Nightjar

Passive electro-optical seeker with onboard terminal guidance

What it does

Nightjar turns a coordinate into a target.

A one-way system is launched at a grid reference. By the time it arrives, the target has moved, or was never precisely where the plan said it would be. Nightjar searches the arrival area, identifies what it is looking at, classifies it, holds track through the run-in, and guides the airframe to the point of impact.

The entire sequence runs on board, in seconds, with no operator in the loop and nothing radiating.

The Nightjar seeker: a sealed olive housing with two optical apertures on the angled front face, a vent below them, and a threaded connector at the rear.

How it fits

Gryphus supplies subsystems. Nightjar and TALON are designed to sit inside someone else's platform — a UAV manufacturer's airframe, a prime integrator's effector, an air defence programme's interceptor — and our interfaces are documented with that in mind.

Integration chain. An airframe connects through its interface to Nightjar, the Gryphus seeker hardware, which runs TALON, the Gryphus onboard software. The airframe and the interface are drawn dim as the customer's own; the two Gryphus blocks are picked out in amber. YOUR SYSTEM AIRFRAME INTERFACE existing platform defined connection GRYPHUS SUPPLIES NIGHTJAR TALON seeker hardware onboard software Integration chain. An airframe connects through its interface to Nightjar, the Gryphus seeker hardware, which runs TALON, the Gryphus onboard software. The airframe and the interface are drawn dim as the customer's own; the two Gryphus blocks are picked out in amber. YOUR SYSTEM AIRFRAME existing platform INTERFACE defined connection GRYPHUS SUPPLIES NIGHTJAR seeker hardware TALON onboard software
Amber marks what Gryphus supplies. The airframe and the interface it mounts to are already yours.

Attributes

Sensing
Passive electro-optical. No active illumination, no emission.
Navigation
Independent of GNSS. No satellite fix required at any stage of flight.
Communications
None required after launch. No data link, no ground station, no network.
Processing
Detection, classification, tracking and terminal guidance computed on the airframe.
Targets
Static and moving surface targets.
Integration
Retrofit to existing airframes via defined interface, or supplied on the Gryphus reference front end.
Manufacture
UK design, UK-sourced components, UK assembly.

Nightjar is paired with TALON, our onboard perception and guidance software. The two are supplied together as a guidance front end, or separately for customers integrating into an existing sensor or effector architecture.

Where it is used

Precision terminal guidance

Converting low-cost, long-range one-way systems from coordinate-attack weapons into precision effectors capable of engaging moving targets, without a link back to the operator.

Counter-UAS interceptor seekers

Terminal seekers for interceptors engaging small, fast, low-flying air targets, in engagements where command guidance is difficult and cost per shot decides whether the defence is sustainable.

Navigation in denied environments

Guidance and terminal navigation for uncrewed systems operating where satellite navigation is jammed, spoofed or simply unavailable.

Critical national infrastructure

Passive detection and engagement capability for the protection of airports, energy sites, ports, substations and data centres against uncrewed intrusion.

Why Gryphus

Passive by design

The seeker emits nothing — no signal to jam, no emission to detect, no transmission to track back to the launch point.

Everything on the airframe

Perception, classification, tracking and guidance are computed on board.

Built for the exchange ratio

Every design decision is taken against unit cost and production rate as well as performance.

Sovereign by construction

Designed, engineered and manufactured in the United Kingdom, on a UK supply chain, with UK-sourced components.

Tell us what you are integrating into.

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