Hornet Block 2

The Hornet Block 2 is Destinus ’s second-generation Hornet — described by the company as a “dual-role interceptor and precision strike system.” Where the Block 1 baseline is a subsonic-threat interceptor, Block 2 folds two jobs into one canister-launched platform: knocking down slow aerial threats such as Shahed -type attack drones, and striking ground and maritime targets.

How it works: the round is fired from a mobile canister rather than a runway or catapult, which lets a launch team relocate quickly and operate in the field. Guidance combines an EO/IR (electro-optical / infrared) seeker with radar, a pairing Destinus says allows autonomous engagement even in GNSS-denied — GPS-jammed — conditions, the environment that now defines the front in Ukraine. On the software side the company advertises AI-coordinated swarm operation with dynamic target allocation, so multiple Hornets can divide up incoming threats between them. Published figures are a range of 150+ km and a 3 kg payload; the system is pitched as multi-domain and all-weather.

A note on the name: this is not the same aircraft as the Hornet fielded in Ukraine by the US firm Swift Beat. That Hornet is a low-cost, catapult-launched fixed-wing kamikaze drone for anti-logistics strike; Destinus’s Hornet is a canister-launched, radar-and-EO/IR interceptor built first to shoot other drones down. The shared name is a coincidence — two different systems from two different companies.