Drone swarm taken down by British Army’s groundbreaking radio wave weapon

“Drone swarms make X obsolete” is a common refrain, particularly from people who’ve just watched a drone light show, but the reality is that they’re largely just marginally ahead in the innovation tussle at the moment – this weapon isn’t a _jammer_ but a directed-energy weapon that uses radio waves to physically damage drones. Commensurate with the drone’s cheapness is their relative lack of resilience, which means weapons like this – capable of destroying multiple drones for each “shot” costing £0.10 – are a great counter…we’ve just never had to field them before since they threat to now has always been high performance aircraft and missiles, so there’s some catching up to do.

An interesting video [from the MoD](https://nitter.poast.org/DefenceHQ/status/1912793324563349875#m) which shows a shot taking effect – you can see that there are drones in view but outside the reticule of the aiming system which survive, and I think that that demonstrates that the energy is really very directional, so for this to be able to deal with a fast moving swarm would probably necessitate the ability to “sweep” the beam quite quickly.

what about mobile units of infantry in dense areas?

Lots of the uses of drones in Ukraine have been in urban areas and forests against other infantry.

It’s great that the UK is developing tech like this, we have a lot of smart people who need more praise.