Lasers heat up for counter-drone option as DroneLight tackles the big question
DroneLight CUAS system is shown here mounted on mast at rear of a PMMC G5. (Photo: Esh-Tech)
Using lasers to defeat drones promises to solve the dilemma of using expensive kinetic effects to kill platforms worth a few hundred dollars. While maintaining thermal output to provide the effects can be a technical hurdle, Israel’s Esh-Tech is one company working on a solution.
Counter-uncrewed aerial system (CUAS) efforts continue to face a mathematical challenge, namely the cost of a countermeasure versus the cost of a drone or drone swarm to protect personnel or multimillion dollar platforms and sites.
A stream of small calibre munition can provide protection at shorter ranges while guided rockets are more effective over longer ranges, the latter being most useful against larger platforms and the former against small Class 1 platforms.
To address the cost-exchange imbalance, lasers are increasingly being developed and deployed as an additional layer of defence. In Israel, the Iron Beam family of systems has been declared as
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