Weapons

DARPA Wants Millions To Design An Unmanned 'Flying Gun' Under Its New Gunslinger Program

Tucked away inside the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's most recent budget proposal is a request for millions of dollars to explore what one could best describe as an unmanned flying gun capable of engaging airborne and ground-based targets. This comes around a year and a half after DARPA first announced it was working on what it called a "Flying Missile Rail." The system would carry its own air-to-air missiles and would be launched like a drone from under the jet's wing, after which they would fly off and engage aerial targets with their missiles.

DARPA is asking for $13.27 million in its budget request for the 2021 Fiscal Year for the flying gun effort, which it has dubbed Gunslinger. The budget documents say that this is a new program and it is in no way related to the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps program of the same name, which developed a system to detect incoming hostile gunfire.