Franco-British CTAS 40mm Unmanned Turret Brings Counter-Drone Firepower to Armored Vehicles.

At Eurosatory 2026 in Paris, CTA International unveiled an unmanned turret concept built around its 40 mm Cased Telescoped Armament System, giving armored vehicles a more versatile weapon against drones, urban threats, and armored targets. The Franco-British company said during the exhibition that the 40CT cannon has moved into serial production, strengthening its role as a compact high-firepower option for modern land forces.

The demonstrator places the cannon and ammunition feed above the vehicle roof, preserving internal space while allowing an 85-degree elevation arc for engagements in the vertical plane. That capability directly responds to the rise of reconnaissance drones, FPV drones, and loitering munitions, which are forcing armored vehicles to combine direct-fire lethality with short-range air defense.

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CTA International’s 40 mm CTAS unmanned turret concept, displayed at Eurosatory 2026 in Paris, combines high-elevation fire, programmable airburst ammunition, and protected internal reloading to equip armored vehicles for ground combat and short-range counter-drone defense (Picture source: Army Recognition Group).

The 40CTAS is built around the 40CTC cannon and a cased telescoped round measuring 65 x 255 mm, in which the projectile is seated inside the cartridge case rather than protruding forward as in conventional ammunition. This geometry reduces ammunition length and allows a compact feed arrangement. The cannon has a recoiling mass of 230 kg, a barrel length of 2,800 mm, overall cannon dimensions of 3,428 mm long, 311 mm wide, and 264 mm high, and a rate of fire of up to 200 rounds per minute. Those figures explain the main design argument behind CTAS: it offers 40 mm effects while occupying an installation volume closer to smaller automatic cannons, which matters for reconnaissance vehicles and infantry fighting vehicles where turret intrusion, ammunition stowage, and crew protection compete for limited internal space.

The ammunition suite is more important than the gun caliber alone. The APFSDS-T armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot tracer round uses a 550 g tungsten projectile with a muzzle velocity above 1,500 m/s and a listed penetration of more than 140 mm of rolled homogeneous armor at 1,500 m, with an effective range above 2,500 m. This places the weapon above legacy 25 mm and many 30 mm vehicle cannons in the anti-armor role, especially against infantry fighting vehicles, reconnaissance vehicles, armored personnel carriers, and vehicles with add-on protection. It does not replace an anti-tank guided missile against a modern main battle tank, but it reduces the number of situations in which a commander must expend a missile against medium armor or a hardened firing position.

For non-armored targets, CTAS uses General Purpose Round variants with different fuzing and terminal effects. The GPR-PD-T point-detonating tracer round has a 2,400 g cartridge mass, a 980 g projectile, a 1,000 m/s muzzle velocity, and is listed as capable of penetrating more than 210 mm of reinforced concrete at 1,000 m and more than 15 mm of rolled homogeneous armor at the same distance. The GPR-AB-T airburst tracer round is programmable and designed to detonate above or behind cover from 60 m to 2,500 m, with fragmentation coverage of up to 125 m². This is operationally relevant in urban terrain because many targets are not exposed vehicles; they are anti-tank teams behind windows, drone operators in defilade, sensors on rooftops, or dismounted infantry behind berms and walls.

The counter-drone contribution comes mainly from airburst ammunition and elevation. The KE-AB kinetic-energy airburst round has a 3,000 g cartridge mass, a 1,400 g projectile mass, a 900 m/s muzzle velocity, dispersion below 0.5 mrad, and an effective range of 3,500 m. Its tungsten pellet payload is intended to create a directional fragment pattern against unmanned aerial vehicles, swarming drones, missiles, helicopters, and slow aircraft. This should be understood as a short-range defensive layer, not a substitute for a dedicated air-defense battery. Its effectiveness depends on detection, tracking, fire-control quality, crew training, and ammunition availability. A vehicle cannon cannot cover the same defended area as radar-directed very short-range air defense, but it can give forward units a way to engage drone threats without using a missile for every contact.

The unmanned turret concept shown in Paris addresses a different problem: how to mount a larger cannon without consuming the volume normally required by a manned turret basket. Leporte stated that the demonstrator can aim at +60 degrees with no intrusion below the represented vehicle roof, while the system architecture allows reloading from inside the protected hull. In practical terms, that supports three integration paths: lighter wheeled combat vehicles that cannot accept a large turret basket, tracked infantry fighting vehicles where internal volume is needed for electronics and crew tasks, and naval or fixed-site weapons where high elevation and compact ammunition handling are required. The design also reduces the need for crew exposure during reload or weapon access, a significant factor when artillery fragments and small drones make the area around an armored vehicle dangerous even behind the front line.

CTAS already has an established user base through the French EBRC Jaguar reconnaissance and combat vehicle and the British Ajax armored reconnaissance vehicle, while the same ammunition technology is used in the RapidFire naval and land air-defense weapon developed by KNDS France and Thales. That commonality matters for procurement because ammunition qualification, production tooling, training procedures, and future round development can be shared across several vehicle and naval applications. Medium-caliber guns are increasingly expected to perform anti-armor, anti-personnel, anti-structure, and short-range air-defense tasks with the same weapon.

The Eurosatory 2026 presentation therefore points to a practical requirement rather than a marketing trend. Armored forces need cannons with higher elevation, programmable ammunition, faster ammunition-type selection, and enough internal protection for crews to reload and maintain the weapon without leaving armor. CTAS provides one answer to that requirement by combining a compact 40 mm cannon, linkless ammunition handling, armor-piercing and airburst rounds, and a turret architecture that can be adapted to manned or unmanned installations. Its limitations remain the normal limitations of direct-fire guns: sensor integration, ammunition depth, target detection, and the geometry of engagement. Its value lies in giving combat vehicles more options before commanders escalate to missiles, artillery, or dedicated air-defense assets.

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