GHOST Thorn. Attritable interceptor against drone saturation attacks.
Series readyThe GHOST Thorn is an attritable FPV interceptor with onboard AI that holds the target lock in the terminal phase. Take off mass stays below 4.5 kg and the airframe is designed for high rate manufacture in fixed and mobile production cells, which is what makes defence against large drone salvoes affordable.
Key facts
| Class below 5 kg |
| Target lock held on board |
| Designed for high rate manufacture |
*Subject to change.
Role in the GHOST family
The Thorn answers the cost problem of drone defence. Thirty cheap attacking airframes cannot be met with thirty expensive missiles. The Thorn is built to be spent: simple, fast to produce and accurate enough in the last hundred metres because the decision runs on board.
Standards and interfaces
Commanded through the GHOST GCS and GHOST CORE with an encrypted link. Terminal guidance runs on board and continues if the link is lost. Fibre guided variant available for operation under electronic warfare conditions.
Questions
What is the GHOST Thorn used for?
The GHOST Thorn is a counter drone interceptor for saturation attacks. It is produced in high numbers at low unit cost so that a defender can answer a salvo of attacking drones without spending a guided missile on each one.
Does the Thorn work when the radio link is jammed?
The terminal guidance runs on the aircraft, so the interception continues if the link drops. For operation under continuous jamming the fibre guided Thorn-F variant carries command and video over an optical fibre with no radio emission.
Who decides on an engagement?
A human operator. The GHOST command architecture requires a human decision before an engagement, and this is enforced in the system architecture rather than configured in software.
Why use a fibre guided drone?
Because electronic warfare defeats radio links. The GHOST Thorn-F carries command and video on an optical fibre, which cannot be jammed and emits nothing that a direction finder can pick up.
How far does the fibre reach?
Spool lengths of 10, 15 and 20 kilometres are available, selected per mission against the added mass of the spool.
Is the Thorn-F a separate aircraft?
No. It is the fibre guided configuration of the GHOST Thorn, built on the same airframe, so training, logistics and ground station stay the same.
Thorn-F, the fibre guided variant
Development programmeThe GHOST Thorn-F is the fibre guided variant of the Thorn interceptor. Control and video travel over an unspooling optical fibre of ten to twenty kilometres, which makes the system immune to jamming and silent in the radio spectrum on approach. It is in development on the qualified Thorn airframe.
| Fibre guided |
| No radio emission on approach |
| Range in the two digit kilometre band |
*Subject to change.
Systems
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Next step
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Status 09/2026