The drones are here to stay.

Drones aid search-and-rescue efforts and capture that perfect aerial view of your beach vacation. They are simple to make, cheap to buy and available to almost anyone in the world. But drones can also present a serious risk to military forces. Because they’re readily available, adversaries can easily weaponize store-bought drones.

There is no one, perfect solution for countering drones. However, there are proven, advanced technologies to address the threat – from weapons that can blast drones out of the sky to RF technology that can take control of a drone and put it on the ground safely, to other futuristic tools.

LASER STRIKE

You don’t want to use a large, expensive missile to knock out a small drone. Better to use a mobile system with near-infinite firing capacity to take out a drone, or a swarm of drones. A high-energy laser fits the bill.

“Small and cheap threats need adequately priced and available responses,” said Dr. Ben Allison, product line director for Raytheon’s high-energy laser weapons systems.

Raytheon offers a modular system that works like this: A radar detects an object overhead. The radar then sends a list of contacts of interest to an advanced variant of the company’s fielded Multi-spectral Targeting System, a suite of optical sensors, to figure out whether the unmanned aircraft system is a threat or a friend. If it’s a threat, the system’s beam director tells the laser where to zap the target.

The laser is fired with an X-Box controller. The cost per shot is basically the cost of electricity.

The system can be tailored to fit a vehicle or other platform, according to Allison. “The only thing that changes is how we package the power, which determines how long you want it to last in the field, and the size of the thermal system,” he said.

Both the power and thermal systems are based on the same technology featured in Raytheon’s Patriot air and missile defense system.

Raytheon recently demonstrated its scalable system at the U.S. Army’s Maneuver Fires Integrated Experiment, where the laser weapon system mounted on a small, all-terrain Polaris MRZR vehicle downed 12 airborne Class I and Class II UASs. The system also engaged targets from an Apache AH-64 helicopter.

Next up: a preliminary design of a powerful, 100-kilowatt laser for the Army’s Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles.

So what does the future hold for lasers battling drones? “We’re definitely going higher power,” said Allison. “You could see naval surface ships equipped with hundreds of kilowatts of lasers. On the airborne side, we will see lasers on rotary platforms, fighters and large airborne transport platforms.”

MICROWAVES VS. DRONES

A laser can pick off a drone from afar. But if there are hundreds of drones closing in to attack, you may want a high-powered microwave.

Currently mounted on a shipping container-like box, PHASER high-powered microwaves emit radio frequencies in a conical beam from a dish. Raytheon plans to significantly reduce the size in future versions.

“The beam is like a searchlight from a lighthouse,” said Don Sullivan, chief technologist of directed energy at Raytheon’s Missile Systems business. “The fact that you can simultaneously track and immediately move to the next target to address not just a swarm, but multiple swarms, is a big advantage.”

The system downed 33 drones – two and three at a time – at the December U.S. Army’s MFIX exercise.

THE KAMIKAZE DRONE

Under an urgent operational need, the U.S. Army is now procuring Raytheon’s small, tube-launched Coyote drone as a near-term solution to eliminate enemy unmanned aircraft.

For its counter-UAS mission, Coyote often needs an extra set of eyes on the battlefield. Enter Raytheon’s small, precision radar, called KRFS, for Ku-band Radio Frequency System.

“First, you’ve got to see it, but then you need to track the target(s) with high accuracy,” said Don Williams, who manages Raytheon’s Multi-Function Radio Frequency System, or MRFS, product line. “It’s a true multi-mission radar.”

The KRFS radar can track small or large drones, and cue different effectors in response.

Raytheon is improving the KRFS radar to detect and track more threats. The company is also evolving its Coyote drone (to read more about Coyote, click here).

THE RIGHT MISSILE

Shoulder-launched or fired from a helicopter or ground-launcher, Raytheon’s Stinger missile doesn’t need to hit a drone to knock it out because it’s equipped with a proximity fuze. The missile can just explode nearby to do the job.

The company’s AMRAAM air-to-air missile can also be fired from a ground launcher.

HYPNOTIZING DRONES

In January, Raytheon signed a teaming agreement with Department 13 International, a small, Maryland-based company, to develop and market counter-drone technologies for defense customers.

Instead of simply jamming radio signals, MESMER manipulates them to stop, redirect, land or take control of drones across a wide range of scenarios.

“MESMER is ideal when you can’t use a kinetic effect like a laser, microwave or projectile,” said Erik Grant, Raytheon technical director for mission support and modernization. “Using a kinetic effect against a drone near a crowded venue could result in injuries or death if the drone is forcibly brought down near people. MESMER, since it employs non-kinetic effects, can be used domestically by law enforcement or government agencies.”

MESMER can automatically detect approaching drones and be controlled by a tablet. It can be operated automatically, without operator intervention, to initiate a drone mitigation. It also has the ability to white-list friendly drones to avoid interfering with their operation.

THE CYBER FRONTIER

Raytheon has also invested research and development resources into counter-drone cyber technology, which could be used independently or fused with other counter-drone methods.

“We wanted to find a more sophisticated way to defeat drones,” Grant said. “With cyber effects, we can detect a drone, and then decide whether to land it safely someplace away from people or just gain access to the drone undetected to identify and locate the drone controller.”

Grant’s group is also looking at command-and-control systems that employ various counter-drone technologies.

“Effectively determining if and when a drone is a threat and how to deal with that threat is going to be important,” he said.

“Basically, we’re putting a laser on a dune buggy to knock drones out of the sky,” said Dr. Ben Allison, director of Raytheon’s high energy laser product line.

It’s actually a little more complicated than that, Allison added. The team is combining a high energy laser with an advanced variant of Raytheon’s Multi-spectral Targeting System – a sophisticated package of electro-optical and infrared sensors – and installing it on a Polaris MRZR, a small, all-terrain vehicle.

In an homage to Austin Powers, Art Morrish, vice president of Advanced Concepts and Technology at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems, said, “It’s not sharks with laser beams on them, but it’s pretty close.”

A defense against drones

According to Allison, the idea grew out of a meeting with Raytheon’s CEO and Chairman Tom Kennedy earlier this year. Kennedy told Allison and Morrish that an allied nation had recently used a Patriot missile to shoot down a cheap, store-bought UAS that was outfitted with a grenade-like munition.

“That cost-to-kill ratio is high,” explained Allison, “but the threat is clear. So, the question became, ‘What can we do for a counter-UAS system using a high-energy laser, and do it quickly. We didn’t want to go out and do a bunch of research and development. We wanted to take the assets and capabilities Raytheon has today and use them to really affect this asymmetrical threat. We settled on a small system that’s hugely capable.”

Good Things Come in Small Packages

The team first looked at putting its laser on a standard-size military container, but soon realized it only took up a quarter of the available space. At the same time, an undisclosed customer was exploring ways to put a laser weapon system on vehicles small enough to fit in an airplane’s cargo bay or inside a helicopter.

“When we saw how small we could make it and we saw a clear customer need, we immediately wanted to find a very tactically relevant vehicle that could get out to forward operating bases and do its mission,” said Allison.

The system is standalone, with a footprint of roughly 30 square feet. On a single charge from a standard 220v outlet, the same kind you plug your washing machine into at home, the HEL system onboard the MRZR delivers four hours of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability and 20 to 30 laser shots. The system can also be coupled with a generator to provide virtually infinite magazine depth.

While the laser and the vehicle are sure to draw all the attention, it’s the weaponized MTS sensor package that is the core of the system. In this configuration, the MTS provides its standard setting ISR and tracking capabilities while also serving as a beam director.

That’s something Allison says sets this combo apart from bigger, more power-hungry systems. “If you have a good beam director, then you can use a smaller, more efficient laser. You can make your system smaller and more flexible,” said Allison.

Hitting the Road

Morrish believes the solution is particularly suited for expeditionary missions.

“Right now, it’s a shoot-on-the-halt capability,” said Morrish. “You drive the vehicle wherever you’re going to drive it. You stop and then you fire up the laser. That makes it great for protecting forward-operating bases and places where convoys have to stop. The next step is to set it up so you can actually shoot on the move.”

Raytheon began field testing the HELWS MRZR last week, and is slated to demonstrate it at the U.S. Army’s Maneuver Fires Experiment at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in December.

“The idea is to quickly take this solution out of the lab and put it in the hands of the operators,” said Morrish. “The folks in uniform are going to find ways to use it that those of us in lab coats never have.”