{"id":42084,"date":"2026-08-24T16:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T16:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/42084\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T16:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T16:25:10","slug":"italy-eyes-us-tech-for-souping-up-dumb-missiles-into-drone-interceptors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/42084\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy eyes US tech for souping up dumb missiles into drone interceptors"},"content":{"rendered":"

ROME \u2014 The Italian Air Force is mulling the purchase of U.S. technology that turns cheap unguided missiles into precision weapons, offering a low-cost option for taking out drones instead of using pricy air-to-air missiles.<\/p>\n

The potential deal was made possible by the U.S. Department of State\u2019s approval of a Foreign Military Sale to Italy of 5,031 BAE Systems Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) II guidance systems.<\/p>\n

The APKWS, which can be inserted between the warhead of an unguided missile and its motor, features four fold-out wings which each carry a laser seeker, turning a missile that costs less than \u20ac100,000 ($117,000) into a guided weapon.<\/p>\n

The solution would allow the Italian Air Force to avoid firing missiles like the AMRAAM – which costs ten times that – to destroy cheaply produced drones.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe proposed sale will improve Italy\u2019s capability to meet current and future threats by strengthening its homeland defense and serving as a deterrent to regional threats,\u201d the State Department said.<\/p>\n

The FMS approval also covers launchers, warheads and rocket motors, as well as technical support, taking the potential deal to $364 million, the State Department added.<\/p>\n

Sources in Italy told Defense News no contract had been signed and the technology was still being evaluated. The likely recipient of the APKWS would be Italy\u2019s Eurofighter<\/a> jet, which is already guarding Europe\u2019s borders against drone incursions.<\/p>\n

This month, an Italian Eurofighter taking part in NATO air policing mission in the Baltics shot down an unidentified drone which flew into Latvian airspace.<\/p>\n

In May, the Royal Air Force announced it was already using the system on its Eurofighters after a rapid acquisition which saw testing and deployment completed in two months.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) gives RAF pilots a highly accurate option to destroy aerial targets and allows them to engage drones at a fraction of the cost of traditional air-to-air missiles,\u201d the RAF said at the time.<\/p>\n

Tom Kington is the Italy correspondent for Defense News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROME \u2014 The Italian Air Force is mulling the purchase of U.S. technology that turns cheap unguided missiles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4053,1409,16886,1411,1408,5,27589],"class_list":["post-42084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-bae-systems","tag-circulated-defense-news","tag-counter-drone-systems","tag-defense-news","tag-dn-dnr","tag-italy","tag-unmanned"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}