Among the highlights of the recent Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEI) 2025 exhibition held in London was a new tank destroyer from Germany’s Rheinmetall, together with Lockheed Martin. The Fuchs JAGM, based on a well-established 6×6 armored vehicle and armed with no fewer than 24 missiles, reflects a growing interest in anti-tank warfare, spurred in part by lessons of the war in Ukraine.
The Fuchs JAGM debuted at DSEI 2025, which ran from September 9 to 12, in the form of a technology demonstrator vehicle.
The basic platform for the Fuchs JAGM is the Fuchs Evolution, the latest version of the wheeled armored personnel carrier that first entered service in 1979 and which has been fielded in around 60 variants by more than a dozen nations.
In its latest guise, the 6×6 vehicle has an enlarged interior and can carry higher payloads and features a range of other enhancements. These include an improved powertrain with an anti-lock braking system (ABS) and a central tire inflation system.
There is additional protection against ballistic, as well as chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats. The vehicle also conforms to the NATO Generic Vehicle Architecture (NGVA), an open-standard level that makes it easier to integrate multiple electronic sub-systems, all of which can be operated from a multifunction crew display and control unit.
For its tank destroyer role, the Fuchs JAGM has provision for up to 24 vertically launched missiles, loaded in six quad launchers. These use technologies developed for the M299 launcher, a four-rail design for helicopters most commonly associated with the AH-64 Apache, as well as the popular Mk 41 VLS found on numerous warships in the U.S. Navy and other navies around the world. Most notably, the launchers rely on a compressed-gas generator, as used in the Mk 41 VLS, which pops the missile out of its container before the motor ignites.
The basic missile options are either Lockheed Martin’s AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missiles (JAGM) or AGM-114R Hellfire. Also provided as an option is the JAGM-MR, for Medium Range.
Like the AGM-114R, the JAGM, in its basic form, can hit targets in the region of five miles. The JAGM-MR at least doubles that range performance, having destroyed targets in tests after traveling 10 miles, following ground launch. It’s also worth noting that a version of the Hellfire with a range that is tripled has also been tested.
JAGM and the AGM-114R are armed with a tandem-shaped charge fragmentation warhead, but they differ in their guidance methods. The AGM-114R uses semi-active laser homing to zero in on its targets, meaning an operator must designate the target with a laser for the missile to strike it. JAGM has a multi-mode seeker that combines an improved semi-active laser seeker for precision strikes with a millimetric-wave radar. The radar mode allows ‘fire and forget’ engagements of moving targets in all-weather conditions. JAGM can also use both modes at once, finding the target via laser designation and then homing in on it using the radar. This is especially useful if the laser beam were momentarily obscured by atmospheric conditions or were to otherwise break off during the terminal portion of an attack. Using the MMW seeker, the missile can, in most cases, still hit its target. The radar engagement capability also allows for large salvo launches to strike targets simultaneously since each targets doesn’t need to be individually designated by a laser.
In the Fuchs JAGM, targets are detected and engaged using an onboard electro-optical sensor package mounted on a telescopic mast, which extends to around 14 feet, the elevated position providing a much greater line-of-sight. According to Rheinmetall, the sensors are able to acquire and lock on targets at around five miles, equivalent to the maximum range of the JAGM and AGM-114R. However, targets can also be acquired using offboard sensors from third-party assets, including drones, which could be required to get the maximum performance out of the longer-ranged JAGM-MR. It seems quite possible a radar could also be mounted on the extendible mast.
The basic sensors are designed to detect multiple targets simultaneously, allowing “up to 24 main battle tanks or other targets” to be engaged “in rapid succession without reloading.”
Interestingly, while pitched as a tank destroyer, the vehicle can also use its JAGM missiles to engage aerial targets, at least in some scenarios. Meanwhile, aside from armor, Rheinmetall identifies various other suitable ground and maritime targets for the system, including air defense systems, patrol boats, artillery and rocket launchers, radar installations, and command-and-control nodes, as well as bunkers and other structures in urban and complex terrain.
Noteworthy is the fact that Lockheed Martin sees the Fuchs JAGM as a way of getting its JAGM into the European market. Currently, only the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have bought the missile outside of the United States. Paula Hartley, Lockheed Martin’s vice president and general manager of Tactical Missiles for Missiles and Fire Control, told Breaking Defense that Fuchs JAGM could change that.
At this point, the Fuchs JAGM is being run as an industry-funded effort. Trials have yet to start, a Rheinmetall official told Breaking Defense, although these are expected to begin in the second half of next year.
Having a tank destroyer based on a wheeled chassis is intended to make the Fuchs JAGM cheaper than other armored vehicle-based solutions, but it also makes it more easily deployable and faster — the vehicle can move at over 60 miles per hour on the road and has a range of around 500 miles. At the same time, Rheinmetall says the tank destroyer package can be mounted on other vehicles, too, including the 8×8 Boxer.
As for the vertically launched JAGM, this is something that Lockheed Martin has been pitching for years now, as you can read more about here.
While JAGM was initially developed primarily as an air-launched anti-tank weapon, in the surface-to-surface role, it’s also designed to be readily installed on warships, including relatively small patrol boats, as well as ground vehicles.
Considering its capabilities, it’s somewhat surprising that the ground-launched JAGM hasn’t found customers so far. After all, in its quad launcher, it can give even lighter units on land a powerful weapon for engaging heavily armored vehicles, strongpoints, and other better-protected targets. Both JAGM and Hellfire have a ‘pop-up’ flight profile, so they can be used against softer targets hiding behind hard cover, such as high walls or rocky outcroppings, as well. This capability could be particularly valuable during operations in dense urban areas.
Putting six quad launchers on a single armored vehicle provides an enormous amount of instant, on-demand firepower. Having multiple vehicles similarly equipped would give troops the ability to rapidly engage an entire brigade of tanks, for example.
On the other hand, both JAGM and Hellfire are expensive missiles, and, in ground-launched form, these weapons are facing increasing competition from both lower-cost drones and loitering munitions, as well as missiles that incorporate the man-in-the-loop (MITL) control method. In the Spike NLOS, for example, an infrared camera in the nose of the missile provides the operator with a view of the target, meaning that manual adjustments can be made in the terminal phase.
The ground-launched JAGM concept is also similar in some ways to work that European missile consortium MBDA has done to develop a variety of ground, as well as sea-based, launcher options for its Brimstone missile. The Brimstone is broadly similar to the JAGM and also has a dual-mode laser and millimetric-wave radar seeker.
Working with Polish defense conglomerate PGZ, MBDA offered the Brimstone for a Polish tank destroyer competition, putting the missiles on a tracked vehicle chassis. You can read more about these concepts here. In the event, Warsaw ordered the Ottokar Brzoza 4×4 wheeled tank destroyer, armed with Brimstone missiles, from the PGZ-Ottokar consortium.
That program was somewhat ahead of its time, calling for a system that could “counter massed armor formations.” This requirement was driven by growing concerns in Poland about Russian aggression, which would be unleashed on a large scale with the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Russian and Ukrainian use of armor, including main battle tanks, in this conflict has seen a resurgence of interest in methods of defeating tanks and other heavy armor on the battlefield. Since the end of the Cold War, tank destroyers had been a relatively niche capability, fielded in numbers by only a small number of nations, notably Italy and Japan, in the form of gun-armed wheeled vehicles.
Lockheed Martin and Rheinmetall are clearly hopeful that, driven by the renewed emphasis on anti-tank warfare, especially in the European theater, their Fuchs JAGM could attract interest. Perhaps, the system will finally see JAGM fulfil its potential in a ground-based role.
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