One of the big themes running through recent conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East has been how older, expensive “exquisite” weapons are being counteracted by a wave of new defence tech that is faster, cheaper and more advanced with autonomy and other capabilities. Today comes the latest instalment in that story, one that helps NATO-allied forces — already heavy with legacy equipment — update in a more cost-effective way.
Tiberius Aerospace said that it has completed the first successful demonstration of a new projectile that can be launched from standard howitzers but perform on part with more costly missile systems.
Tiberius — a UK and US startup — said that the projectile was launched as part of the tests it’s carrying out of its flagship Sceptre liquid munitions. The “liquid-fuelled ramjet projectile” gets launched from a 155mm howitzer but works like a precision-guided munition.
Tiberius said that the testing that was recently completed in New Mexico, in the US, saw the projectiles reach ranges of up to 150 kilometres. (This is roughly the distance, for example, between London and Calais, or between the Ukraine border and Kursk or Belgorod in Russia.) The plan is to continue testing to increase the range further.
The projectiles are capable of travelling at speeds of around Mach 3.5 and going up to altitudes of 65,000 feet, making the projectiles capable of bypassing common jamming and other electronic warfare interference. The projectiles can support payloads of up to 5.2 kilograms and they have demonstrated circular error probability of less than 5 metres, the company added.
Most importantly, the munitions can be manufactured in existing factories, reducing the capital expenditure and operating costs needed to get into production.
Previous to founding Tiberius, its co-founders, CEO Chad Steelberg and CSO Andy Baynes, cut their teeth in diverse, non-military businesses like Google and Apple, working in fields as diverse as consumer electronics, AI and voice technology.
The turn to defence came at a time when many technologists have watched events unfolding in Ukraine and considered how they could bring their own skills to bear to help. Customers, missions and sales cycles are all new territory, but what stays the same is the win of meeting an important milestone in the building of complicated, groundbreaking systems.
“This is a genuine world first breakthrough,” Steelberg said in a statement. “These tests prove not only the technology, but a new way of delivering capability at pace, at scale and at significantly lower cost. Having successfully proved our design and engineering methodologies, we now need to move to much larger ranges to deliver the next phase of testing, validation and certification. Sceptre is an ambitious and complex project, but these successful US test firing results prove we are quickly advancing along the right trajectory.”
It’s not clear how a lot of the startup’s R&D is being funded. PitchBook notes it has only raised $4.5 million to date. (Our guess is that there could be more activity going on there that is not being disclosed.)
Tiberius said the Sceptre system’s “modular, open architecture” makes it easier to upgrade, and it works on common fuels, including diesel variants JP-4 and JP-8. It noted that development of the equipment can be managed through Grail, the company’s operating system that it launched last year to help plan and develop more efficient manufacturing plans for next-generation equipment. Grail was in the spotlight also earlier this month, when Tiberius announced that it had been upgraded to also help manufacture equipment for Ukrainian defence pipelines.
