Saab develops Nimbrix C-UAS missile

Saab has unveiled its Nimbrix C-UAS missile. (Swedish Armed Forces/Alexander Gustafsson)

Saab presented its Nimbrix counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) missile to journalists including Janes during an online briefing on 27 August. The missile is being developed to counter the growing battlefield threat posed by small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Nimbrix is a 1 m-long fire-and-forget missile weighing less than 3 kg with an optimal range of 2–5 km against manoeuvring targets, an active target seeker, and a hard-kill airburst warhead designed to engage and defeat UAV swarms. Mats-Olof Rydberg, head of Saab's product unit ground-based air defence, said Nimbrix is designed for one shot, one kill. He described its cost-to-kill ratio as “extremely important” but declined to quantify it.

The missile can be integrated with command-and-control, passive sensors, radars, dynamically variable magazine (DVM) launcher hardware, very-short-range air-defence missiles such as the RBS 70 NG, gun solutions such as the Trackfire ARES remote weapon station (RWS), DVM, and net solutions such as Saab's Barracuda multispectral camouflage system, forming the inner layer of layered air defence.

Nimbrix can be operated dismounted as a manportable air-defence system (MANPADS) on a tripod or mounted on a 4×4 vehicle, SVOS RBS 70 mobile fire unit, and unmanned ground vehicle with a man-in-the-loop or waterborne platforms, among others. An RWS can be armed with 12–15 Nimbrix missiles or a combination of six to eight Nimbrix and RBS 70 missiles. Rydberg said Nimbrix uses Saab sensors but that the seeker is commercial off-the-shelf.