Beretta develops 8-barrel drone-killing turret

Beretta Defense Technologies will unveil a new remote-controlled weapon station for counter-drone operations at Eurosatory 2026 in Paris next month, bringing to the exhibition a platform that mounts eight Benelli Drone Guardian shotgun systems on a single automated turret capable of tracking and engaging drone targets without requiring an operator to physically aim the weapon.

The LIVET Remote Controlled Weapon Station, developed through a collaboration between Beretta Defense Technologies and Italian technology company DUALEE, represents the industrialization of a shotgun-based counter-drone approach that Benelli has been developing through its Drone Guardian platform and now scales into a multi-barrel, remotely operated configuration suited for fixed-site and critical infrastructure protection.

The Benelli Drone Guardian that forms LIVET’s foundation is a purpose-built semi-automatic shotgun firing programmable air-burst ammunition, designed specifically for engaging small unmanned aircraft at close range. The logic behind using shotgun technology for counter-drone work is straightforward: small drones present a difficult targeting problem for conventional rifle or machine gun fire because they are small, fast, and maneuverable, and hitting them with a single aimed projectile under pressure is genuinely difficult for human operators. A shotgun firing a spreading pattern of projectiles, particularly when those projectiles are programmed to detonate at a calculated distance, significantly increases the probability of a kill on each trigger pull compared to any single-projectile weapon. The Drone Guardian took that principle and optimized it for the counter-drone mission specifically, and LIVET takes eight of those systems and automates their deployment through a remote-controlled platform with auto-tracking capability.

The auto-tracking functionality is the capability that elevates LIVET beyond a simple remote weapon station. A human operator watching a small drone through a camera and manually trying to keep a weapon pointed at it while it maneuvers faces a task that requires both excellent situational awareness and fine motor control under pressure, exactly the conditions that degrade human performance most severely. Auto-tracking removes that burden by using sensors and software to maintain a targeting solution on a detected drone automatically, allowing the operator to focus on the engagement decision rather than the mechanics of keeping the weapon aligned. Combined with the DUALEE technology integration, which Beretta describes as enhancing the platform’s capabilities without specifying the technical details of what DUALEE contributes, the system is designed to reduce the reaction time between drone detection and engagement to the minimum that the mechanical and electronic architecture allows.

The counter-drone market that LIVET enters has expanded dramatically since 2022, driven by the comprehensive demonstration in Ukraine that small, cheap unmanned aircraft can destroy expensive military equipment, disrupt logistics, and threaten critical infrastructure at a scale and persistence that no previous threat category combined. Defending against that threat has generated demand for layered solutions that can address drones at different ranges and with different lethality requirements: electronic jamming and spoofing for softer approaches that preserve the drone intact, directed energy for high-volume engagements where cost per kill matters, and kinetic systems for confirmed hostile targets that need to be physically destroyed. LIVET positions itself explicitly in the kinetic layer, the hard end of the spectrum where the objective is not to redirect or confuse a drone but to ensure it does not complete its mission under any circumstances.

The choice to mount eight Benelli Drone Guardian systems on a single platform rather than a single weapon creates both capability redundancy and engagement capacity that a single-barrel system cannot match. If one system malfunctions or runs out of ammunition during an engagement, seven others remain operational. If a raid involves multiple simultaneous targets, the platform can potentially engage more than one before any of them reaches the protected asset. The modular architecture that Beretta describes allows the LIVET configuration to be adapted to different operational contexts, suggesting the platform can be integrated into fixed defensive perimeters around critical infrastructure, mounted on vehicles, or deployed as a standalone protected position depending on the mission requirement.

Beretta Defense Technologies operates within the broader Beretta Group, one of the world’s oldest continuously operating firearms manufacturers, with origins dating to 1526 in the Val Trompia valley of northern Italy. The group’s defense division, operating as a distinct entity from the commercial arms business, has developed a counter-drone portfolio that now spans multiple product lines at different capability levels, and the LIVET announcement positions it as the latest and most capable kinetic layer in that portfolio. Benelli Armi, whose Drone Guardian platform provides the weapon systems integrated into LIVET, is also part of the Beretta Group, which means the collaboration represents an internal integration of technologies from within the same industrial family rather than an external partnership.

Eurosatory, where LIVET will make its public exhibition debut, is the world’s largest land and airland defense and security exhibition, held biennially in Paris and drawing procurement officials, military delegations, and industry representatives from across NATO and beyond. The timing of the Eurosatory announcement for a counter-drone kinetic platform is commercially deliberate: European defense ministries are in the midst of the largest defense spending expansion in decades, with counter-drone capability consistently identified as a procurement priority at both the national level and through NATO’s collective defense planning. A new kinetic counter-drone system from a well-known European manufacturer, demonstrated in person at the continent’s most important defense exhibition, reaches exactly the audience with both the authority and the budget to make procurement decisions.