Switchblade 600

AeroVironment’s Switchblade 600 is a loitering munition designed to give ground forces a precision strike option against armoured vehicles and hardened targets at distances well beyond the line of sight. It entered US service in 2020 as the heavier sibling to the man-portable Switchblade 300, scaling the same tube-launched, fly-then-strike concept up to a system capable of defeating main battle tanks. Where the 300 is an anti-personnel round optimised for dismounted infantry, the 600 is built around an anti-armour payload and the longer flight times needed to find and prosecute that class of target.

The munition launches from a sealed tube, deploys folding wings, and cruises on an electric motor that keeps its acoustic and thermal signature low. Endurance is roughly 40 minutes with a range exceeding 40 kilometres, allowing the operator to stand off well outside the engagement envelope of most short-range air defences. The warhead is a tandem shaped charge derived from the Javelin family, which is what unlocks the anti-armour role. Guidance combines GPS waypoint navigation with an electro-optical and infrared seeker; the operator flies the munition through a tablet-based ground control unit, designates a target, and can wave off and re-attack until the moment of impact. AeroVironment has paired the airframe with its own command-and-control software and is integrating it with third-party autonomy stacks — including a Red Cat-led pairing with the Edge 130 quadcopter, in which the drone spots and the Switchblade strikes — to push more of the engagement loop onto the system itself.

The United States is the launch customer and remains the largest operator. The bulk of public combat experience comes from Ukraine, which received an initial tranche under the Biden administration’s drawdown packages in 2022 and has continued to receive additional rounds through subsequent Presidential Drawdown Authority deliveries and Foreign Military Financing contracts. Taiwan has also placed orders, with US notifications in 2022 and 2024 covering Switchblade 300 and 600 rounds as part of its asymmetric deterrence buildup. AeroVironment has booked successive production contracts with the US Army and the Defense Innovation Unit worth several hundred million dollars as the round shifted from a niche special-operations capability to a programme of record.

Development continues around the warhead, the launcher, and the autonomy layer. The company markets multi-pack launchers for vehicles and vessels, has demonstrated maritime variants, and is working on Block-level upgrades that lengthen range and improve resilience against jamming. With Russia’s war in Ukraine validating loitering munitions as a category, the Switchblade 600 sits in an increasingly crowded field alongside Israeli systems like the IAI Harop and a wave of newer entrants, but it remains the reference Western design in its weight class and the one most allied militaries benchmark against.