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This 12 months’s Affiliation of america Military’s annual assembly buzzed with speak of countering the quickly evolving drone menace dealing with your complete U.S. army, together with the Air Drive. Leaders and protection trade officers mentioned the necessity for brand new approaches to procurement and employment of a brand new class of those weapons.
Air Drive counter-drone officers could take a look at Epirus Inc.’s high-power microwave system that boasts a monitor document of killing dozens of drones with one shot, the agency’s CEO stated Oct. 14 on the AUSA convention.
On the exhibit ground, Epirus unveiled the most recent model of its Leonidas high-power microwave system mounted on a Normal Dynamics robotic tracked car. Throughout a live-fire demonstration in late August, a model of Leonidas downed a swarm of 49 drones with a single pulse.
Epirus CEO Andy Lowery described the weapon as a counter-electronics system that briefly disrupts and disables all sizes of drones.
“It creates voltage-inducing circumstances across the circuit board, so if you happen to can think about this discipline of electromagnetic vitality within the environment, and the boards and wires themselves pull in that electromagnetic vitality which creates a voltage noise on the circuit boards,” Lowery advised Air & Area Forces Journal.
The result’s much like the “blue display screen of demise” that Microsoft Home windows customers typically suffered throughout a system error that would solely be mounted by rebooting the pc, Lowery stated.
The Leonidas has the identical impact on drones. “We knock down a drone, and if it doesn’t break from the autumn, you’ll be able to go seize it, flip off the ability, flip the ability again on once more … after which the system will begin,” Lowery stated, including that it could then be examined for forensic data.
The Air Drive Analysis Laboratory has been experimenting with counter-drone programs such because the Tactical Excessive-power Operational Responder, or THOR, since 2019. In a follow-on effort, the lab chosen Leidos in 2022 to start improvement an identical system dubbed “Mjolnir” after the hammer wielded by the Norse god Thor.
The companies counter-drone officers started to specific curiosity within the Epirus system after the agency offered its first Leonidas programs to the Military in 2023.
“We’ve been working with the Air Drive for about two years in earnest,” Lowery stated. “They’ve plenty of excessive, high-value targets, like F-35. They’ve bought nuclear missiles. They’ve bought this, they’ve bought that, and so they’ve bought an enormous drone drawback.”
However the Air Drive is extra taken with testing the trailer model of the Leonidas, and never the robotic tracked car it teamed with Normal Dynamics to deliver to AUSA, he stated.
“This can be a army commonplace trailer that they’ll tow with any kind of pickup truck or something like that,” Lowery stated. “We expect in 2026, they might lease two to 4 programs; that’s what they’ve been .”
However that doesn’t imply the Air Drive has given up on Mjolnir, a redesigned model of Thor to satisfy the Air Drive’s want for counter-drone programs that may be quickly deployed underneath the service’s agile fight employment, or ACE, technique. It entails small groups of Airmen establishing momentary airbases in ahead, undefended places on the battlefield.
The Air Drive Analysis Laboratory lately prolonged its contract with Leidos to finish an “ACE-compliant” prototype that the Air Drive may take a look at subsequent summer season, in accordance with a Leidos official, who was not approved to talk to the press.
The Air Drive didn’t reply to a request for touch upon this story by press time.
Additionally this week, AeroVironment Inc. introduced it might ship long-range counter-drone sensor expertise Grand Forks Air Drive Base, N.D. as a part of an effort to help President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome homeland protection protect effort. The protection agency is partnering with GrandSky, a business drone enterprise and huge aviation park positioned subsequent to the air base, in accordance with AeroVironment’s web site.
AeroVironment will ship its Titan and Titan-SV programs for detecting and figuring out drones at nice distances across the base. The agency’s AV Halo Command software program platform will then fuse the info into a standard working image. The trouble is a results of a March memorandum of understanding between AeroVironment and GrandSky that helps Undertaking Extremely, a $110 million initiative—led by Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.)—to make Grand Forks a proving floor for counter-drone protection expertise.
In the meantime miliary leaders and different protection trade officers say that it’s going to take extra than simply the most recent counter-drone weapon to unravel the Pentagon’s enemy drone drawback.
Each counter-drone weapon needs to be cheap and expendable, Retired Military Lt. Gen. Neil Thurgood, senior vp for Anduril, stated Oct. 14 throughout a dialogue hosted by the Pentagon’s new counter-drone workplace, often known as the Joint Interagency Job Drive 401.
“We’ve bought to appreciate that it’s going to be momentary,” Thurgood stated. “We’ve bought to appreciate that it’s going … to be exercised, it’s going for use to kill one thing or get killed. And we’re going to maneuver on to the following factor.”
Military Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, director of JIATF 401, agreed with Thurgood, including that future counter-drone weapons should be handled like different munitions.
“Your counter-UAS load is simply that—it’s a primary load, and will probably be expended,” Ross stated. “They’re expendable, and we needs to be procuring them at a worth level that ensures they’re expendable, and we must always practice with them as in the event that they’re expendable, or we’ll by no means have the proficiency we have to use them successfully.”
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