Aegis
The magazine that answers the other guy’s magazine. Aegis is a canister interceptor cheap enough to fire at FPV swarms and smart enough to come home when the target is a balloon.
Aegis
MQM-26G
Meridian design bureau
Conceptual · not a program of record
- Unit cost
- $28K
- Combat radius
- 12 nm
- Endurance
- 0.25 h
- Speed
- 280 kt
- Ceiling
- 12,000 ft
- Payload
- 2.4 kg
- FY26 buy
- 8,000
- Rate / year
- 24K
Launch / recover
Launch. Canister from Stryker / ship / fixed site / HMMWV; rocket-boost then cruise
Recover. Block R (RF) is recoverable; Block K is hit-to-kill
C2. M-LIDS analog: radar cue, fire-control on the vehicle, autonomous terminal
Why it is better
- Cost-exchange designed to beat $2k FPV swarms, not just Shaheds
- Recoverable RF round so you do not spend a missile on a balloon
- Same vehicle node as Kestrel/Lance — one battery, three magazines
- Ship, base, and maneuver variants from one seeker family
Nav (GNSS optional)
- Ku-band cue
- imaging IR terminal
- RF home-on-jam
Sense
- strapdown IIR
- RF seeker (Block R)
Effect
- hit-to-kill (K)
- HPM daze (R)
- proximity fragmentation (K-prox)
Against the public program
Coyote Block 2/3 / JIATF 401 / Replicator 2 C-sUAS
Public. FY26 request ~6,000 Coyote Blk 2 and 700 Blk 3; Replicator 2 folded into JIATF 401 Jan 2026
Gap. Interceptor magazines empty after the first raid; cost-exchange still favors the attacker
Meridian. 28k kinetic, recoverable RF shot, 24k/year — flips the cost-exchange on Group 1–3