Defense News:

France’s future navy surface ships will be protected from swarm attacks by the RAPIDFire very-short-range weapon system developed by a Thales and Nexter consortium, the DGA French procurement agency has announced.

Based on the medium-caliber, cased, 40mm gun developed by CTAI, the international subsidiary of Nexter Systems and BAE Systems, RAPIDFire was designed to respond to new threats, notably low, small, slow, stealthy, swarm attacks that can saturate conventional missile defenses. It has a range of 4 kilometers (2.5 miles).

Integrated onto the unmanned turret, the gun has an optronic fire-control system which can be controlled by the operator. Threat analysis is shared with the ship’s combat management system, and the gunner can validate or adjust the strategy proposed by the gun. There are five different types of ammunition that the gun can choose from automatically, to best engage a given threat…

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