MBDA signs first SKY WARDEN export contract

November 21, 2025 – MBDA has signed its first export contract with a Middle Eastern country to provide its SKY WARDEN counter-UAV solution.

Lorenzo Mariani, MBDA Executive Group Sales and Business Development, said: “Signing this export contract marks a crucial step in our commitment to ensuring the security and sovereignty of our partners around the world. SKY WARDEN provides an innovative and comprehensive response to the challenges posed by asymmetric air threats. This unique drone-fighting system combines state-of-the-art technology, unprecedented flexibility, and a constantly evolving capability. With SKY WARDEN, we offer our customers robust and adaptable protection against all UAV threats, today and tomorrow.”

SKY WARDEN – for which MBDA has been awarded, by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), the Frontex C-UAS Prize 2025 and declared “best system to protect the EU’s borders” – is a comprehensive multi-layer system that protects an area from micro to tactical drones, up to eight kilometers away. This solution is an evolution and enhancement of an MBDA developed multi-sensor and multi-effector command and control (C2) system, which enables the detection, identification and classification of threats with precision thanks to the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

SKY WARDEN offers a wide range of complementary effectors designed to counter and destroy enemy drones, such as CILAS HELMA-P laser weapon, omni and directional jammers, MBDA HTK (Hit-to-Kill) drone interceptors and MISTRAL 3 missile, boasting a success rate of more than 96%. Sensors and effectors are chosen according to their intrinsic performance and mission requirements. SKY WARDEN is therefore a scalable system perfectly adapted to the asymmetric aerial threats of today and tomorrow.

SKY WARDEN can evolve over time according to the needs of users and to the evolution of threats thanks to a completely modular architecture and the easy integration of new effectors. The system is highly flexible, either dismounted to protect fixed sites, or vehicle-mounted for mobile protection. It may also be integrated with other medium-range air defense capabilities like the VL MICA or CAMM-ER or connected to higher level.

The development of SKYWARDEN is constantly evolving. This is evidenced by the recent acquisition by MBDA of the HELMA-P laser from CILAS to complete the range of effectors available within the solution.

Photo courtesy MBDA