Euronaval 2026 – BAE Systems Bofors Sea Tridon family: a flexible C-UAS hard-kill solution based on a well proven gun

The headline out of Euronaval is a family of naval counter-drone gun mounts, but the more useful way to read the Sea Tridon announcement is as a statement about where the counter-UAS market is maturing. After several years in which every naval staff wanted a drone answer and industry offered a bewildering menu of jammers, interceptors, and directed-energy demonstrators, the arrival of a product line built on the Bofors 40mm gun and the existing Tridon turret concept suggests the hard-kill segment is settling around a simpler proposition: use ammunition and fire-control architectures that navies already trust, and adapt them to the drone threat rather than inventing a new kill chain from scratch.

The mechanics are worth understanding because they explain the commercial logic. Tridon was unveiled at Eurosatory in 2024 as a truck-mounted C-UAS system built around the well-known Bofors 40mm gun, pairing a proven medium-caliber cannon with a modern turret, sensor suite, and fire-control system tuned for small, agile targets. Sea Tridon extends that architecture to the naval domain, where the engineering constraints differ sharply: salt, spray, ship motion, deck space, and the need to integrate with a combat management system rather than stand alone. The appeal of the 40mm is not novelty but maturity. The Bofors 40 has decades of logistics, training, and ammunition development behind it, and programmable airburst rounds give a gun of that caliber a credible engagement envelope against small unmanned air targets without requiring a dedicated interceptor missile for every engagement. That matters for magazine depth and cost-per-engagement, the two variables that dominate naval counter-drone economics.