SmartShooter is supplying its lightest weapon-mounted fire control system, the SMASH 2000L, to the US for C-sUAS defence. (SmartShooter)
Smart Shooter's US subsidiary on 3 October was contracted to supply more of its SMASH 2000L weapon-mounted fire control systems to the US Army for counter-small unmanned aerial system (C-sUAS) defence, the company told Janes .
SMASH optics uses image processing to automatically acquire a target from a weapon sight's field-of-view (FOV) and then displays a box around the target in the shooter's reflex sight. A switch on the weapon's forestock enables the shooter to select and lock on to a target. SMASH will then fire only when the sight is aligned to hit the target – this includes ‘leading' a moving target.
The company's US sales of its SMASH 2000L are “in the hundreds”, Scott Thompson, Smart Shooter's vice-president and general manager for the US, told Janes on 9 October at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) 2023 symposium in Washington, DC.
The Pentagon's Joint small Counter UAS Program Office (JCO) in June 2020 selected the SMASH fire control system as a dismounted kinetic solution to defeat UAS, although that selection itself was not a contract but rather a stamp of approval from the JCO.
The US Army's Program Executive Office for Missiles and Space then ordered a tranche for testing and has now ordered another tranche. The US Marine Corps (USMC) has ordered systems for testing as well (it is considering the system as a squad-level weapon), and the US Air Force purchased systems to trial at a base overseas, Thompson said. Some systems are deployed by the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division, he added.
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