Counter-UAV Directed Energy 

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

Over the backdrop of the growing threat of small unmanned aircraft, the US Air Force has been moving toward procuring directed energy (DE) counter-UAV systems. The Air Force says it will deploy a prototype of Raytheon’s Phaser high-power microwave counter-drone system for an operational evaluation within months. The service has been experimenting with a number of anti-drone directed energy weapons, which also include lasers. 

Phaser in its current form is a containerized high-power microwave directed energy weapon. Raytheon says one of its goals is to eventually be able to scale down the system into more portable, flexible forms, according to thedrive.com.

Radars or electro-optical and infrared cameras help cue the system to its targets. It then projects a beam of microwave energy that aims to disrupt a drone’s internal systems, causing it to fall out of the sky or possibly initiate a pre-programmed emergency procedure where it tries to lands or return to a point of origin.

Michael Jirjis, USAF DE experimentation strategic development planning and experimentation office lead, told janes.com that the service has been soliciting ideas from industry. 

The USD16.2 million contract refers to one prototype high-power microwave (HPM) system. The USAF sole sourced Raytheon this contract, Jirjis said, because the company participated in the service’s third quarter 2018 event and had shown enough success that the USAF wanted to purchase the system and put it overseas for a year-long field assessment.

“We want to understand how directed energy systems operate in a contested environment,” Jirjis said.