Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. (Nasdaq: KTOS), a technology company in Defense, National Security and Global Markets, today announced its participation in NATO’s At-Sea Demonstration (ASD)/Formidable Shield (FS) 25. This extensive live-fire exercise, the largest of its kind in the European theater, is hosted biennially by the U.S. 6th Fleet and executed by Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO.
This year’s exercise comprised a series of live-fire events against unmanned air and surface systems, subsonic, supersonic, and ballistic targets. It incorporated multiple Allied ships, multi-national/multi-service ground-based air defenses, and aviation forces, working cohesively across battlespaces to deliver lethal effects, accomplish exercise objectives, and hone warfighting skills.
Kratos’ Aegis Readiness Assessment Vehicle Type B (ARAV-B) medium range ballistic missile target participated during the exercise. Kratos launched the ARAV-B target on May 20, 2025, which flew a nominal trajectory and performed all planned events before being successfully engaged and intercepted by U.S. guided missile destroyers USS Bulkeley (DDG-84) and USS Thomas Hudner (DDG-116) using a Standard Missile 3 (SM-3).
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Download free sample pages More informationDave Carter, President of the Kratos Defense & Rocket Support Services Division, said, “Kratos is immensely proud of our dedicated team of professionals who consistently contribute to the success of events like Formidable Shield for users worldwide. Our team continues to deliver affordable, responsive, and reliable threat representative targets to our government customers and their allies.”
Eric DeMarco, President and CEO of Kratos, said, “At Kratos, we deliver real, mission relevant products and systems to our customers, not powerpoints, renditions or imagination. We believe that affordability is a technology, and rather than pay dividends or buy back KTOS stock, we invest Kratos funds to rapidly develop and field National Security relevant hardware, innovating, and also saving our government customer and the U.S. taxpayer time and money compared to traditional approaches. Kratos’ participation in Formidable Shield 25 is a recent example of the success and value creation of Kratos’ strategy for our entire incredibly important stakeholder community.”
The exercise, which commenced on May 3, 2025, involved approximately 6,900 personnel from across NATO member states. Kratos has been supporting the biennial Formidable Shield Exercise with aerial drone and ballistic missile targets since its inception in 2017, continually offering NATO forces opportunities to test and improve interoperability in the integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) environment.
