BRAWLR: The Little Air-Defense Truck That’s About to Drive Itself Into War

Another step toward closing Ukraine's skies

SNC

While the frontlines in Ukraine have remained relatively static in most of 2025, (with tiny, incremental gains by Russia), the year also saw huge progress made toward closing Ukraine’s skies.

In fact, the biggest story of the year will likely be this: While AFU defenders have held the line in the East, Ukraine’s air defenses have matured to a point where only a small percentage of Russian junk gets through.

Between F-16s hunting drones, legacy systems like NASAMS and Patriot, refurbished Shilkas or Gepards, or the countless high-tech systems like Skynex, Prometheus, Terrahawk Paladin, Gravehawk, the Sky Sentinal AI turret, FrankenSAMs, Vampire, (and many more), it’s getting extremely difficult for Russia to prosecute deep strike missions.

It’s into this veritable zoo of air defenses that a new system emerges: Sierra Nevada Corporation’s (SNC’s) BRAWLR. This falls under what SNC calls “Expeditionary Area Air Defense (EAAD) systems.”

In military terms, we call something “expeditionary” when a unit or system is so far forward, it’s essentially cutoff from the normal US military supply lines.

So, according to SNC, what does it take to be an EAAD system?

Open Architecture: The systems are designed to be sensor-agnostic and effector-agnostic, allowing for the rapid integration of various allied and partner nation technologies and weapons systems.

Rapid Deployment: EAAD systems are built for flexibility and are easily deployable to support remote operating locations and provide immediate short-range air defense (SHORAD) capabilities.

Integrated C2 (Command and Control): They can operate as standalone units or connect with existing theater-level C2 interfaces and integrated air defense systems.

Counter-UAS Capabilities: A primary focus of the EAAD family is countering unmanned aerial systems, an area where the systems have demonstrated significant effectiveness.

Autonomy: More on this below!

BRAWLR currently has four hundred confirmed kills in the skies over Ukraine.

And now, SNC wants to take the next step: put the thing on an autonomous chassis, plug in Applied Intuition’s battlefield AI stack, and send a robot air-defense gunfighter to Ukraine’s front line.

If you squint, you can see the outlines of something bigger: a world where ground-based air defenses stop being crewed vehicles and start being roaming, semi-autonomous predators that patrol the battlespace without needing a human behind the wheel.

In this sense, a country could close off entire air defense sectors with very few humans.

After all, people are soft and squishy, get injured remarkably easily, and, at least in the West, are moderately valuable, depending on who they voted for (kidding).

Also, at first glance, BRAWLR looks very similar to the Vampire SAM, which I’ve written about before.

The Vampire you see in Ukrainian service is essentially a modular rocket launcher stuck onto a pickup bed, built originally for counter-drone work using APKWS.

Its strength is simplicity.

A BRAWLR from the SNC press release

Vampire fires APKWS only. BRAWLR carries multiple missile types at once like Sidewinders, APKWS, Stingers, R-27 derivatives, and the fire-control system can juggle those choices in real time. It’s not a drone-defense widget; it’s a full-spectrum short-range air-defense node designed to hunt everything from FPVs to cruise missiles.

Vampire depends heavily on external cueing or a separate laser designator. BRAWLR’s MAAWLR variant has its own X-band radar, thermal cameras, EO/IR suite, and mesh networking, which lets multiple launchers pass targets between themselves.

Vampire reacts. BRAWLR detects, tracks, shares, and engages.

Mobility is where the gap becomes a canyon. Vampire stays human-driven because it was always meant to be cost-effective and disposable. BRAWLR is now headed toward a fully autonomous carrier platform, thanks to the Applied Intuition partnership.

That unlocks missions Vampire could never attempt: running inside FPV-saturated zones, moving under fire, shifting positions after every launch without waiting for a crew, or sitting in places no human would be allowed to linger.

Vampire is the DIY garage gun truck of air defense. BRAWLR is the factory-built, missile-agnostic, sensor-rich hunter-killer that grew out of that idea and left it in the dust.

Let’s take a look at what makes BRAWLR special:

The Basic System That Ukraine Quietly Turned Into a Legend

SNC introduced BRAWLR in 2023 with the kind of marketing language defense companies use when they’d love to brag but can’t.

“One operator.” “Rapid deployment.” “Proven defensive capability.”

They never actually mentioned that they sent it to Ukraine, yet the kill count does the talking. There’s only one place on the planet where an air-defense truck gets that many reps in that short a time: the country living under the heaviest drone and cruise-missile bombardment in modern history.