Herakles GbR

About HERAKLES Defense

HERAKLES Defense is a Munich-based defense tech startup developing RAPTOR-1, an autonomous, kinetic counter-UAS interceptor against Class-I FPV kamikaze drones. The system is designed as a drone-versus-drone concept and targets EW-resistant threats such as fiber-optically controlled and AI-controlled FPV drones, against which classical jammers and conventional air defense repeatedly fail, according to the company. RAPTOR-1 combines detection and effector in a single system: interception is fully autonomous, vision-based, and without GPS, radio link, or depth estimation; the kill mechanism is a kinetic collision without a warhead. The flight control was developed natively around quad-racing airframes to engage evasive targets in fractions of a second. An in-house built digital twin with FPV-specific flight physics and disturbance models fitted from real flight logs is used to test thousands of engagement scenarios before every real test flight. The system currently reaches TRL 5 and has been validated multiple times in the relevant environment. Delivery target regions are Germany, the EU, and NATO states; inquiries from BAAINBw and allied armed forces are handled via technical briefings under NDA.

Site

Munich

Processes

Autonomous kinetic counter-UAS defense against Class-I FPV kamikaze drones, RAPTOR-1 interceptor system (detection and effector in one system), In-house simulation environment / digital twin, Technical briefings under NDA

Materials

Vision-Based Guidance, Digital Twin, Quad-Native Guidance

Certificates

Real flight validation TRL 5, Certified quality management system

Industries

Defense / Defense Tech, Counter-UAS, Military (NATO armed forces, BAAINBw)

1. 01

   Threat analysis and system architecture

2. 02

   Software development of the vision-based guidance

3. 03

   Simulation in the digital twin

4. 04

   Hardware integration and test bench

5. 05

   Real flight tests and validation (TRL 5)

6. 06

   Technical briefings under NDA

Technology and Processes

Location

System Components

Inside the production

Validation and Quality

RAPTOR-1 is at the TRL 5 stage: fully autonomous interceptions of agile, EW-resistant FPV drones have been reproduced multiple times and documented on video. Protocols, timelines, bills of materials, and raw footage are available under NDA; third-party confirmation is cited as the next step.