Neometrix / Counter-UAS Systems / Air-Defence Gun Upgrade / NMX-ADG-40

NMX-ADG-40 · ENGINEERED TO ORDER — RADAR · RF DETECTION · ELECTRO-OPTICAL · DRIVEN MOUNTS

A gun that can see.

Name: Air-Defence Gun Upgrade & Counter-UAS Integration
Brand: Neometrix

Against small unmanned aircraft a gun already has the two things that matter most. It can reach the target, and it can keep going without spending something expensive on something cheap. What it never had was the ability to find one in time.

So that is what we add. Radar for all-weather position. Radio-frequency detection for the control link, often earlier still. An electro-optical head to confirm it by eye. One fused track, a fire-control solution, and a driven mount quick and precise enough to act on it — fitted to guns you already own.

Discuss an upgrade Capability note (PDF)

An upgraded air-defence gun position at dusk: a towed twin-barrel anti-aircraft mount with a sealed electro-optical sensor head fitted on its cradle, a flat-panel radar raised on a mast behind it and a control cabin to one side

Fig · 01 — The upgraded position. The gun is the one that was always there; everything that lets it find a target is new.

The problem

finding, not reachingthe gun could always reach

The sensing

radar + RF + electro-opticalfused into one track

The mount

servo, encodedquick to get there, precise to stop

Our role

system integrationsensors from partners

Status

engineered to ordersuccessive-quoted class

ISO 9001ISO 14001Systems integrationPrecision drives & positioningField-fit kits

Overview

Why the answer is still a gun.

The economics decided this before the engineering did.

A flat-panel surveillance radar mounted on a raised mast on a towable trailer, standing against an open sky at a defended site

Fig · 02 — Radar. The layer that turns a gun position from reactive to cued — all weather, day and night, watching where nobody is looking.

You cannot answer a cheap, numerous threat with an expensive, scarce one. That is the whole argument for the gun — and the whole reason it needs to see.

Cheap threat, cheap answer

Small unmanned aircraft are inexpensive and arrive in numbers. Whatever you spend to stop one is spent again on the next. A gun is one of the few answers whose cost per engagement stays low and whose magazine is deep.

And the mounts already exist — in numbers, in position, maintained by crews who know them, with structural life left in them. The asset is there. The gap is elsewhere.

The gap is sensing

These positions were built for targets that were large, fast and high, and they relied on people looking. A small aircraft flying low and slow arrives without being seen, and a crew who cannot find it early cannot use the reach the gun already has.

That is a sensing and integration problem, not a gun problem. Give the position radar, radio-frequency detection and an electro-optical head, fuse them into one track, and put a mount under the gun that can act on that track quickly.

What we do, and with whom

Neometrix is the system-integration partner: the sensing fit and its alignment, the driven mount, power, cabling, the console and shelter, the interlocks, and the kit that installs it all without altering the gun. Radar and radio-frequency detection come from specialist partners; the gun and its fire control are the customer's.

Detectedradar, all weather

Identifiedthe control link, early

Confirmedelectro-optical, by eye

Pointeddriven mount, precisely

The system

Five layers, one pointing order.

Detection, identification, confirmation, decision, and the mount that acts — engineered so they behave as one thing rather than five bought ones.

FIG · 02COUNTER-UAS GUN SYSTEM · RADAR / RF / ELECTRO-OPTICAL / FUSED TRACK / FIRE CONTROL / DRIVEN MOUNT — OURS vs PARTNER vs CUSTOMER

Three kinds of box in this drawing, and the honesty is in keeping them apart: what we engineer, what a specialist partner supplies, and what the customer already owns and keeps.

1 · Radar

Position and track in weather, darkness and clutter, on targets nobody is watching for. It is what converts a gun position from something that reacts to something that is cued.

2 · Radio-frequency detection

The control link is often detectable before the aircraft itself is worth looking at — useful warning, and useful evidence when deciding what kind of machine is out there.

3 · Electro-optical & infra-red

The confirming layer. A head on the mount looks where the track says, so a person can see the thing itself before anything is decided about it, by day or by night.

4 · Fusion & fire control

Three sensors, one track: reconciled so the crew read a single picture. The customer's fire-control solution turns that track into a pointing order for the mount.

5 · The driven mount

Servo traverse and elevation on low-backlash gearing, with encoders that know exactly where the barrel points — because a cued gun is only as good as the mount that has to get there.

6 · Console, power & fit

An operator station instead of handwheels, electrical supply for a position that had none, and a bolt-on reversible kit that leaves the gun and its certification untouched.

Work content

What the upgrade contains, element by element.

The last column is the one that matters — ours, a partner's, or the customer's.

A radio-frequency detection array on a slim mast: several small flat sealed antenna panels arranged around a central column above a grey equipment cabinet, against open sky

Fig · 03 — Radio-frequency detection. Often the earliest warning a position gets, and the layer that helps say what kind of machine is out there.

Element	What it does	Ours / partner / customer
Site & mount survey	what the position and fleet actually are	ours
Radar	all-weather detection and track	specialist partner
RF detection	finds and characterises the control link	specialist partner
Electro-optical / infra-red head	visual and thermal confirmation	partner-supplied, fitted by us
Sensor mounting & alignment	heads held rigid and co-aligned	ours to engineer
Track fusion & display	three pictures, one track	integrated by us
Fire-control solution	turns a track into a pointing order	the customer's
The gun and what it fires	unchanged by this upgrade	the customer's
Traverse & elevation drives	gets the gun there, holds it there	ours to engineer and build
Low-backlash gearing	removes lost motion from the train	ours to design
Encoders & referencing	the mount knows where it points	ours to integrate
Power & conditioning	supplies a position that had none	ours to engineer
Cabling & protection	survives weather, vibration, handling	ours to build
Console & shelter	where the crew read and decide	ours to engineer
Safety interlocks	people safe around a powered mount	ours to engineer
Retrofit kit & field fitting	bolt-on, reversible, fleet-wide	ours to design and support
Trials, training & documentation	proves it, then hands it over	ours to deliver

The row that decides whether the system is believed is sensor alignment. Radar, the electro-optical head and the barrel must agree about where they are looking — and keep agreeing after transport, vibration and a hot afternoon.

Full specification — expand

System	A counter-unmanned-aircraft upgrade for air-defence gun positions: radar and radio-frequency detection, an electro-optical and infra-red head, fused tracking and display, integration to the customer's fire-control solution, a driven mount with servo traverse and elevation, power, cabling, console and shelter, safety interlocks, a bolt-on reversible retrofit kit, and trials, training and documentation
The One Idea	A gun that can see. It could always reach a small aircraft; it could never find one in time
Why A Gun	Small unmanned aircraft are cheap and numerous, so the cost of each engagement matters and a deep magazine matters. A gun answers both — and the mounts already exist, in position, with crews who know them
Radar	Detection and track in all weather, day and night, on targets nobody is looking for — the layer that makes a position cued rather than reactive. Supplied by a specialist radar partner and integrated by us
Radio-Frequency Detection	Finds the control link, frequently the earliest indication a position gets, and contributes to deciding what kind of machine is present. Supplied by specialist partners and integrated by us
Electro-Optical / Infra-Red	The confirming layer: a head carried on the mount, cued by the track, so a person sees the thing itself — by day or by night — before any decision is taken
Fusion	The three pictures reconciled into one track on one display, so the crew are not arbitrating between three screens at the moment it matters
Driven Mount	Servo traverse and elevation on low-backlash gearing with encoders: lost motion and flex become pointing error, so gearing, preload and structure are engineered and measured. A cued gun is only as good as the mount that must get there and stop
Alignment	Radar, the electro-optical head and the barrel axis must agree about where they are looking, and hold that agreement through transport, vibration and temperature — the discipline that decides whether the system is trusted
Retrofit Discipline	The kit bolts to interfaces that already exist, is reversible, and leaves the gun unaltered, so the upgrade does not disturb the gun's own certification and a position can be returned to its original state
Mount Types	Legacy towed and static air-defence mounts — 40 mm L/70 and ZU-23-2B class and similar — named because they are public designations that operators search for; the fleet, unit and customer are not
Honest Scope	Ours: system engineering and integration, sensing fit and alignment, fusion and display integration, driven mount and drives, power and cabling, console and shelter, interlocks, the retrofit kit, trials, rollout and training. Specialist partners: the radar and the radio-frequency detection. The customer's: the gun and everything it fires, the fire-control solution, any effector
Sensitive Boundaries	No performance figure of any kind appears on this page — no ranges, rates, accuracies, detection distances or envelopes — and no customer, unit, command, reference, part number or partner company name. Public gun designations are named because operators search for them; everything else is described at capability level
Status	Neometrix has quoted against successive air-defence gun upgrade requirements, including counter-unmanned-aircraft detection and interdiction capability and gun traverse and elevation drive requirements, offered as the system-integration partner for the sensing, the driven mount and the fit, with radar and radio-frequency detection from specialist partners and the gun and its fire control furnished by the customer, and no delivered gun upgrade is claimed.

Configurations

Four scopes, one architecture.

Requirements of this class arrive in stages, and the stages are worth buying separately.

Detection fit

Give the position eyes

Radar and radio-frequency detection installed, powered, fused and displayed — so a site knows what is in its air long before anything else needs deciding.

Driven mount

Give the gun reflexes

Servo traverse and elevation with encoders and low-backlash gearing, replacing manual or hydraulic drive — the half that lets a cued gun actually get there.

Interdiction fit

Join the two

The electro-optical head, the fused track and the customer's fire-control solution integrated with the driven mount, with the interlocks and trials that make the pairing trustworthy.

And the fourth: a comprehensive upgrade — survey, sensing, fusion, driven mount, power, console, shelter, kit and fleet rollout taken as one programme, which is how these requirements are usually written when a whole fleet is brought forward at once.

The interior of an air-defence control cabin: two monitors on a desk, one showing a plain circular radar sweep display with small track symbols and the other a dark camera view with a rectangular tracking box, beside a small control panel with a joystick

Fig · 04 — The control cabin. Three sensors arrive here as one picture — and the decision that follows is a person's, not the system's.

Where it fits

Positions that are worth keeping.

The case is strongest exactly where the equipment is oldest and most numerous.

Legacy towed gun fleets

40 mm L/70 and ZU-23-2B class mounts, held in large numbers, well understood by their crews, with decades of structural life left — and no sensing to speak of.

Fixed site and installation defence

Where a position can be given permanent power, a mast and a console, and where the threat that changed is the small, low, slow one.

Critical infrastructure

Sites that must be watched continuously rather than manned reactively — radar and radio-frequency layers earn their place long before anything else happens.

Mixed-generation batteries

Units operating several mount types at once, where a common sensing, console and interface approach is worth more than a bespoke answer per type.

Overhaul and rebuild programmes

A mount already stripped for overhaul is the cheapest moment to fit drives, cabling and sensor interfaces — the work is half done.

Training establishments

Where instrumented, repeatable pointing and a real sensor picture matter for teaching, and a driven mount can be exercised far more than a manual one.

A sealed electro-optical sensor head on a machined two-axis mount fitted to a gun cradle, with the servo drive unit and cabling visible beneath it

Fig · 05 — The sensing fit on the mount. The head looks where the track says; the drives take the barrel to the same place. Making those two agree is the engineering.

FAQ

Common questions.

Longer answers, for readers who want the reasoning.

Q · 01 Why answer small unmanned aircraft with a gun at all?

Because of arithmetic that no amount of sophistication escapes. The threat is cheap and numerous: the machines are inexpensive, they can be bought or built in quantity, and losing one costs the other side very little. Any answer that spends something expensive to stop each one loses that exchange even when it works perfectly — and worse, it runs out. A gun inverts both problems. Its cost per engagement stays low, and its magazine is deep enough to keep answering rather than being husbanded for the targets that matter most. There is a second argument that is easy to overlook: the guns are already there. They exist in numbers, they are sited where things need defending, they are maintained by crews who know them, and they are paid for. Adding sensing and a driven mount to an asset that already exists is a fraction of the cost of fielding something new, and it can be done fleet-wide in a timeframe that matters. None of this argues that guns replace other layers; a serious defence is layered, and this page is deliberately about one layer of it. It argues that the affordable, high-volume layer of that defence is a gun — and that the only reason it has not been doing the job already is that it could not see.

Q · 02 Why three kinds of sensor rather than one good one?

Because each of them fails in a way the others do not, and small unmanned aircraft are unusually good at exploiting single-sensor weaknesses. Radar is the backbone: it works in darkness, weather and dust, it searches a volume rather than a direction, and it produces the position and track a mount can actually be pointed from. Its difficulty is that small, slow, low targets are hard to separate from clutter and from birds, which is precisely the discrimination problem. Radio-frequency detection attacks that from a completely different angle: instead of looking for the aircraft it listens for the control link, which frequently exists before the aircraft is close enough to matter and which carries information about what kind of machine is present. Its weakness is equally clear — a machine that is not transmitting is invisible to it. Electro-optical and infra-red is the confirming layer: it does not search well, but once cued it lets a person see the thing itself, day or night, which is what allows anybody to be confident before a decision is taken. Put together, they cover each other's blind spots: radar finds, radio-frequency corroborates and characterises, and the optical head confirms. Fusing them into one track on one display is the part that has to be engineered properly, because three separate screens at a decisive moment is not a capability, it is an argument.

Q · 03 Who supplies the radar and the radio-frequency detection?

Specialist partners, and we are deliberate about saying so. Building a radar or a radio-frequency detection system is a deep, narrow discipline pursued by companies who do nothing else, and a systems integrator who claims to also be that maker is usually overstating one of the two. Our position is the opposite and, we think, more useful to a customer: we bring established specialist sensors to the design, and we take responsibility for making them work as part of the whole. That means the physical fit — mounting, mast or cradle interfaces, alignment, environmental protection; the electrical fit — supply, conditioning, distribution and protection on a position that had no electrical system; the data fit — getting each sensor's output into a common picture and onto one display; and the engineering that makes the fused track agree with where the mount actually points. We do not name partners on a public page: a partnership is a commercial relationship between two companies and it is announced jointly, when both are ready, not implied by a supplier's website. In a quotation, by contrast, the proposed sensors are named explicitly, with their maker, so the customer knows exactly what is being offered and who stands behind each part of it.

Q · 04 What exactly do you not touch?

The list is short and firm, because a page like this is only useful if it is honest about its edges. We do not touch the gun — not the barrel, not the breech, not the recoil system — and we supply nothing that it fires and describe nothing of the kind. We do not produce the fire-control solution: the computation that turns a track into a pointing order is its own discipline and is furnished by the customer or their chosen supplier. We do not make the radar or the radio-frequency detection equipment; those come from specialist partners. We supply no effector of any kind. What we do is everything that turns those parts into one working position: the survey, the system engineering, the sensing fit and its alignment, the fusion and display integration, the driven mount with its drives, gearing and encoders, the power and cabling, the console and shelter, the interlocks, the retrofit kit, and the trials, rollout and training. Our quotations state this division in the same words. Being explicit is not modesty — it is that a customer buying an upgrade needs to know exactly which risk sits with which supplier, and a vendor who blurs that line is a problem that shows up at trials.

Q · 05 Why does the mount matter if the sensors do the hard part?

Because a cued gun is only as good as the mount that has to get there, and this is where an upgrade quietly succeeds or fails. Sensing produces a track; the mount has to follow it. On a legacy position that mount was pointed by hand or by simple hydraulics, and both were engineered for a different problem entirely. The specific enemy is backlash — the free play in a gear train where the driving side has moved and the driven side has not yet followed. On a hand-cranked mount it is invisible: the operator simply winds until the sight looks right. Under closed-loop control following a moving track it is corrosive, because the controller commands a movement, nothing happens for a moment, then the load arrives suddenly; reverse direction and the dead zone returns. The result is hunting and overshoot, worst exactly when the target changes direction. Stiffness is the same argument in another form: a train that flexes under load turns a commanded position into an approximate one. So the answer is mechanical before it is electrical — gearing chosen and preloaded to minimise lost motion, structure sized so deflection stays small, drives matched to the mount's real inertia and balance, and the whole train measured rather than assumed. Get that right and ordinary control works well; get it wrong and clever control only makes the error arrive faster.

Q · 06 Has Neometrix delivered a system of this class?

Neometrix has quoted against successive air-defence gun upgrade requirements, including counter-unmanned-aircraft detection and interdiction capability and gun traverse and elevation drive requirements, offered as the system-integration partner for the sensing, the driven mount and the fit, with radar and radio-frequency detection from specialist partners and the gun and its fire control furnished by the customer, and no delivered gun upgrade is claimed. We would rather say that plainly than dress it up. The record behind the sentence has two halves. The first is a run of pursued upgrade requirements — giving existing air-defence positions the ability to detect and engage small unmanned aircraft, and comprehensive upgrades of existing mounts. The second, and the reason this page is not speculative, is a set of pursued requirements for the variable-speed traverse and elevation drive gear of exactly this class of mount: the mechanical heart of what an upgrade replaces, and squarely the engineering this company does. Around them stands work this site shows in depth: precision sensor mounts and boresight equipment, the anti-drone mission vehicle and its sensing integration, positioners and drive systems across dozens of machines, and controls and safety integration as the house trade. The honest shape of a first contract is what these requirements define: survey the fleet, engineer and prove a kit on a prototype position, integrate the partner sensors and the customer's solution, then roll out with training and support.

Q · 07 How does this differ from your other counter-unmanned-aircraft pages?

Three pages, three genuinely different things, and the claims are kept apart so none of them counts another's work. The counter-drone system page is the layered capability in general: detection, decision and defeat considered as one system, where our role is prime integration and the platform that carries it. The anti-drone mission vehicle page is the mobile platform: a vehicle engineered to carry that capability to where it is needed, with the mast, power, protection and integration that implies. This page is the gun-based answer, retrofitted onto positions a customer already owns — where the effector is not bought at all but is the gun already sited, and the engineering question is how to give it sight and reflexes without altering it. Read them together if you are shaping a programme, because a serious defence usually needs some of each: mobile cover where the threat moves, upgraded fixed positions where the assets are, and a system view that makes the two behave as one picture rather than three procurements.

Q · 08 How is an upgrade proved before it is accepted?

In stages, and mostly on things that can be measured rather than demonstrated. The first proving is in the factory: drives and gearing run against the real inertia they will see, lost motion and stiffness measured rather than assumed, positioning checked for repeatability in both directions, and the electrical system exercised for the environment it will live in. Then a prototype fit on an actual position from the fleet, which is where the survey is tested honestly — interfaces either pick up or they do not, cable routes either work or chafe, and the fitting sequence either can be followed by a unit's own tradesmen or cannot. Then integration with the partner sensors and the customer's solution connected: that the fused track is coherent, that radar, the optical head and the mount agree about where they are looking, that the agreement holds through movement, transport and temperature, and that interlocks behave under fault conditions and not only in normal use. Finally the customer's own acceptance regime applies, on their terms, against their approved criteria, at their trials — and everything performance-related belongs there, in their documents, not on a public page. That division is deliberate: we prove the engineering we are responsible for, and the capability is judged by the people who will own it.

The system, the vehicle, and the mounts.

Three neighbours in the counter-unmanned-aircraft and precision-mount world.

↗ The system

Counter-Drone System

The layered capability as a whole — detect, decide, defeat — and our prime-integration role in it.

↗ The vehicle

Anti-Drone Mission Vehicle

The mobile platform that carries the capability — mast, power, protection and integration.

↗ The mounts

Payload Mounts & Boresight Equipment

The precision-mount and alignment discipline this upgrade applies to an existing position.

Browse all Neometrix product lines.

Get a quotation

Tell us the positions, the fleet,
and what will be furnished.

The projects desk replies within two working days with a clause-by-clause compliance matrix, the proposed sensor set named with its makers, and a budgetary quotation. Write to [email protected] or use the form.

Enquire — gun upgrade Capability sheet (PDF) +91 7777 876 876

ISO 9001 / 14001 ENGINEERED TO ORDER — AIR-DEFENCE GUN UPGRADE & COUNTER-UAS INTEGRATION RADAR · RF DETECTION · ELECTRO-OPTICAL · FUSED TRACK · DRIVEN MOUNT — A GUN THAT CAN SEE ENGINEERED IN NOIDA · INDIA

A gun that can see.