The US Air Force Research Laboratory has announced the search for contractors to create a high-power anti-drone microwave system. The program for its development starts in the fall, and the military wants to get a prototype in 2023.
Today, microwave weapons are practically not used. The UN believes that it could potentially violate the Geneva Conventions in terms of the ban on the use of torture. For example, the "Ray of Pain", which was developed by Raytheon in the 2000s to disperse crowds, has never been used. It generated microwave radiation in the wavelength range of 95 gigahertz, which penetrated into the human skin to a depth of 0.4 millimeters and heated the tissues to a temperature of 44 degrees Celsius.
But the Geneva Conventions do not protect drones. Therefore, with their spread, the military again remembered about microwave weapons, which can disable entire swarms of aircraft. In 2019, the US military introduced the Tor system, which disables unmanned aerial vehicles with short and powerful flashes of microwave radiation. It is designed to fight swarms of drones.
Last week, the US Air Force Research Laboratory published its vision for the use of directed energy weapons in the next forty years. It follows from it that the military is more interested in systems that can simultaneously destroy a swarm of drones than those that destroy aircraft one after another.
The US Air Force Research Laboratory announced on July 28 that it was looking for contractors to create a high-power anti-drone microwave system. The program for its development was called "Mjolnir" - after the hammer of the god Thor in Norse mythology. Its goal is to find an economical anti-drone air system that is comparable or superior in efficiency to "Tor". The program starts in the fall, and the military wants to get the first prototype in 2023.
The development of microwave weapons to combat drones is being done not only in the United States. Earlier, we wrote about the Russian microwave cannon, capable of neutralizing the radio-electronic equipment of unmanned aerial vehicles, combat units of high-precision ammunition, aircraft and helicopters.
Vasilisa Chernyavtseva
