STARK has reached a key milestone towards the delivery of its new loitering munition, Gambit, following the successful demonstration of the required effectiveness of the warhead developed by TDW Gesellschaft für verteidigungstechnische Wirksysteme mbH.
The TDW-developed warhead, together with its fuze and safety and arming system, was integrated into the man-portable Gambit quadcopter through an accelerated development process. Live testing at TDW’s site in Germany confirmed Gambit’s ability to destroy lightly armoured targets. The multi-effect warhead is fully qualified and already in service with NATO forces.
The test marks the latest milestone in the ongoing partnership between STARK and TDW, an MBDA company. In December last year, the two companies conducted the first live firing of a loitering munition in Germany with Virtus.
"The proof of effectiveness shows that we are able to solve demanding technological challenges in a short time. We are now ready to deliver another powerful and safe warhead system for loitering munitions ," says Andreas Seitz, Managing Director of TDW. "For unmanned systems of this class, there are ways with lower proof requirements but we do not take this path. User safety is not a question of system size for us. That is exactly where our know-how lies: warhead, fuze, and the overall safety assessment come from a single source."
Gambit is a man-portable, foldable loitering munition designed for ISR and precision strikes at short range, including operations in contested electromagnetic environments. The collaboration has resulted in a system developed entirely in Europe and equipped with a German warhead.
“Gambit delivers maximum operational capability with a minimal logistical footprint,” says Johannes Schaback, CTO of STARK. “Its foldable design allows a single soldier to carry one or multiple systems, deploy them within minutes and adapt them flexibly to different mission profiles. A modular extension also enables operators to switch to fibre-optic control in contested electromagnetic environments.”
The partnership brings together two companies with the same development philosophy: modular, scalable and designed for production at scale. Both TDW and STARK develop modular systems that allow new capabilities to be integrated rapidly while supporting industrial production in large quantities.
