Northrop Grumman has given a name to the 50mm gun-based air defence system it has been developing to shoot down cruise missiles and drone swarms, calling it Raid Hunter, and says testing through the rest of this year will support accelerated fielding. The system pairs the company’s Chain Gun with precision-guided 50mm ammunition and a networked system controller. Its purpose is to handle raids large enough to saturate conventional defences, which is a problem missiles alone cannot solve because a magazine of interceptors runs out faster than an attacker runs out of drones. Raid Hunter addresses this critical need by delivering a cost effective and deep magazine solution which can be rapidly delivered to the warfighter at scale.” Guns had largely been written off for air defence by the 1990s, displaced by missiles that were more accurate at greater range.