Soldier holding Heaviside Industries' new TYR lightweight loitering munition. Photo: Heaviside Industries

Heaviside Industries on Monday unveiled its first precision strike weapon, TYR, a man-portable, fixed-wing loitering munition that can be tailored for anti-armor and anti-personnel applications and is designed to meet requirements for different U.S. services.

TYR has been live-fire tested several times and Heaviside is initially offering the munition with the shaped charge anti-tank warhead, which is the biggest requirement currently, Nils Haagenrud, the company’s president, told Defense Daily earlier this month. The loitering munition was unveiled at the annual Association of the U.S. Army conference.

The entire system, reusable launcher, third-party controllers and air vehicle, weighs 15 pounds. The air vehicle, including warhead and batteries, is five pounds, has a wingspan under 40 inches and is about 31 inches long. The wings, which also house the batteries, are removable for carrying, he said.

Heaviside designed and developed TYR in part based on lessons Ukrainian forces and the U.S. Defense Department learned in the early part of Ukraine’s war against Russia, where loitering munitions were unreliable due to jamming and spoofing, Haagenrud said. The system has also been informed by Army, Marine Corps and U.S. Special Operations Command requirements for light-weight loitering munitions, he said.

The company is putting a heavy emphasis on communications and navigation to operate in denied and degraded communications environments and is using its own radios and computer vision software to avoid jamming, work at range, find a target, and enable an operator to confirm the target for the terminal end game, Haagenrud said.

TYR has a range exceeding 25 miles, 60-plus minutes of endurance, can fly faster than 150 miles per hour, and is equipped with electro-optical and thermal cameras. The munition can attack a target from as low as 10 degrees and top-down. The unmanned aircraft can be equipped with a small radar to find and destroy other drones, like Shaheds, for counter-unmanned aircraft system missions, Haagenrud said.

Founded in 2024, Heaviside emerged from stealth this year and in August said it raised $60 million in a Series B round to expand its production capacity and U.S. footprint (Defense Daily, Aug. 12).

Norway-based Nammo is providing the warheads for TYR, to also include anti-structural and explosively formed penetrator variants, and is Heaviside’s primary partner. Two United Kingdom-based companies, Talos Technologies and Raeon, supply the electric motor and batteries, respectively, for TYR.

Heaviside has about 70 employees and is hiring. Production will begin in Norway and will leverage the partnership with Nammo. Heaviside’s engineering hub is in California and the company is looking for a manufacturing site in the U.S., Haagenrud said.