Loitering munition Harpax: MBDA Italia unveils new family for the Italian Army

At the “Seafuture 2025” maritime defence exhibition, MBDA Italia showed Harpax for the first time, a new family of loitering munition for multi-domain operations.

Harpax was developed together with Italian SMEs to meet the needs of the Italian Army. Mini and Small, the first two variants, had already been presented in March 2025 during the “Volpe Bianca 2025” exercise in the Puster Valley.

The Harpax Mini is a small quadcopter that is particularly suited to urban environments. The system weighs around 2.5 kilograms at launch, stays airborne for 20 minutes and has a range of 5 kilometres. Its effector is a 500-gram fragmentation warhead with a directed charge from KNDS Ammo Italy. The quadcopter is intended for use against infantry in the open and against unprotected or lightly protected vehicles. MBDA Italia and Siralab developed the Harpax Mini jointly.

Harpax Small: fixed-wing loitering munition

The Harpax Small is a fixed-wing loitering drone. It measures around one metre and has a take-off weight of 8 kilograms. At up to 200 km/h it covers distances of about 15 to 20 kilometres in 25 to 40 minutes. Thanks to its modular design, different payloads are possible depending on the mission profile: besides a 1.5-kilogram warhead, tasks in electronic warfare, logistics transport and reconnaissance are also possible. As is usual with canister-launched systems, the wings and propeller only unfold after launch. MBDA Italia's partner for the Harpax Small was the SME Skyeye System.

Up to four drones can communicate and coordinate with each other simultaneously via the Harpax weapon system.