Anti-Drone Ammunition: How It Works and Who's Building It

Drones have become a fast-growing threat in security and military operations, and ammunition manufacturers are now building dedicated products to counter them — with two very different technical approaches emerging.

Beretta and Norma: the shotgun route. Beretta's Benelli M4 A.I. "Drone Guardian" pairs a 12-gauge shotgun platform with Norma's AD-LER (Anti-Drone Long Effective Range) shell. The manufacturer says the 12/70 round uses a tungsten load engineered for energy transfer against small aerial targets, effective out to 100 metres, and rated for shotguns built to handle 1,320 bar. At IWA 2025, the two companies went further, unveiling a belt-fed anti-drone round for high-rate-of-fire, crew-served weapons rather than handheld shotguns. You can see the Drone Guardian system in action on Benelli's own product page.

RWS Technology: the rifle-caliber route. RWS Technology takes a different approach with its 7.62x51 UDD LIGHT — UDD standing for Urban Drone Defence. Rather than a shotgun shell, it's built around a standard NATO rifle caliber firing a 1.0-gram plastic, lead-free projectile, with a patented low-emission SINTOX primer. The manufacturer lists a muzzle velocity of 1,050 m/s and 613 J of energy, rated for full-automatic weapons, waterproof and shockproof, and built to function from -30°C to +40°C — designed for drone defense at ranges up to 100 metres in built-up, inner-city areas. RWS demonstrates the system in a video on their own UDD product page.

Different as they are, both systems share the same underlying shift: rather than conventional ballistic performance against a person or game animal, these rounds are engineered specifically to disrupt a small aerial airframe.

This is defense and security-market equipment — it isn't available to licensed civilian collectors or target shooters, and it isn't listed or sold on Maltaguns. We're covering it here as an industry development, part of a broader shift across the firearms industry as commercial and military drone use continues to grow.