and is fitted with a jam-resistant data link allowing beyond-line-of-sight operations. Initially known with the development project name, Colibri, this munition was then renamed OSKAR, the acronym for Opportunity Strike Kinetics Aircraft Ruggedised, and now MV-25. The 100 systems delivered to France have been forwarded to Ukraine, further shipments being expected.
A second Mataris loitering munition is in production and should be delivered to the French military in summer 2025, the MX-10. Here too KNDS France teamed with Delair to produce a First Person View (FPV) UAV with a quadcopter architecture, which can be deployed vertically and eventually recovered in the same way, should the mission be aborted, the 550 grams warhead being armed only in the last phase of attack, allowing therefore a safe recovery.
The third short-range element of the Mataris family is the MT-10, which is still in development, the system being around TRL 5 according to the company. It could be defined as “flying warhead” as it is made of a cylindrical body at the bottom of which we find the typical 550 grams KNDS fragmentation warhead; the ensemble has the same diameter, the upper part containing electronics, battery and electric motors, the latter activating two two-blade counter-rotating rotors. Rotor blades can be folded downwards to allow the munition to be contained into a launch tube, from which it should be expelled using a pneumatic system, although those details have not yet been frozen.
The design is being made in-house by KNDS France, leveraging the work unveiled in 2019 on the IXOS LG UAV, aimed at providing the Leclerc main battle tank an air reconnaissance capability as part of a proposed upgrade package. The tube-launched configuration should mean that vehicle-borne use is still among the uses considered for this new UAV, an infantry use being however not excluded. Beside an easier packaging for a vehicle-borne use, KNDS considers that the counter-rotating rotors solution is much more discrete that the quadcopter architecture. Mass at take-off should be around 4 kg, with an endurance of over 30 minutes. No partner for production has yet been selected.
Last but not least comes the MV-100, for the time being the only medium-range loitering munition of the Mataris catalogue. MV-100 is the new name assigned to what in June 2024 was visible at the KNDS at Eurosatory under the Larinae name. It is based on the Veloce 330 jet powered airframe by EOS Technologie. With a take-off mass of around 27 kg, it can carry a 6 kg payload that includes optronics as well as a KNDS France designed warhead with a mass of around 3 kg; named Arceus, it is fitted with a proximity fuse and generates an explosively formed penetrator (EFP) that would hit armoured vehicles on their top armour, typically one of their weak points.
Graphics courtesy KNDS, photos by P. Valpolini