KNDS, the Franco-German land defense group behind the Leclerc and Leopard tanks, has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Aerix Systems, a small aerial robotics startup based near Bordeaux, to develop and industrialize a physical drone interceptor called the AXS-μ1. The partnership will fold the interceptor into TARGAS DSP10, one module within KNDS’s broader counter-drone architecture, and KNDS says production of the finished system is set to begin in 2027.
The agreement is notable less for its scale than for what it says about how established defense primes are now sourcing genuinely new hardware. Rather than developing a kinetic interceptor drone in-house, KNDS is backing a startup whose core technology, an unconventional omnidirectional propulsion system, already existed before the two companies ever spoke.
What the Two Companies Actually Announced
Under the agreement, KNDS will support the AXS-μ1 through what the companies describe as its maturation phase, the stage where a working prototype is refined into a manufacturable, field-reliable product, ahead of production starting in 2027. KNDS brings two things Aerix Systems does not yet have on its own: experience as what the company calls an architect of complete mission solutions, meaning it designs and integrates full weapons systems rather than single components, and the industrial capacity to actually build the interceptor at scale once the design is locked in.
That combination matters because Aerix Systems, despite drawing NATO’s attention, remains a young company. It raised €5.6 million in a funding round at the end of 2025, and its most prominent customers to date include Intercontrôle, a subsidiary of the nuclear group Framatome, alongside early collaboration with France’s Ministry of Armed Forces. KNDS has indicated it could mobilize its own manufacturing base to produce roughly 1,000 AXS-μ1 units per month once production begins in early 2027, a volume Aerix Systems would have had little prospect of reaching alone.
Inside the AXS-μ1
The AXS-μ1 first appeared publicly in April 2025, and it looks little like most of the interceptor drones now entering service across Europe. Where competitors have largely converged on a rocket-shaped airframe built for a single fast, straight-line intercept, Aerix Systems designed the AXS-μ1 around omnidirectional propulsion, four independently controlled motors that let the drone maneuver in any direction rather than relying on a fixed forward flight path. Paired with an onboard AI layer dedicated to trajectory correction, that design is intended to give the drone finer control in the final metres before impact, precisely the phase of an intercept where a fast-moving, evasive target like an FPV drone is hardest to hit cleanly.
The interceptor measures roughly 40 centimetres across, carries a payload allowance of about 1.5 kilograms, and reaches speeds of around 200 kilometres per hour. It is built to achieve neutralization fully autonomously through direct physical impact, a method generally described as hit-to-kill, and it carries no explosive warhead. That last detail is operationally useful in two respects. It reduces the risk of collateral damage from the interceptor itself, and because the drone is not destroyed by its own munition on every engagement, it can potentially be recovered and reused if it fails to connect with its target.
Aerix Systems has already drawn institutional recognition beyond its partnership with KNDS. The company was selected into the latest cohort of DIANA, NATO’s innovation accelerator programme, a step that gives it access to experimentation opportunities with allied forces in the Czech Republic and Portugal.
How TARGAS DSP10 Combines Jamming and Impact
The AXS-μ1 does not operate alone within KNDS’s system. TARGAS DSP10 pairs the interceptor with Raptor 2, an electronic countermeasures system built by Nuances Technologies that is designed to jam or take over the control link of certain categories of drone rather than destroy them physically. The result is a system that offers two distinct neutralization methods within a single close-in protection package, an electronic, non-destructive option where jamming is sufficient, and a kinetic, physical option for threats that jamming cannot reliably defeat, chief among them the FPV drones the press release specifically names as a growing concern.
That distinction matters operationally. Electronic warfare effectors are generally cheaper to use repeatedly and avoid any debris or collateral risk, but they only work against drones that depend on a radio or satellite link a jammer can actually reach and disrupt. FPV drones flown over fibre-optic cable, a tactic that has already spread widely across the war in Ukraine, are immune to that kind of jamming by design, since there is no wireless signal to intercept in the first place. A hit-to-kill interceptor like the AXS-μ1 does not depend on the target’s communications method at all, which is precisely why KNDS is adding it as a second layer rather than relying on electronic countermeasures alone.
The system’s name reflects both its function and its reach. DSP stands for Droneshield Protector, and the 10 refers to its operational range in kilometres. KNDS has built TARGAS DSP10 to be readily deployable and integrated directly onto military vehicles, giving ground forces what the company describes as a scalable close-in protection capability rather than a fixed installation tied to a single defended site.
One Layer Within a Larger Ecosystem
TARGAS DSP10 is one module inside TARGAS, short for Tactical Advanced Response for Ground, Air and Surface threats, the full counter-drone and counter-air architecture KNDS presented in complete form at Eurosatory in June 2026. TARGAS is built to run the entire kill chain from detection through neutralization, and its scope extends well past drones alone, covering loitering munitions, missiles, glide munitions, low-flying helicopters and fighter aircraft, and ground or naval threats ranging from robotic systems to armored vehicles.
Other effectors already shown within the TARGAS family include TARGAS 30, which mounts a radar and a 30mm ARX 30 gun on a Serval chassis, and RAPIDFire, developed jointly with Thales and armed with the same 40mm CTA cannon that already equips the Jaguar armored vehicle, guided by artificial intelligence-derived targeting algorithms. KNDS has also demonstrated interoperability between TARGAS and systems built by partners including TYTAN and Helsing, positioning the ecosystem as an open architecture rather than a closed, single-vendor stack. Northrop Grumman’s recently unveiled Raid Hunter system pursues a broadly similar layered logic, pairing a gun-based effector with networked battle management rather than a single interceptor type, a sign that multiple defense manufacturers are converging on layered, mixed-effector architectures as the practical answer to a threat picture that no single weapon can cover alone.
Why the FPV Threat Is Driving This
The specific mention of FPV drones in the companies’ announcement is not incidental. Future Military Technologies has covered how first-person-view drones evolved from hobbyist racing quadcopters into the dominant close-combat weapon on the Ukrainian front line, a shift that has forced defense manufacturers across Europe to treat cheap, agile, hard-to-jam drones as a genuine design requirement rather than an edge case. Lockheed Martin’s own counter-drone kill chain, built around an AI battle manager cueing a missile interceptor, addresses a related but distinct slice of that same problem, engaging threats at longer range than a close-in system like TARGAS DSP10 is meant to cover. The AXS-μ1 sits closer to a growing category of small, purpose-built kinetic interceptor drones emerging across the defense industry, a category that includes systems like the MARSS Interceptor family, all converging on the same basic premise: against a fast, maneuvering, radio-silent drone, sometimes the most reliable way to stop it is to fly another drone directly into it.
Production target still eighteen months away
The KNDS and Aerix Systems partnership is a fairly small deal in absolute terms, a startup interceptor, a single module within a larger system, and a production target still eighteen months away. What makes it worth tracking is the pattern it fits. A major pan-European prime with nearly 11,000 employees and a €33.1 billion order backlog is choosing to mature and scale a small company’s existing hardware rather than build an equivalent capability from scratch internally, betting that Aerix Systems’ unconventional propulsion approach gives it a genuine edge in the final, hardest seconds of a drone intercept.
Whether the AXS-μ1 performs as well in KNDS’s hands as it has in early testing will depend on the maturation work still ahead of it. But the broader signal is already clear. As FPV drones continue reshaping how ground forces think about close-in protection, the answer increasingly involves layering electronic and physical countermeasures together, and pairing established manufacturing muscle with the kind of fast-moving startup engineering that produced the AXS-μ1 in the first place.
