The U.S. Air Force says it will deploy a prototype of Raytheon's Phaser high-power microwave counter-drone system for an operational evaluation within months. The service has been experimenting with a number of anti-drone directed energy weapons, which also include lasers, in recent years as the threat of small unmanned aircraft has grown. A Raytheon representative has said that a recent mass drone attack that caused significant damage to oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia has highlighted these concerns "to the nth degree." The Pentagon announced the deal, worth almost $16.3 million, in its daily contracting announcements on Sept. 23, 2019. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is managing the program, which it says will include a year-long evaluation of Phaser at an unspecified location "OCONUS," or "outside the continental United States." Work under the contract is set to wrap up on Dec. 20, 2020, meaning that this field test is set to start in January at the very latest. AFRL has previously tested Phaser at the U.S. Army's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

"Experimentation includes, but is not limited to 12 months of in-field operation by Air Force personnel against unmanned aerial systems threats," the contracting notice explains. "In addition, experimentation includes but is not limited to operator training, in theater maintenance of systems while collecting availability (full mission capable, partial mission capable, non-mission capable), reliability, maintainability and supportability data, and system operation against real-world or simulated hostile vignettes without disrupting other necessary installation operations." Phaser in its current form is a containerized high-power microwave directed energy weapon. Raytheon says one of its goals is to eventually be able to scale down the system into more portable, flexible forms.

Raytheon Raytheon's Phaser system.