DSEI UK 2025: TigerShark, MGI’s new strike drone

The defence division of MGI Engineering, used the DSEI exhibition in London to unveil a new long-range autonomous strike drone. The drone, named TigerShark, was presented as a system offering cruise missile-level performance at a fraction of the cost. It is designed and built in the UK, and will be available to MGI Engineering’s partners from October 2025, the company said in a press release.

The TigerShark is capable of carrying a 300kg modular payload over 750km at subsonic speeds of 750km/h. It has been optimised for deep-strike missions against high-value targets. The system is equipped with advanced autonomy from Auterion, allowing it to operate in GPS-denied and communications-contested environments. It uses inertial and terrain-mapping navigation with on-board edge computing to ensure guidance and accuracy.

Launched from the ground via RATO (Rocket Assisted Take-Off) or vehicle platforms, the drone has been engineered for salvo firing, which enables multiple TigerSharks to be deployed simultaneously to overwhelm air defence systems. Its open architecture design allows for rapid in-service upgrades and a wide array of payload options, from high-explosive warheads to electronic warfare and decoy packages.

A similar approach has been taken with MBDA’s One Way Effector and Russia’s Geran 2, although the payloads are much smaller. 

TigerShark: Addressing strategic needs

The launch followed the debut of the SkyShark tactical drone in July 2025, which provided a compact platform for short-to-medium range operations with a 20kg payload. MGI is now offering customers a two-tier autonomous strike family, with the TigerShark extending the concept into the strategic deep-strike domain.

“SkyShark showed how a sovereign, affordable drone could deliver precision strike at scale. With TigerShark, we’ve taken that same design philosophy into the long-range domain…giving commanders the kind of strategic strike option that was previously out of reach for many nations,” Mike Gascoyne, chief executive at MGI Engineering, said.

The company introduced the TigerShark in response to a growing need among allied nations for affordable, scalable long-range strike capabilities. By combining payload flexibility, survivability, and sovereign UK manufacture, MGI states it is a credible alternative to traditional cruise missile systems, particularly in an era of increasingly sophisticated anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) environments.

Defence explainer: A2/AD

A2/AD is a broad term that was originally applied to the challenges faced by US forces operating in the Indo-Pacific. The concept gained traction with a 2003 report, “Meeting the Anti-Access and Area-Denial Challenge,” by Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr. and Barry Watts from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), a US defence think-tank. They noted that the US no longer kept large forces deployed forward as it did during the Cold War and was instead dependent on being able to deploy into a theatre without opposition. They identified two potential strategies an adversary could use to deter or defeat the US:

“If anti-access (A2) strategies aim to prevent US forces entry into a theater of operations, then area-denial (AD) operations aim to prevent their freedom of action in the more narrow confines of the area under an enemy’s direct control. AD operations thus include actions by an adversary in the air, on land, and on and under the sea to contest and prevent US joint operations within their defended battlespace.”

As such, the concept is more relevant to the Indo-Pacific than Europe, where most of NATO’s forces are essentially already in what would be Russia’s theatre of operations. However, Russia does nonetheless retain a significant and credible air defence and long-range strike capability. In Russian parlance, an operation to defend against NATO’s airpower would be called a Strategic Operation for Repelling Aerospace Aggression (SORASA), according to Dima Adamsky. It would combine long-range strike capabilities from all domains, including its nuclear triad, the air force and air defence forces to try and defeat NATO’s airpower. 

Calibre comment

Conducting massed airstrikes with weapons like cruise missiles involves a lot of planning and intelligence gathering. This would typically involve extensive efforts to locate and analyse enemy air defences and electronic warfare systems so that the most effective flight paths for the missiles can be planned. Even then, advanced weapons like StormShadow can be intercepted and defeated if used in small numbers without supporting enablers. Mass certainly has its place and can stress air defences quite considerably, as Russia’s bombardments of Ukraine, and Iran’s of Israel have shown. However, as Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the RUSI think-tank wrote for the Calibre Defence magazine, “cheap massed systems are a key enabler required to get high-end DEAD munitions through to GBAD targets, not a replacement for those high-end weapons.”

By Sam Cranny-Evans, published on September 17, 2025. Credit for the lead image is Calibre Defence, and it shows the TigerShark display model at DSEI.