Raytheon’s High-Power Microwave Weapon Downs Drones
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as evidence that microwave and electromagnetic weapons against drones are real and already tested.
What it is
Cleared Defense Department footage of Raytheon's Phaser high-power microwave weapon bringing down drones during a 2013 live-fire demonstration at Fort Sill. Raytheon says it has halved the payload size and is offering the system for operational use.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2019 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Cites sixstringtheory · 2019-02 · on “Scientists call for ban on lethal, autonomous robots”
This brings to mind a microwave beam developed by Raygheon to down drones [0] and an article I read well over a decade ago about EMPs. Wonder how these are doing on the consumer front? [0] [this video]
Cites PaulHoule · 2019-07 · on “How big a threat is an electromagnetic attack?”
Non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse generators are a real weapon that I think is more significant than the nuclear EMP that people are afraid of. Here is one example: [this video] Many amateurs have demonstrated disruption or destruction of electronic devices at short range with magnetron tubes from microwave ovens. I think those military prototypes use travelling wave tubes, they could probably be made more compact and efficient with gallium nitride transistors. The big avantage for anti-drone use is that the energy costs pennies per shot as compared to scaled down AA weapons such as Iron Dome that are more like $50,000 a shot. That same kind of device could wreck electronics at ground targets too
Cites greedo · 2021-06 · on “To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths”
Jamming would address inter-swarm communications, but then they'd revert to solo operations. EMP isn't realistic, but microwave systems have already been tested: [this video]