Helldivers 2 Gunships: Kill the Fabricator, Not the Sky

They come from somewhere

Automaton gunships are produced by a gunship fabricator — a structure, not a patrol. Until it is destroyed, the sky refills. That single fact decides the fight: a squad shooting gunships out of the air is playing a defence with no end, while a squad that pushes the fabricator ends it in one push. Finding it is usually a matter of looking up and back. The fabricator is a tower-like structure, and it is often on the edge of the engagement rather than inside it.

Why they are hard to hit

They are fast, they move in passes rather than hovering, and they present a small target at range. Low-penetration weapons do very little, and sustained fire from a rifle mostly wastes ammunition while giving away your position. What reaches them: high-penetration support weapons, dedicated anti-air stratagems, and anything with a lock or a large blast. What does not: a primary fired upward at a moving target. The support weapon page sorts the options by what they penetrate, and the armour values page explains why a weapon that shreds Troopers does nothing to a hull.

The tactical answer

Suppress, then advance. Gunships punish standing in the open. Move in short bursts between cover, and accept that you will take some fire; the goal is reaching the fabricator, not clearing the sky. Do not split. A player who runs for the fabricator alone arrives with no stratagems left and gets focused. Two players moving together can cover each other’s approach. Save one big cooldown for the fabricator. It is a structure, so a barrage or a precision strike removes it and everything it produces. That is a better use of the cooldown than killing the gunship that is currently shooting at you.

Reading the mission

If a bot mission feels impossible in its last third, check whether a fabricator is still alive. It is the single most common explanation for a squad that keeps winning fights and still losing ground, and it is also the reason some missions are much harder than their difficulty label suggests. The same logic applies to the other special spawners — see nests and fabricators for the general rule, and the Automaton guide for the units that escort them.