Avibras

Avibras is the Brazilian company behind ASTROS, the rocket artillery system that has been the Brazilian Army's long-range fire capability since 1983 and one of Latin America's few genuinely exported weapon systems. It was founded in 1961 and works from Jacarei in Sao Paulo state, close to the aerospace cluster around Sao Jose dos Campos.

The corporate situation has to be stated plainly because it changed recently and substantially. The original entity, Avibras Industria Aeroespacial S.A., collapsed financially after 2020 as government orders dried up and contracts slipped, entering judicial recovery with accumulated liabilities variously reported between roughly R$600 million and R$1.5 billion, hundreds of layoffs and long-running wage arrears. Foreign buyers circled between 2024 and 2025, including the Saudi group Black Storm Military Industries, and the Brazilian Armed Forces opposed transferring the company and its missile intellectual property to foreign control. The resolution came through Brazil's isolated productive unit mechanism: a new company, Avibras Aeroco Industria Aeroespacial, was formed in October 2025 and took over the industrial site, contracts and intellectual property without inheriting the debt, which remains with the original entity in recovery. Production restarted on 4 May 2026 backed by around R$300 million of private investment. Anyone reading older material should treat the operating business and the legal shell as two different things.

The product line is built around ASTROS, a modular multiple launch rocket system firing calibres from 127 mm up to 300 mm. A battery is a set of vehicles rather than a single launcher: the AV-LMU universal multiple launcher, the AV-UCF fire control radar vehicle and the AV-PCC command vehicle, all on wheeled chassis. The rocket family runs from the SS-30 through the SS-40, SS-60 and SS-80, with the largest 300 mm rounds reaching beyond 90 km. The ASTROS 2020 and later MK6 configurations extended the system into guided munitions and cruise missiles, and the AV-TM 300, also called the MTC-300 and nicknamed Matador, is a 300 km class tactical cruise missile fired from the same launcher.

Avibras also builds the solid rocket motors, warheads and fire control that go with the system, and has historically produced air-to-ground rockets, anti-aircraft equipment and wheeled armoured vehicles alongside the artillery business. Its engineering base in propulsion and guidance is what made the missile developments possible in the first place.

The Brazilian Army restructured the ASTROS acquisition in March 2026 into a programme called FOGOS, a multi-domain artillery effort meant to combine rocket artillery, cruise missiles and, for the first time, an air defence element aimed at drones. A separate S+100 tactical ballistic missile programme was also launched to extend the system's reach. Exports have gone to a handful of operators, with Saudi and Iraqi use the most widely documented, and the restarted company is pursuing further international sales.