BAE Systems Unveils Two New Systems at AUSA 2026: Pairing a Cannon With a Microwave Weapon

Quick take: BAE Systems unveiled two systems it describes as complementary at the AUSA (Association of the United States Army) annual meeting in Washington on October 12, 2026: the Multi-Domain Artillery Cannon System (MDACS) and the High Power Microwave (HPM) weapon. The company says the pair forms a layered defense package against drone swarms and cruise missiles.

The kinetic layer: MDACS

By BAE’s own description, MDACS forms the kinetic half of the pairing. In the air-defense role, it fires the Hypervelocity Projectile (HVP), a guided, next-generation round. Industry coverage frames it as a lower-cost way for the US Army to defeat drones, cruise missiles and other fast aerial threats. Against ground targets, the system can fire Scorpio-XR, a precision-guided munition that doubles the range of existing 155mm cannon-launched projectiles. HVP itself is not a new technology — the US Navy and Army originally developed it primarily for electromagnetic railgun programs years ago. What BAE is doing is pairing that existing munition with conventional powder-gun artillery for the air-defense mission, an approach aimed at extracting more capability from the existing artillery inventory rather than building an entirely new platform.

The directed-energy layer: HPM

HPM is the pairing’s directed-energy option. BAE describes it as a scalable, high-maturity architecture for low-risk, cost-effective layered air and missile defense. The company says the system has been validated at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6, with 99 percent of its components being commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts. Its modular design is said to support fixed-site, towed, combat-vehicle and maritime configurations. The main advantage of microwave weapons over conventional missile- or round-based interceptors is that they do not face a ‘magazine’ problem — as long as the system has access to electrical power, it can theoretically disable target after target in succession. That trait is pitched as a direct answer to the risk of conventional missile stocks running out quickly against cheap, high-volume drone attacks.

The logic behind the pairing

BAE argues that massed drone swarms have outpaced the capacity of traditional kinetic systems with limited magazine depth. The company says combining MDACS’s precision with HPM’s directed energy, which does not run out of interceptors, is meant to close that gap; HPM’s backers argue the system can keep engaging targets for as long as power is supplied.

Verification level and a cautious read

Details on MDACS come largely from BAE’s own press release and a single piece of trade coverage; HPM’s capability claims are likewise the company’s own. BAE’s earlier work in high-power microwave weapons traces back to a Mk 38 gun-based naval variant demonstrated in 2019, a different and earlier-stage system than this 2026 announcement. Performance figures have therefore not yet been independently verified, and the gap between maturity claims and demonstrated field performance is worth tracking carefully for any directed-energy weapon announcement.

Why it matters for Turkey and NATO

The drone and munition threat MDACS targets overlaps considerably with the gap Turkey’s own KORKUT, a twin-barrel 35mm cannon system forming the bottom tier of the Çelik Kubbe architecture, is built to close. On the directed-energy side, ASELSAN’s ALKA laser system works on a different physical principle than microwaves but sits in the same ‘magazine-free directed energy’ category. BAE packaging a kinetic-plus-directed-energy pair into a single layered offering is a model worth watching for how Turkey’s own KORKUT-ALKA combination could evolve toward a similarly integrated architecture. The pattern seen in Ukraine, where hundreds of cheap kamikaze drones are directed at a single target simultaneously, is pushing both Western and Turkish defense planners to invest more in magazine-free solutions, with BAE’s MDACS-HPM pairing standing out as the latest American example of that trend.

Sources

• BAE Systems press release, ‘BAE Systems unveils next-generation directed energy and kinetic defense systems at AUSA,’ October 12, 2026 — used for the product descriptions of MDACS and HPM and official statements.
• Army Recognition, ‘BAE Systems develops MDACS cannon air defense for U.S. Army to defeat drones and cruise missiles,’ 2026 — used for independent confirmation and MDACS’s mission framing.
• Defence Industry Europe, ‘BAE Systems pitches new High Power Microwave system to the U.S. defense market,’ 2026 — used to cross-verify HPM’s technical claims.