Beretta's LIVET Eight-Shotgun Counter-Drone Turret Gets a Live Demo in Denmark

Most counter-drone systems are built around a costly sensor network and an expensive interceptor. Beretta Defense Technologies (BDT) has gone the other way. Its answer to small drones is a remotely operated turret carrying eight 12-gauge shotguns. The system is called LIVET and was developed with the Italian firm DUALEE. According to The War Zone, it recently completed a live demonstration in Denmark in front of the Danish Armed Forces.

The demonstration is the first public sign that the turret has gone from a trade-show concept to firing in front of a potential customer. BDT first previewed LIVET in late May, ahead of its planned debut at Eurosatory 2026.

What LIVET Actually Is

LIVET is a remote controlled weapon station (RCWS). Instead of a machine gun or cannon, it carries eight shotguns, each based on Benelli's M4 Drone Guardian, a semi-automatic 12-gauge built specifically for counter-drone work. The Drone Guardian concept was introduced in 2024, and LIVET takes it into a remotely operated, multi-weapon configuration. The shotguns fire programmable airburst ammunition, which is meant to let the projectile payload disperse at a selected distance from the target.

The turret includes AI-based software to detect, recognize and track small aerial targets, and The War Zone reports it can track up to five targets at once. It is not limited to its own sensors. LIVET can take in data from external radio-frequency (RF) detectors and radar, so it can sit inside a larger air-defense setup instead of working as a closed system.

The software does not have the final say. Per The War Zone, the final engagement decision remains with the human operator. LIVET automates the target following and weapon alignment while an operator monitors the engagement.

The Defense Post summarized the design in early June: eight Benelli Drone Guardians in one automated turret that uses sensors and software to detect, track and engage small UAVs.

Why Eight Shotguns?

The reasoning behind the design is geometric. Small drones are small, fast and maneuverable, and hitting one with a single aimed projectile under pressure is difficult. As The Firearm Blog laid out at the preview, a shotgun's spread pattern changes that equation at short range, and eight Drone Guardian systems on one automated mount multiply it. The War Zone adds that the arrangement offers a larger ammunition capacity and redundancy, while potentially letting the system address multiple incoming threats and giving a higher probability of kill against a single one.

Mounting the guns on a turret also changes who the system is for. The Firearm Blog describes the shift as one from a last-ditch individual tool to a layered, automated site-defense asset. BDT lists the application as fixed-site and critical infrastructure protection, where the same perimeter has to be covered around the clock.

The Range Question

The design's main limit is range. The War Zone says the operational utility of shotgun-based counter-drone systems is constrained by their very short engagement distances. The French Army, which has ordered the baseline M4 Drone Guardian, has identified approximately 160 feet as the optimal effective engagement range for shotgun-based anti-drone applications, with a stated maximum of up to 330 feet. LIVET's guns are based on that baseline weapon, and no source says the turret changes those figures.

Those numbers place LIVET squarely in the terminal layer of a counter-UAS defense, the last line against what longer-range detection, jamming or interceptors failed to stop. The War Zone says the system is not designed to take on larger UAVs, fixed-wing drones or threats operating at medium altitude. Its intended targets are primarily micro- and mini-UAVs, particularly small quadcopters and FPV drones that approach within close range of the protected asset.

Put another way, LIVET is not designed to clear a sky. It is designed for the moment when a small drone is already close to whatever it is protecting.

What We Don't Know

The public record on LIVET is thin, and that matters as much as the specifications. The sources available contain no independent test data and no figures from the Danish demonstration. No hit rates, engagement distances, target types or conditions have been reported. Nor do the published reports say whether Denmark plans to buy the system.

Several practical questions are also unanswered:

Performance of the airburst ammunition. Programmable airburst rounds are central to the pitch, but no published data shows how much they extend the useful range beyond the French Army's figures for the baseline gun.
Performance with five tracks. Tracking five targets at once is a software claim. Hitting them in sequence, with a human approving the engagement, is a different test, and no results have been released.
Sensor integration in the field. The ability to accept external RF and radar data is stated, but the sources do not say which sensors LIVET has been paired with.
Ammunition load and reload. The sources do not say how many rounds the turret carries or how quickly it can be reloaded, which decides how long it can hold out against a sustained attack.

Until test results are published, LIVET's numbers are manufacturer claims, and a demonstration staged for the Danish Armed Forces is not the same as an independent evaluation.

Why It Matters

Cheap quadcopters and FPV drones have forced militaries and infrastructure operators to look for defenses whose cost per engagement is not wildly out of proportion to the target. The War Zone notes that using expensive missiles against cheap uncrewed aircraft is often unsustainable, and that gun-based systems offer a potentially more economical kinetic alternative, although effectiveness depends heavily on detection range, engagement geometry, ammunition performance and the nature of the incoming threat. A turret that builds on an existing counter-drone shotgun and cues it with sensors is an attempt to make the close-range layer more sustainable than leaving it to a soldier's reflexes.

LIVET also shows where the line on autonomy is being drawn. The software finds and follows targets, but a human makes the final engagement decision. That arrangement could appeal to European buyers who want automation that cuts operator workload without handing lethal decisions to software, though no source says so directly.

Its limits are just as clear. At hundreds of feet rather than miles, LIVET cannot stand in for detection networks, electronic warfare or longer-range interceptors. It is one layer in a stack, built for the last seconds before a small drone reaches its target. Whether it does that job reliably will depend on test data that has yet to be released.