Drone attacks, including the recent swarm strike in Saudi Arabia, are increasing, and so is the Pentagon's interest in killing them.

Yesterday afternoon, the Pentagon notified Congress of its purchase of a microwave weapon system designed to knock down swarms of enemy drones with pulses of energy. The purchase comes with an intent to deploy the PHASER system overseas for a year-long assessment, making it the first directed energy defense weapon to ever be fielded.

The U.S. Air Force spent $16.28 million for one prototype PHASER high power microwave system for a “field assessment for purposes of experimentation” in an unspecified location outside the U.S. The test is “expected to be completed by Dec. 20, 2020,” making the overseas deployment “against real-world or simulated hostile vignettes” imminent.

A Growing Threat

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There are several directed energy weapons that the Air Force is buying to test their effectiveness in the field, and officials say some will be on the frontlines in tense areas of the globe where enemy drones are becoming a threat, includes North Korea, Africa, the Ukraine and—most recently—the Middle East.

“At the moment we have awarded multiple DE systems for use in our field assessment overseas and are working to support multiple bases and areas of responsibility,” says Michael Jirjis, who is lead on the PHASER experiment, told Popular Mechanics. “We can’t say which specific locations at this time.”

The PHASER system, by virtue of timing, could now land at the forefront of an international crisis.

Officials at the Air Force and Raytheon, the system’s manufacturer, say the purchase has been underway for a while, but the timing of the announcement couldn’t make it more urgent. The recent swarm attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities has highlighted the risk and drawn a stern response from the Pentagon.

“This is not the reaction of just a few events but the realization of a growing need over the past few years,” says Jirjis.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Friday that the U.S. would be moving enhanced air defenses into the region. He didn’t offer any specifics, saying the Pentagon is working with the Saudis to come up with a support plan. The PHASER system, by virtue of timing, could now land at the forefront of an international crisis.

“It is a remarkable coincidence because this has been in the works between the Air Force and Raytheon essentially since an experiment at White Sands [Missile Range] late last year,” says Don Sullivan, Raytheon missile systems' chief technologist for directed energy.

Those who sell drone-killing weapons keep a sharp eye on the warning signs, and there were many that preceded the attack in Saudi Arabia.

“There are fairly recent incidents, for example in Yemen where a very large drone with a high explosive payload killed about 40 people, at a prayer ground of all places. And that was on YouTube,” Sullivan says. “It was a real eye-opener. What happened in Saudi over the weekend was kind of that raised to the nth degree.”

Finding Its Target

This ScanEagle represents the maximum size target that PHASER can take down. Stocktrek Images Getty Images

The system uses microwaves to disable Class One and Class Two drones, ones that are less than 55 pounds and fly at altitudes of 1,200 to 3,500 feet at speeds between 100 and 200 knots. Think RQ-11 Raven at the low end and a ScanEagle as the maximum-sized target.

There were an estimated 20 drones and cruise missiles used to attack Saudi Arabia, and some of the drones may have been small enough for PHASER to have disabled them. The HPM system is not known to work against cruise missiles, according the Air Force and Raytheon.

PHASER is part of a layered approach to defending against unmanned aerial threats. Raytheon and others are developing suicide drones, laser systems, and even nets to down drones of various shapes and sizes. The use of directed energy to face this threat is giving that weapon system and its boosters a long-awaited win. In short, there is finally a threat fit for these weapons.

“Up until very recently it's been mostly a technology push rather than a user pull,” says Sullivan, who has been involved with it for more than 40 years. “There wasn't sufficient user pull until the UAS, and in particular swarms of UAS, have reared their ugly heads as a real threat.”

How It Works

PHASER is high-powered microwaves cannon that emits radio frequencies in a conical beam. It doesn’t cook a drone with heat. Instead, the weapon disrupts or destroys their circuits with a burst of overwhelming energy.

“It's not a thermal effect, it's an electric field effect that is basically imposed on the electronics to either upset or permanently damage them,” says Sullivan. “And the effect is essentially instantaneous.”

Lasers need to fix on a target to burn them, but HPM pulses are shorter than one microsecond. That’s all it takes to disable a drone. “If you could see the microwaves, it would look very much like a strobe light,” Sullivan says.

Operators need positive identification before using the weapon, so the “kill chain” starts with detection from radar and then a camera or other sensor. The PHASER antenna uses that data to aim at the enemy drones. “So wherever the electro-optical and infrared sensor is looking, that's where our antenna is pointed.“

Air Force personnel trained and used PHASER during exercises to successfully down drones, which proved to be a key to convincing the service to buy it. “We've taken down multiple rotary wing and multiple fixed wing drones simultaneously at different experiments,” Sullivan says.

PHASER frying a rotary drone mid-flight.

Microwave weapons have traditionally been hampered by the fact that they don’t discriminate targets—bathing an area with them could damage friendly hardware along with a foe’s. But with attacks involving swarms of small UAVs becoming popular, that vice has become a virtue since PHASER can attack multiple targets simultaneously and doesn’t run out of ammunition.

There may be other benefits other than anti-drone screens, but no one is talking about them publicly. “PHASER also has other applications that can be utilized for defensive purposes,” Sullivan admits. “I can't get into other applications outside of counter UAS because of classification reasons. We're not clear to discuss that at the moment.”

While the dream of Raytheon and others is to create a family of systems that can thwart drones, the systems are being assessed on their own. “At the moment, the systems we are pursuing are focused on providing a stand alone capability,” Jirjis says. “However, we have been working across Air Force to understand how directed energy ties into the larger air defense picture for both point and area defense.”

Preparing for Battle

The PHASER microwave weapon system. Raytheon

For Sullivan, this week’s milestone military purchase is the result of four decades of championing the technology. He was responsible for starting the Air Force high power microwave (HPM) program while on active duty as a captain at Kirtland Air Force Base. He then joined K-Tech, a small Albuquerque–based company that was working in the microwave field. Raytheon acquired K-Tech in 2011 and then funded PHASER as an independent research and development project.

“This is sort of a historic inflection point where directed energy is actually getting out in the field and being utilized,” he says. “It’s certainly been a dream in the high energy laser community that this would happen.”

During his career a slew of other directed energy programs received big funding and delivered small results. The Reagan-era Airborne Laser, an airplane equipped with a laser that targeted ballistic missiles, went nowhere after billions in development and cost overruns. The Active Denial System, which heats skin as a non-lethal crowd control device, was built and delivered but never used in theater due to its controversial nature.

High Power Microwave weapons were not immune from the curse. The Air Force Research Laboratory’s developed a HPM weapon called MAXPOWER that detonated roadside bombs at a distance, but it was too big to send into the field and funding dried up.

“The U.S. military has a long and complicated history in developing directed energy weapons,” notes one 2018 report by the Congressional Research Service. “Many past efforts have failed for a variety of reasons and not all failures were attributed to scientific or technological challenges.”

The LaWS (Laser Weapon System), another type of energy weapon.

Advances in electronics and solid-state lasers have enabled directed energy to redeem its reputation. “At present, a number of U.S. military DE weapons-related programs are beginning to show promise, such as the Navy’s Laser Weapon System (LaWs), the first ever Department of Defense laser weapon to be deployed and approved for operational use,” the report says. LaWs is expected to see service on the decks of warships in 2021.

The growing drone threat may help sell other directed energy weapons. This past month, the Air Force purchased two prototype high energy laser systems, designed to burn single drones from an emitter mounted on a vehicle. The Army also chose Lockheed Martin over Raytheon for its own anti-drone, high-energy laser weapon development, which has an expected 2022 debut.



But PHASER is heading to the field this year, ahead of them all, making it a trailblazer for other directed energy weapons. If the technology has found a home, it would open up more opportunities for Sullivan to improve the system.

“We already have multiple improvements, you know, plan for the system that we've kind of had in our hip pocket for the last couple of years. So we're hoping that not only will we get to field the existing technology, but the improvements to that technology can be developed rapidly and lead to an enhanced capability.”

For Sullivan, it’s a chance at redemption after decades of chasing what some labeled an impossible task.

“We're just incredibly satisfied,” Sullivan says. “We have a real sense of success and accomplishment that our system will be the first of its kind to go overseas."

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