Startup Heaviside unveils Tyr, a 15-pound anti-tank loitering munition, at AUSA 2026

TLDR

• Heaviside unveiled Tyr, a 2.3 kg loitering munition with an anti-tank warhead, at AUSA 2026.¹²
• Cheap, portable and armed with a real anti-armour warhead, it joins a fast-growing field of loitering munitions.¹²
• Heaviside says it costs "way under $100,000" per unit and requires a human to authorise the final strike.¹

Heaviside Industries, a Los Angeles-headquartered startup founded in May 2026, unveiled its Tyr loitering munition at the AUSA 2026 conference in Washington, DC.¹² Tyr is the company's second product after Moth, a lightweight radio-frequency spectrum analyser for individual soldiers, and marks Heaviside's entry into the crowded market for low-cost, expendable attack drones.²

The munition is 790 mm long with a 1,000 mm swept wingspan, weighs 2.3 kg at launch, and is fired from a reusable, crossbow-like ground launcher that fits in a rucksack once the wings are detached.² At roughly 40 km, its range is set by the maximum reach of its dual-band data-link in a contested electronic environment, while its stated endurance of over 60 minutes and 100 km/h cruise speed let it loiter over a target area before diving on the most valuable objective it finds.²

Although Heaviside is headquartered in Los Angeles, most of its engineering, development, and testing happen in Norway, next to defence firm Nammo, which supplies Tyr's anti-tank warheads and a live-fire test range.¹ Those warheads, derived from Nammo's M72 LAW anti-tank rocket series, make up roughly a third of the drone's weight and carry enough explosive power to destroy a main battle tank such as a Russian T-72 or T-80; the company says Tyr has successfully flown to and detonated targets in Norwegian winter conditions of 20 degrees below zero.¹

Heaviside president Nils Haagenrud, a veteran of Teledyne FLIR's Black Hornet programme, told Breaking Defense that Tyr costs "way under $100,000" per unit, built largely from commercial off-the-shelf components to keep costs down and supply chains resilient.¹ The drone fuses electro-optical and infrared sensors and incorporates AI targeting features being field-tested in Ukraine, though Haagenrud said the company requires a human in the loop for the final engagement decision.¹

Why it matters: Tyr adds another entrant to the fast-growing field of cheap, soldier-portable loitering munitions that pair commercial components with real anti-armour warheads, and its close ties to an established arms-maker in Nammo give a young startup a path to live-fire validation and manufacturing scale that most first-time drone companies don't have.