The Air Force Research Laboratory announced April 6 it has kicked off its overseas demonstration of directed-energy weapons dispatched to take down threatening unmanned aircraft. While the demo has long been in the works, AFRL revealed that its Tactical High-Power Operational Responder (THOR) system will ...
Directed Energy
Research Closes in on Reality
When the Air Force Research Laboratory’s experimentation office was chartered in 2016, the idea of ‘try before you buy’ hadn’t picked up much speed. Nearly four years later, the office is using momentum and top cover from leadership to institutionalize experiments as regular practice in ...
Military research on how to protect against threatening unmanned aircraft has so far focused on two ends of the drone spectrum—store-bought products like small quadcopters and large, advanced aircraft akin to the MQ-9 Reaper. But Evan Hunt, high-energy laser business development lead at Raytheon, argues ...
A recent set of experiments with laser and microwave weapons in Oklahoma is shaping how the Air Force moves forward with its plan to protect bases from drones using directed energy. Five systems participated in the Air Force portion of the Maneuver and Fires Integrated ...
High-power microwave weapons, like the Raytheon system shown here, are being vetted to fry electronics for a variety of uses like base defense. Raytheon photo. The US military has doubled its spending on directed energy weapons over the past two...
