Posted on 06/21/2019 4:54:38 PM PDT by Eddie01
In recent years, small drones have made their way onto battlefields where they’ve been used to surveil US forces or drop bombs on them, prompting the US military to develop new ways to take them down. This week, the US Air Force unveiled a new tool that can be stationed at bases around the world: a high-powered microwave system called Tactical High Power Microwave Operational Responder (THOR), which is designed to protect bases against swarms of drones.
The Air Force Research Laboratory at the Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, developed the system, which uses short bursts of high-powered microwaves to disable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). According to local TV station KRQE, the system was developed quickly (18 months) for about $15 million. It runs off of a generator and is stored in a shipping container, meaning it can be transported almost anywhere and set up within a couple of hours.
The Air Force began testing THOR against short-range targets earlier this spring, while another system, the Counter-Electronic High-Power Microwave Extended-Range Air Base Air Defense (CHIMERA) is designed to hit things at medium to long ranges. That system is expected to be delivered sometime next year.
The military predicts that a major problem will be swarms of drones operating in concert when it wouldn’t matter if one or two are taken down. This system is effectively designed to take out a large number of drones all at once and has a further range than bullets or nets. THOR program manager Amber Anderson says that the system “operates like a flashlight,” and that anything caught in the beam “will be taken down ... in the blink of an eye.”
Taking out a drone is a difficult proposition: they’re small and difficult to hit with a gun, and if they’re flying over people, there’s a risk that they could be injured by falling debris or pieces of drone. That hasn’t stopped people from trying a variety of methods for taking them down, from conventional defensive systems to nets, eagles, and even shotgun-wielding drones. The US Army has begun looking for similar systems. It invested in a microwave weapon built by Lockheed Martin back in August 2018, while other parts of the Department of Defense have been testing other defensive systems, like lasers, which could be used against drones or missiles.
bkmk
I so want to aim it at a truckload of microwave popcorn... I know, I know, I’m evil... Anyone else remember the ending of “Real Genius?”
So they cranked up their Area Denial System that was to be used on people.
Interesting. Technology does not stop..... new tech = countermeasure = new tech = countermeasure.
This is why our national survival depends as much on our economic well-being as anything.
Yeah, baby! Yeah.
Good point. Making a better lock drives a smarted batch of lockpickers.
In this case, the obvious countermeasure would seem to be a hardened drone that used stealth technology to minimize the cross-section and protect itself.
Or another drone with an anti-radiation missile. Send in a second drone, let it get lit up and use that to target the Thor. A few pounds of blast-frag should do it.
Better be very careful with these things, if one gets "loose in the wild" it could be a disaster.
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#3 Thor like device was used on a house : )
https://youtu.be/rthHSISkM7A?t=16
And as usual, we tell the world about what should be a secret weapon, so that China, Russia, etc. can develop ways to protect their offensive weapons from such.
It will also zap bugs and birds?
AFRL and Raytheon are actually a day late and a dollar short. Other countries has the technology for many years and mostly in a more sophisticated form. How do you think Iran got intact Sentinel drone?
There wasn’t much talk about it because in this case it is unlikely that MIC could sell that many high-dollar drones to the military.
The general flaw behind a remote controlled unmanned vehicle is that if you can control it someone else can do it too.
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