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US Air Force shoots down drone swarm with THOR microwave weapon

170 points by MR4D 3y ago

option 3y ago
there is an opportunity to test this right now in real world battles and save a lot of lives. Just saying…
fennecfoxy 3y ago
Why call it THOR when it uses microwaves rather than bolts of electricity? More expensive but I think small, fast drone interceptors would be better. Show them the target and then let the machine guide it there, squirt out some 5 cent netting and the target drone is toast if they use a propellor, if they use some sort of jet then hmm. Just have like 500g of explosive in the interceptor I guess.
hiatus 3y ago
One has to wonder what incentive there is in publicising something like this. Indicating capabilities to potential adversaries seems to have utility in limited circumstances.
- cheschire 3y ago
  First of all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_of_force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_of_force Also capabilities have to be made public to show what tax dollars are being spent on.
- skyyler 3y ago
  Understating capabilities could have utility, no?
- binarymax 3y ago
  Maybe not, since the Star Wars program taught us that propaganda of capability is a good enough deterrent.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
- ultra_nick 3y ago
  It changes the whole game. We were almost defenseless from swarms of flying grenades before. Now, the military can handle that threat.
- yamazakiwi 3y ago
  Most military missions are posturing, there many incentives.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Same reason for knowing the U.S. defense budgets, number of aircraft carriers, fighter jets, etc. What's better than winning a war? Not having to fight one.
  - regentbowerbird 3y ago
    And also accountability to the citizens who are financing all this. A 773$B black hole in the budget would be undemocratic and rife for embezzlement.
    - virgildotcodes 3y ago
      The DOD is unable to account for 61% of its 3.5 trillion in assets. https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-sessions-open-probe-into-department-of-defense-after-failing-gao-audit-for-fifth-time%EF%BF%BC/#:~:text=“The%20Committee%20on%20Oversight%20and,its%20%243.5%20trillion%20in%20assets https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-sessions-open-prob....
      - nvy 3y ago
        >The DOD is unable to account for 61% of its 3.5 trillion in assets. I bet most of the circumstances behind this stat are mundane. I used to be in military SAR and we had a mule[0] randomly go missing. We were mystified because it's not like a work-issued Blackberry you could forget at a Subway or something. It's hard to lose track of a 20-ton piece of GSE, or at least you'd think so. It later turned up in Kandahar at the coalition base. These things happen; it's not malicious so much as the fact that mission success sometimes mean you take the wrong tow mule and "oh well". [0]https://www.google.com/search?q=sellick+aircraft+tug https://www.google.com/search?q=sellick+aircraft+tug
        paulddraper 3y ago
        Reassuring
        3y ago
- krapp 3y ago
  We're letting the aliens know the next time they try to invade our airspace disguised as Chinese weather balloons, we'll be ready for them. It'll be like the Battle of Los Angeles for real this time.
- ambicapter 3y ago
  Seems to have pretty clear dissuasive capability.
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  Hard to say what's already known to be known by foreign intelligence. Doesn't hurt to publicize it if you already know that major potential adversaries know about it. Also hard to say exactly how cutting-edge anything we get to see is.
- Robotbeat 3y ago
  If a relatively small research project is going to mean adversaries have to spend twice as much on drones which have heavy metal mesh shielding, that’s pretty great return on investment even if the capability is totally negated by that countermeasure.
  - MR4D 3y ago
    Also, nothing was said about the maximum design power of this device. For all we know, they could ramp it up to 10x the power with a different power unit.
- CodeWriter23 3y ago
  I think it was Truman who said “Speak softly but carry a big stick”. They have to see the stick for it to have any diplomatic effect. Then there was Reagan who collapsed the Soviet Union with a mostly bullshit space defense initiative called “Strategic Defense Initiaitive”, aka Star Wars and SDI. That proved if the enemy believes the stick exists you don’t need to actually have the stick.
  - zabzonk 3y ago
    > I think it was Truman who said “Speak softly but carry a big stick”. Theodore Roosevelt, actually.
  - MR4D 3y ago
    Reagan (or , at least his advisors) was essentially following Moore’s Law in the SDI effort. He knew that computers were getting faster at an increasing rate and the Soviets couldn’t catch up. Same thing happened in the space race in the 1960’s where the Russians had to build huge rockets because they didn’t have the miniaturization capabilities of the US.
- nvy 3y ago
  Over the last few years there was a lot of hay being made about how drone swarms have obsoleted $military_technology_du_jour and how there's no real way to defend against "drone zerg", etc. The USAF is probably publicizing this for two reasons: 1. To reassure domestic audiences that the USAF can counter these things to some extent and is working on it, and also probably to demonstrate return on investment for Congressional oversight reasons 2. As a form of soft deterrence; a reminder to unfriendly powers that "hey, we have this technology, imagine what else we have that we're not telling you about"
  - dimmke 3y ago
    I remember the first time I learned about drone swarms was this YouTube video called Slaughterbots: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA Of course at this point, my country had been using drones to kill people since I was a small child, which I think is ironic. In the Slaughterbots scenario, each specific drone has sensors and AI good enough it can pilot itself and doesn’t need an external connection that can be detected or disrupted and is good enough to target individual people with facial recognition. I believe (this is not an area of expertise for me) that the drones depicted in that video are still far more advanced than what currently exists currently (but I think it could probably get there within the next 10-20 years), whereas the video linked shows a more realistic drone swarm attack where it’s targeting infrastructure and the blast radius is larger than being able to target an individual's head, but still smaller than traditional UAVs. It’s an upsetting watch, but the part of me that enjoys speculative science fiction (I love evaluating how realistic the apocalypse is in zombie movies) always found the attempted countermeasures employed to be silly and unrealistic. Covering windows and leaving only tiny circles so no drone can get through etc… But at the same time, the video struck a chord because as soon as I saw it, I knew some form of this was coming and likely within the next decade. But mitigations and countermeasures are being developed in tandem. I think that's the major thing the Slaughterbots video got wrong. And there's many different potential countermeasures, they don't all have to be 100% effective, but together they form a kind of "net" that will make these attacks a lot harder to pull off. For example, they now have a portable machine that can disrupt a drone swarm's sensors, which will at the very least require additional shielding (and increase cost per unit) which removes some of the benefits. It's possible the technology will prove even more fruitful after additional development and make drone swarms mostly untenable for warfare except in rare situations. This is a very direct countermeasure, but I could also imagine other indirect measures like regulating consumer drone manufacturers and forcing them to add/remove features that make it more difficult to turn them into a weapon. The same way printers can't just print currency and GPS won't work if it's moving too fast. Ultimately, for war it just makes it another type of weapon/tactic and there's already infrastructure for controlling how those things move between countries and intelligence groups that work to keep them away from terrorists etc... Which leaves the possibility of a sole actor or small group without state backing turning consumer drones into these swarms. Which could happen, it could be a new vector of terrorist attack. But they'd still have to source explosives which is already monitored, etc... In the Slaughterbots video, these swarm attacks are extremely efficient and effective, killing 5000+ people at a time. I think a similar attempt from a homegrown terror cell would not be more effective than a mass shooting or traditional bombing in terms of casualties (< 50.) I think for it to become more effective, it would have to be done many times and iterated on by the same group, building up institutional knowledge. It's just too complex. Like the idea of a "dirty bomb", I think it’s one of those things that is theoretically extremely dangerous but due to a mix of factors is unlikely to result in a situation like the one depicted in that video. A matrix of countermeasures will just make the juice not worth the squeeze. I think about it like guns. There is a lot of gun violence in the United States, but it stems more from ideological gridlock than the government not being able to stop it if they had the will to. The one thing that does worry me is the possibility of targeting individuals. So if you have a tiny drone that can explode and isn’t part of a larger swarm, then you could potentially murder someone in a way that is very hard to investigate. Much harder than a homicide involving a gun where someone had to pull the trigger. It could be the next evolution of SWATing someone.
binarymax 3y ago
> THOR engaged the targets and knocked them out of the sky using its non-kinetic, speed-of-light microwave pulses. Microwaves dont travel at the speed of light. Did they mean line of sight? Edit - well guess I was wrong!
- doctoboggan 3y ago
  Why wouldn't they? They are just EM waves. "Light" is used colloquially for the visible spectrum but microwaves could be considered light waves
- krapp 3y ago
  Microwaves do travel at the speed of light, all electromagnetic radiation does.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  > Microwaves dont travel at the speed of light Yes, they do, microwaves are just a wavelength of light.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tasseff 3y ago
  You might have been colloquially correct. Microwaves travel at the speed of light, but my microwave that heats up a Hot Pocket can't. :-)
  - jakeinspace 3y ago
    They’ll work in a pinch against a drone idling below your kitchen window.
- ared38 3y ago
  You are actually correct. The speed of light you always hear about is the speed of EM radiation in a perfect vacuum. In a medium such as the atmosphere, the pulse doesn't travel as fast. The slowdown depends on the refractive index, which itself depends on the frequency of the wave -- longer wavelengths have lower indices. This means that microwaves will move the tiniest bit faster than light through the atmosphere.
otoburb 3y ago
>>[the] weapon proved effective in neutralizing multiple targets even though it had never before been tested against the types of drones used in the trial. Presumably THOR was tested against American and/or foreign-made retail drones, and not foreign military-grade drones. Hardened electronics aren't a new concept.
- awestroke 3y ago
  Still a good thing that they can stop massively asymmetric attacks (huge number of cheap drones with cheap explosives)
- DirectorKrennic 3y ago
  I presume that the Defense Department's experts are well aware of these things. The article is sparse in details. Maybe they did test this new capability on "military-grade" drones, whatever "military-grade" means. Military technology isn't always superior to civilian, commercial technology, as anyone with even a passive familiarity with government acquisitions could attest. Both Ukraine and Russia have resorted to modified commercial drones in the Ukraine war. A North Korean drone was once recovered that was nothing more than a piece of crap with a cheap camera mounted[1]. Really, the only serious and adversarial competitor in the drone space is China. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/suspected-north-korean-drones-low-tech-but-south-on-high-alert/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/suspected-north-korean-drones-l...
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    > While the capture of the two surveillance drones appears to offer a rare glimpse into the North's technology, analysts stress they do not necessarily represent the best unmanned aerial vehicles the North can field. Always be skeptical of aggressive mimicry. A "piece of crap with a cheap camera" is cheap and disposable-- and misleads those quick to jump to conclusions. It's what you deliberately throw over the fence when you want adversaries to think you're underequipped. They have nukes for fuck's sake. They can afford real drones.
- sorokod 3y ago
  May be true, but a lot of the stuff flying over Ukraine is retail. Future conflicts may be similar. DJIs seem to be popular https://gagadget.com/en/153538-ukrainian-intelligence-service-will-receive-78-dji-matrice-300-rtk-drones-for-uah56160000-30-drones-already-in-ukraine/ https://gagadget.com/en/153538-ukrainian-intelligence-servic...
Marlon1788 3y ago
I wonder how effective this is against a microwave resistant design. microwaves are incredibly easy to deflect, 1mm sheet steel at the right angles would be interesting to see. 1M USD start up drone company inquire here.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  If you can fully shield the electronics with steel then you're probably good to go. The problem is any small gap in the shielding (such as for venting heat from the rotor motors).
- xyzzyz 3y ago
  Even aluminum foil can do wonders here.
  - Marlon1788 3y ago
    tin foil hat drones incoming
- version_five 3y ago
  The drones are going to be vulnerable because they need to have some kind of antenna to communicate externally, that presumably would be pretty broadband. It would be interesting to think about how one could harden them but still allow communication ... I think it's probably possible. Something like an nmr receiver that has diodes that short it out for high power input... I have no idea if that translates practically.
  - Marlon1788 3y ago
    something like a small hole or slit in the deflecting body would allow different wavelengths through. The microwave region extends from 1,000 to 300,000 MHz (or 30 cm to 1 mm wavelength).
    - asdfman123 3y ago
      Or you could use some kind of fiber optic system, worst case.
notatoad 3y ago
given the number of actual incidents involving shooting down drones in recent months, it might have been nice to include right in the title that this was a demonstration, and not an actual deployment against an enemy.
- falcolas 3y ago
  FWIW, it was a practical test, so while it does not presage war for the US, it does prove that this is a real weapon outside of computer simulations.
  - notatoad 3y ago
    Yeah, for sure. But we aren’t under attack, and headlines should tend to avoid any possible confusion about that
rohan_ 3y ago
Defense engineers have more fun!
- epolanski 3y ago
  I don't know, I was offered to design and implement military cockpits UI and tracking systems for the biggest weapon exporter in Italy for a very good salary, a 60% raise of what I earned at the time and I was like "no thanks, I want to go sleep without thinking I'm helping writing software to kill people". Since then I have a very clear clause in my contracts that I don't work in projects involving law enforcement, military and some other business.
  - AHOHA 3y ago
    Interesting point, I too have a similar moral, but I don’t mind to do something for defense, no?
    - lesuorac 3y ago
      Much like how one mans terrorist is another's freedom fighter. One mans defense is another mans offense. Surely this microwave can be moved to the frontlines and as the frontline moves forward.
      - AHOHA 3y ago
        You got a point, but going by that logic, as bladesmith, I should never make any knife because there’s always the possibility to be used the wrong way?
        epolanski 3y ago
        Knife have dual purposes, military weapons have only one.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      It seems hard to guess based on the technology if something will be defensive or aggressive. I mean, silly example, but if you invent a suit of armor somebody will say “nice, now I can use my sword two handed, no need for a shield!” Maybe nukes.
smaili 3y ago
Do they decide on an acronym first then work backwards to try and come up with what each letter stands for or is it just a coincidence that they landed on THOR? :)
- jstarfish 3y ago
  The last time they didn't do this, they ended up carrying MANPADS into battle.
- Taek 3y ago
  It's called a backronym :)
- falcolas 3y ago
  As they say, "Someone really wanted our initials to spell out 'SHIELD'."
- hammock 3y ago
  Chatgpt makes this fun and rewarding. How about: Mobile Integrated Countermeasure Radiating Overwhelming Waves Against Virtual Enemies (MICROWAVE)
- AHOHA 3y ago
  Both way, I did some projects with military and they care much about these acronyms for some reason.
  - macintux 3y ago
    I imagine when you’re dealing with so many weapons systems it’s helpful to have memorable names. Beats the heck out of X1, X2, X3, X4, X5, X6 (not to pick on BMW, but to pick on BMW). (Update: not to mention the need to appeal to Congress to keep funding these systems.)
    - AHOHA 3y ago
      Yep, it’s mainly for catchy names for funding.
hendersoon 3y ago
They say it's a wide beam. Is that a misinterpretation of the spectrum used or did they mean physically a wide beam, as opposed to a thin maser? That would be extremely inefficient compared to a pinpoint accurate defense, wouldn't it? I assume military drones are difficult to spot, so maybe they need a shotgun pellet approach.
- zacharycohn 3y ago
  Judging from the size of the dish, I assume it's a physically wide beam. That also means you don't have to aim as well, and you can - like they demonstrated in the video - point and sweep to take out a large swath at once without having to acquire each target individually.
epolanski 3y ago
Serious question, what if instead of pointing it to drones it was pointed to organic flesh? Wouldn't that microwave burst the water contained in someone's body?
- jiveturkey 3y ago
  that already is a weapon. as an example, they believe a low power version is what was used in havana.
  - reilly3000 3y ago
    Came to say this. It’s not a big mystery like the news keeps saying it is. How can one defend against this?
    - Firmwarrior 3y ago
      Tinfoil hat lining
      - alasdair_ 3y ago
        Please make a tinfoil hat and cook it in your microwave and let us know how it goes.
  - verdverm 3y ago
    The latest I heard about Havana is they believe that to not be the case any more. There are however crowd control versions for anti-riot purposes. They induce a burning feeling on the skin without permanent damage, supposedly.
    - smegger001 3y ago
      I wonder who is doing the studies to prove no long term harm.
      - 3y ago
jameshart 3y ago
“non-kinetic, speed-of-light microwave pulses” Presumably the version that uses kinetic faster-than-light microwave pulses is still classified.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  actually the pulses went back in time and killed the systems inventor. So it no longer exists.
- reilly3000 3y ago
  Shhhh. Don’t want to be on THEIR naughty list.
  - nerpderp82 3y ago
    It isn't like they are generating plasma conduits with the microwaves and then using a hyper velocity gas gun to propel a slug of plasma down the conduit!
    - all2 3y ago
      Hammer's Slammers, anyone? In the series of books they would use a laser to carve a hole in air and then inject a plasma made of super-heated copper into the collapsing channel. I always thought it was a pretty neat concept. That, along with their flying tanks. They used big fans to lift these M1 Abrams style battle tanks. I cannot imagine the power consumption for all of it.
      - justinclift 3y ago
        Sounds similar to that "guide lightning using a laser" thing from a few months ago: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-17/scientists-use-laser-to-guide-lightning-bolt-for-first-time/101861990 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-17/scientists-use-laser-...
- Retric 3y ago
  I recall reading about some microwave or laser weapon which was pulsed to in theory increase effectiveness. Part of the design was using kinetic effects and the sub light speed propagation of pressure waves through the material. Basically rather than trying to vaporize armor you heat or blast chunks off in rapid succession which can do all sorts of things including creating strong magnetic fields. Which was then possibly more efficient in defeating armor etc. I can’t find the exact source but this seems related: https://www.nre.navy.mil/organization/departments/aviation-force-projection-and-integrated-defense/aerospace-science-research-351/directed-energy-weapons-uspl-and-atmospheric-characterization https://www.nre.navy.mil/organization/departments/aviation-f...
hn8305823 3y ago
> THOR engaged the targets and knocked them out of the sky using its non-kinetic, speed-of-light microwave pulses. Maybe that's military jargon but in Physics photons definitely carry and deliver kinetic energy.
- zacharycohn 3y ago
  A kinetic weapon is one that damages the target by smashing into it. Blunt projectiles like rocks, arrows, bullets, etc. This is a non-kinetic weapon, because it does not damage the target through kinetic force.
  - hn8305823 3y ago
    > This is a non-kinetic weapon, because it does not damage the target through kinetic force. It is literally the kinetic energy of the photons and nothing else that is disabling the drones. The photon kinetic energy is transferred to electrons that either overheat components or destroy control electronics with excessive voltage (the article did not specify which).
    - nostrademons 3y ago
      Intended audience: not physicists.
    - zactato 3y ago
      Unnecessary pedantry. You know what the title meant.
    - aidenn0 3y ago
      It's the kinetic energy of a HEAT round that damages a tank too, but that's not classified as a KEW either, since a KEW is where the sole damage done is by the energy of a projectile (and a HEAT round it's the chemical energy in the round that produces most of the damage, after being converted to thermal and kinetic energy). I will propose that (generally speaking) a projectile has mass, which would exclude photons from the definition.
  - 3y ago
SEJeff 3y ago
Let’s also not forget LEONIDAS, which is a bit more mobile but smaller. https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/01/24/epirus-counter-drone-microwave/amp/ https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/01/24/epirus-counter-dro...
themodelplumber 3y ago
That promo video has "suck it Iran" written all over it. Right down to the truck launches and drone shapes. I do admit I wonder about single point of failure with this, so hopefully it's part of some layered strategy. Maybe with some flingy nets, those matrix-barrel guns with like 100 barrels in a grid, eagles trained to swoop down and pick apart the props, etc. etc.
- uhtred 3y ago
  > eagles trained to swoop down and pick apart the props I assume the eagle dies or gets a horrific injury in this scenario?
  - zdw 3y ago
    Generally not: https://www.michigan.gov/egle/Newsroom/MI-Environment/2020/08/13/shoreline-mapping-egle-drone-sent-to-watery-lake-michigan-grave-by-u-p-bald-eagle https://www.michigan.gov/egle/Newsroom/MI-Environment/2020/0...
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    They tried that, in The Netherlands, I think. They stopped the initiative. Not sure why, but they didn't think it was effective.
  - SimonPStevens 3y ago
    Surprisingly they seem very capable of taking down drones uninjured. They have very strong legs, and with a flexible attack from below they can avoid the props. Here's a video of some french trained eagles showing how easy it is. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b8kZupqPbJs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b8kZupqPbJs
  - prawn 3y ago
    I had a wedge tailed eagle take down one of my drones while filming. Drone ended up dropping to the ground damaged while the eagle wasn’t too bothered. It just perched nearby and watched me picking up pieces, not preening or appearing at all injured.
  - 3y ago
amelius 3y ago
Anyone have a formula for E(x,t) and H(x,t) for the actual wave?
barbegal 3y ago
Lots of words but not much detail. What I'm interstates to know: - The effective range of the system, if the range is only 100m or so then you might need a lot of these to protect a larger strategic area. - How it neutralises the drones, does it overheat certain components or just inject sufficient noise into the system that the flight controller stops working or just disrupt any command signals.
- narigon 3y ago
  My guess is it just overwhelmems the control. Solving auto-homing sounds like a hard problem and it's more feasible to just have the drone land on the loss of control.
AHOHA 3y ago
While I’m working mainly on drones/robotics, counter drones is also becoming a big talk with a lot of interest from investors, however, countring drones isn’t that easy, even with latest sensors (sound/visual/Lidar/radar sensors), there’s a lot of false positives when deployed in real scenarios, one trial we tried near an airport, the system we tested caught a lot of birds as drones, you tune it not to detect it, then drones goes undetected. Some systems tries to us AI to study the fly path and find some anomalies and trigger based on that, but so far I didn’t see personally an acurate system that can reliably detect and neutralize. Swarm on the other hand, might be easier given how easy to detect them.
- runtime_blues 3y ago
  Airport is probably a very different environment, though? I imagine that if you have a military installation, you don't mind blasting some birds with RF every now and then (and the birds probably don't mind either).
  - excalibur 3y ago
    As a passenger on commercial aircraft, I don't mind reducing the bird population near an airport.
  - version_five 3y ago
    A bird is small and largely non-conducting. I'd guess it could plausibly survive a burst of microwave that could disable a drone, at any practical distance from the weapon.
    - dist-epoch 3y ago
      Microwave tends to "cook" you.
      - Retric 3y ago
        Microwave covers a huge range 300 MHz to 300 GHz and they want something that will work in the rain or fog which means minimizing absorption by water as much as possible.
hk1337 3y ago
aka Point Break
nerpderp82 3y ago
This thing is easily defeated with a small amount of software and tactics.
wayeq 3y ago
Thor is he-yah!
aidenn0 3y ago
Anyone know what this would do to a more traditional airborne threat (e.g. cruise missile or fighter)?
JoeAltmaier 3y ago
Now we need steam-powered drones?
denton-scratch 3y ago
I'd like to know more, like the power of the beam, and what it does to the drones. I'm not wow'ed to learn that an electronic circuit can be influenced by microwaves, nor that a HF radio beam can be jammed. I note the article didn't claim this thing can be used to disable an autonomous cruise missile using inertial/map-based guidance, and having no radio receiver.
dmbche 3y ago
I wonder if these devices could ever become powerful enough to be mounted on missiles and thrown at helicopters or planes and have them drop out of the sky - or mounting them on Growlers! Could be interesting as an alternative to explosives
TheRealPomax 3y ago
Did they also trial it against a drone swarm that knew about THOR (which an assailant would) and had put the drones in "not even Faraday mesh" but just a fairly open wire sphere because microwaves are trivially neutralized with a "mesh" that has several inches of space between the wires? (E.g. wired cages that are already commonly used by drone-operators in the ducting/smoke stack/container/etc inspection business to prevent their $50k industrial drones from crashing into walls/ceilings) Because a test that doesn't test "what happens when the enemy knows the weaknesses" is not a test.
- _8j50 3y ago
  The drones would fly in a faraday cage? Really? Even if so, that's more cost and less weight they can carry. I am sure the US mil would also be concerned its own drones can be shot down like that. A faraday cage protects against interference but does it shield against energy? Are they using microwaves to excite components in the drone or is it more like a MASER where microwave is used to deliver energy? If this was light for example, I would equate what you are saying to coating the drones with a mirror, but if it is something like a LASER it would still damage the drone.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    Conductive paints/coatings exist.
  - TheRealPomax 3y ago
    You've clearly never heard of building inspection drones. The drones fly in a sperical cage, which you can trivially run wires through, or over, to create a Faraday cage after programming the drones to fly whatever pattern you need them to. Hell, buy some copper tape, off you go. Just because you didn't know about this thing, doesn't mean drone operators in military positions don't know about this either.
    - _8j50 3y ago
      I did not know, I did not presume what military folks know either.
rdtsc 3y ago
Very neat. Wonder if drones could fly lower and swarm around it in an almost full circle. There could be anti-THOR suicide drones attacking first before the rest fly in. Then, would any shielding work or even some kind of a microwave energy reflector, like an inverted cone, to concentrate the energy back at the THOR system to use its energy against itself.
vonnik 3y ago
Fwiw, large-scale jammer systems using radio frequencies are already deployed and quite effective in Ukraine. Curious what the advantage is here.
- Wistar 3y ago
  Perhaps effective against completely autonomous vehicles?
  - vonnik 3y ago
    There are three ways I know to bring down a drone with electronic warfare: - jam the operator's signal (RF) - jam or spoof GPS/GLONASS (RF) - fry the electronics There are degrees of autonomy. Some autonomous vehicles do not rely on their operators, but continue to rely on GPS et al. Fuller autonomy requires an internal navigation system based on local data of the terrain to be navigated. In that case, the only thing left is to damage the on-board electronics. Google tells me this is what microwaves do... https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/drone-killer-fires-microwave-beams-to-disable-uavs/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/drone-killer-...
cwkoss 3y ago
Gonna be pretty gnarly when these get introduced into a theater of war and some desperate person points them at human flesh. :-|
xjlin0 3y ago
Does it work in rainy days?
stevenjgarner 3y ago
It looks like this system might not have 360 degree coverage. Is that a weakness?
smoyer 3y ago
This should be useful in Florida!
two_in_one 3y ago
anti-drone 'rifles' are used a lot in Ukrainian war by both sides. As I understand they mostly target GPS receivers and force 'disoriented' drone to land. Also there are attacks on control frequencies. Which are countered by frequency changes or hopping, obviously. Attack on drones electronics itself requires significant power. So that thing likely to have short range. AI powered drones, which don't need constant control and GPS, will be much harder to take down. They can be made today for about $1k, more for bigger ones.
arcastroe 3y ago
According to the article, this anti drone system works by targeting the electronics inside the drone with microwave pulses. Dumb question: why couldn't the electronics be shielded like the door of your kitchen microwave?

170 points by MR4D 3y ago

there is an opportunity to test this right now in real world battles and save a lot of lives. Just saying…

Why call it THOR when it uses microwaves rather than bolts of electricity? More expensive but I think small, fast drone interceptors would be better. Show them the target and then let the machine guide it there, squirt out some 5 cent netting and the target drone is toast if they use a propellor, if they use some sort of jet then hmm. Just have like 500g of explosive in the interceptor I guess.

hiatus 3y ago

One has to wonder what incentive there is in publicising something like this. Indicating capabilities to potential adversaries seems to have utility in limited circumstances.

cheschire 3y ago
First of all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_of_force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_of_force Also capabilities have to be made public to show what tax dollars are being spent on.
skyyler 3y ago
Understating capabilities could have utility, no?
binarymax 3y ago
Maybe not, since the Star Wars program taught us that propaganda of capability is a good enough deterrent.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
phendrenad2 3y ago
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
ultra_nick 3y ago
It changes the whole game. We were almost defenseless from swarms of flying grenades before. Now, the military can handle that threat.
yamazakiwi 3y ago
Most military missions are posturing, there many incentives.
paulddraper 3y ago
Same reason for knowing the U.S. defense budgets, number of aircraft carriers, fighter jets, etc. What's better than winning a war? Not having to fight one.
- regentbowerbird 3y ago
  And also accountability to the citizens who are financing all this. A 773$B black hole in the budget would be undemocratic and rife for embezzlement.
  - virgildotcodes 3y ago
    The DOD is unable to account for 61% of its 3.5 trillion in assets. https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-sessions-open-probe-into-department-of-defense-after-failing-gao-audit-for-fifth-time%EF%BF%BC/#:~:text=“The%20Committee%20on%20Oversight%20and,its%20%243.5%20trillion%20in%20assets https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-sessions-open-prob....
    - nvy 3y ago
      >The DOD is unable to account for 61% of its 3.5 trillion in assets. I bet most of the circumstances behind this stat are mundane. I used to be in military SAR and we had a mule[0] randomly go missing. We were mystified because it's not like a work-issued Blackberry you could forget at a Subway or something. It's hard to lose track of a 20-ton piece of GSE, or at least you'd think so. It later turned up in Kandahar at the coalition base. These things happen; it's not malicious so much as the fact that mission success sometimes mean you take the wrong tow mule and "oh well". [0]https://www.google.com/search?q=sellick+aircraft+tug https://www.google.com/search?q=sellick+aircraft+tug
      - paulddraper 3y ago
        Reassuring
        3y ago
krapp 3y ago
We're letting the aliens know the next time they try to invade our airspace disguised as Chinese weather balloons, we'll be ready for them. It'll be like the Battle of Los Angeles for real this time.
ambicapter 3y ago
Seems to have pretty clear dissuasive capability.
yamtaddle 3y ago
Hard to say what's already known to be known by foreign intelligence. Doesn't hurt to publicize it if you already know that major potential adversaries know about it. Also hard to say exactly how cutting-edge anything we get to see is.
Robotbeat 3y ago
If a relatively small research project is going to mean adversaries have to spend twice as much on drones which have heavy metal mesh shielding, that’s pretty great return on investment even if the capability is totally negated by that countermeasure.
- MR4D 3y ago
  Also, nothing was said about the maximum design power of this device. For all we know, they could ramp it up to 10x the power with a different power unit.
CodeWriter23 3y ago
I think it was Truman who said “Speak softly but carry a big stick”. They have to see the stick for it to have any diplomatic effect. Then there was Reagan who collapsed the Soviet Union with a mostly bullshit space defense initiative called “Strategic Defense Initiaitive”, aka Star Wars and SDI. That proved if the enemy believes the stick exists you don’t need to actually have the stick.
- zabzonk 3y ago
  > I think it was Truman who said “Speak softly but carry a big stick”. Theodore Roosevelt, actually.
- MR4D 3y ago
  Reagan (or , at least his advisors) was essentially following Moore’s Law in the SDI effort. He knew that computers were getting faster at an increasing rate and the Soviets couldn’t catch up. Same thing happened in the space race in the 1960’s where the Russians had to build huge rockets because they didn’t have the miniaturization capabilities of the US.
nvy 3y ago
Over the last few years there was a lot of hay being made about how drone swarms have obsoleted $military_technology_du_jour and how there's no real way to defend against "drone zerg", etc. The USAF is probably publicizing this for two reasons: 1. To reassure domestic audiences that the USAF can counter these things to some extent and is working on it, and also probably to demonstrate return on investment for Congressional oversight reasons 2. As a form of soft deterrence; a reminder to unfriendly powers that "hey, we have this technology, imagine what else we have that we're not telling you about"
- dimmke 3y ago
  I remember the first time I learned about drone swarms was this YouTube video called Slaughterbots: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA Of course at this point, my country had been using drones to kill people since I was a small child, which I think is ironic. In the Slaughterbots scenario, each specific drone has sensors and AI good enough it can pilot itself and doesn’t need an external connection that can be detected or disrupted and is good enough to target individual people with facial recognition. I believe (this is not an area of expertise for me) that the drones depicted in that video are still far more advanced than what currently exists currently (but I think it could probably get there within the next 10-20 years), whereas the video linked shows a more realistic drone swarm attack where it’s targeting infrastructure and the blast radius is larger than being able to target an individual's head, but still smaller than traditional UAVs. It’s an upsetting watch, but the part of me that enjoys speculative science fiction (I love evaluating how realistic the apocalypse is in zombie movies) always found the attempted countermeasures employed to be silly and unrealistic. Covering windows and leaving only tiny circles so no drone can get through etc… But at the same time, the video struck a chord because as soon as I saw it, I knew some form of this was coming and likely within the next decade. But mitigations and countermeasures are being developed in tandem. I think that's the major thing the Slaughterbots video got wrong. And there's many different potential countermeasures, they don't all have to be 100% effective, but together they form a kind of "net" that will make these attacks a lot harder to pull off. For example, they now have a portable machine that can disrupt a drone swarm's sensors, which will at the very least require additional shielding (and increase cost per unit) which removes some of the benefits. It's possible the technology will prove even more fruitful after additional development and make drone swarms mostly untenable for warfare except in rare situations. This is a very direct countermeasure, but I could also imagine other indirect measures like regulating consumer drone manufacturers and forcing them to add/remove features that make it more difficult to turn them into a weapon. The same way printers can't just print currency and GPS won't work if it's moving too fast. Ultimately, for war it just makes it another type of weapon/tactic and there's already infrastructure for controlling how those things move between countries and intelligence groups that work to keep them away from terrorists etc... Which leaves the possibility of a sole actor or small group without state backing turning consumer drones into these swarms. Which could happen, it could be a new vector of terrorist attack. But they'd still have to source explosives which is already monitored, etc... In the Slaughterbots video, these swarm attacks are extremely efficient and effective, killing 5000+ people at a time. I think a similar attempt from a homegrown terror cell would not be more effective than a mass shooting or traditional bombing in terms of casualties (< 50.) I think for it to become more effective, it would have to be done many times and iterated on by the same group, building up institutional knowledge. It's just too complex. Like the idea of a "dirty bomb", I think it’s one of those things that is theoretically extremely dangerous but due to a mix of factors is unlikely to result in a situation like the one depicted in that video. A matrix of countermeasures will just make the juice not worth the squeeze. I think about it like guns. There is a lot of gun violence in the United States, but it stems more from ideological gridlock than the government not being able to stop it if they had the will to. The one thing that does worry me is the possibility of targeting individuals. So if you have a tiny drone that can explode and isn’t part of a larger swarm, then you could potentially murder someone in a way that is very hard to investigate. Much harder than a homicide involving a gun where someone had to pull the trigger. It could be the next evolution of SWATing someone.

binarymax 3y ago

> THOR engaged the targets and knocked them out of the sky using its non-kinetic, speed-of-light microwave pulses. Microwaves dont travel at the speed of light. Did they mean line of sight? Edit - well guess I was wrong!

doctoboggan 3y ago
Why wouldn't they? They are just EM waves. "Light" is used colloquially for the visible spectrum but microwaves could be considered light waves
krapp 3y ago
Microwaves do travel at the speed of light, all electromagnetic radiation does.
phendrenad2 3y ago
> Microwaves dont travel at the speed of light Yes, they do, microwaves are just a wavelength of light.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tasseff 3y ago
You might have been colloquially correct. Microwaves travel at the speed of light, but my microwave that heats up a Hot Pocket can't. :-)
- jakeinspace 3y ago
  They’ll work in a pinch against a drone idling below your kitchen window.
ared38 3y ago
You are actually correct. The speed of light you always hear about is the speed of EM radiation in a perfect vacuum. In a medium such as the atmosphere, the pulse doesn't travel as fast. The slowdown depends on the refractive index, which itself depends on the frequency of the wave -- longer wavelengths have lower indices. This means that microwaves will move the tiniest bit faster than light through the atmosphere.

otoburb 3y ago

>>[the] weapon proved effective in neutralizing multiple targets even though it had never before been tested against the types of drones used in the trial. Presumably THOR was tested against American and/or foreign-made retail drones, and not foreign military-grade drones. Hardened electronics aren't a new concept.

awestroke 3y ago
Still a good thing that they can stop massively asymmetric attacks (huge number of cheap drones with cheap explosives)
DirectorKrennic 3y ago
I presume that the Defense Department's experts are well aware of these things. The article is sparse in details. Maybe they did test this new capability on "military-grade" drones, whatever "military-grade" means. Military technology isn't always superior to civilian, commercial technology, as anyone with even a passive familiarity with government acquisitions could attest. Both Ukraine and Russia have resorted to modified commercial drones in the Ukraine war. A North Korean drone was once recovered that was nothing more than a piece of crap with a cheap camera mounted[1]. Really, the only serious and adversarial competitor in the drone space is China. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/suspected-north-korean-drones-low-tech-but-south-on-high-alert/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/suspected-north-korean-drones-l...
- jstarfish 3y ago
  > While the capture of the two surveillance drones appears to offer a rare glimpse into the North's technology, analysts stress they do not necessarily represent the best unmanned aerial vehicles the North can field. Always be skeptical of aggressive mimicry. A "piece of crap with a cheap camera" is cheap and disposable-- and misleads those quick to jump to conclusions. It's what you deliberately throw over the fence when you want adversaries to think you're underequipped. They have nukes for fuck's sake. They can afford real drones.
sorokod 3y ago
May be true, but a lot of the stuff flying over Ukraine is retail. Future conflicts may be similar. DJIs seem to be popular https://gagadget.com/en/153538-ukrainian-intelligence-service-will-receive-78-dji-matrice-300-rtk-drones-for-uah56160000-30-drones-already-in-ukraine/ https://gagadget.com/en/153538-ukrainian-intelligence-servic...

Marlon1788 3y ago

I wonder how effective this is against a microwave resistant design. microwaves are incredibly easy to deflect, 1mm sheet steel at the right angles would be interesting to see. 1M USD start up drone company inquire here.

phendrenad2 3y ago
If you can fully shield the electronics with steel then you're probably good to go. The problem is any small gap in the shielding (such as for venting heat from the rotor motors).
xyzzyz 3y ago
Even aluminum foil can do wonders here.
- Marlon1788 3y ago
  tin foil hat drones incoming
version_five 3y ago
The drones are going to be vulnerable because they need to have some kind of antenna to communicate externally, that presumably would be pretty broadband. It would be interesting to think about how one could harden them but still allow communication ... I think it's probably possible. Something like an nmr receiver that has diodes that short it out for high power input... I have no idea if that translates practically.
- Marlon1788 3y ago
  something like a small hole or slit in the deflecting body would allow different wavelengths through. The microwave region extends from 1,000 to 300,000 MHz (or 30 cm to 1 mm wavelength).
  - asdfman123 3y ago
    Or you could use some kind of fiber optic system, worst case.

notatoad 3y ago

given the number of actual incidents involving shooting down drones in recent months, it might have been nice to include right in the title that this was a demonstration, and not an actual deployment against an enemy.

falcolas 3y ago
FWIW, it was a practical test, so while it does not presage war for the US, it does prove that this is a real weapon outside of computer simulations.
- notatoad 3y ago
  Yeah, for sure. But we aren’t under attack, and headlines should tend to avoid any possible confusion about that

rohan_ 3y ago

Defense engineers have more fun!

epolanski 3y ago
I don't know, I was offered to design and implement military cockpits UI and tracking systems for the biggest weapon exporter in Italy for a very good salary, a 60% raise of what I earned at the time and I was like "no thanks, I want to go sleep without thinking I'm helping writing software to kill people". Since then I have a very clear clause in my contracts that I don't work in projects involving law enforcement, military and some other business.
- AHOHA 3y ago
  Interesting point, I too have a similar moral, but I don’t mind to do something for defense, no?
  - lesuorac 3y ago
    Much like how one mans terrorist is another's freedom fighter. One mans defense is another mans offense. Surely this microwave can be moved to the frontlines and as the frontline moves forward.
    - AHOHA 3y ago
      You got a point, but going by that logic, as bladesmith, I should never make any knife because there’s always the possibility to be used the wrong way?
      - epolanski 3y ago
        Knife have dual purposes, military weapons have only one.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    It seems hard to guess based on the technology if something will be defensive or aggressive. I mean, silly example, but if you invent a suit of armor somebody will say “nice, now I can use my sword two handed, no need for a shield!” Maybe nukes.

smaili 3y ago

Do they decide on an acronym first then work backwards to try and come up with what each letter stands for or is it just a coincidence that they landed on THOR? :)

jstarfish 3y ago
The last time they didn't do this, they ended up carrying MANPADS into battle.
Taek 3y ago
It's called a backronym :)
falcolas 3y ago
As they say, "Someone really wanted our initials to spell out 'SHIELD'."
hammock 3y ago
Chatgpt makes this fun and rewarding. How about: Mobile Integrated Countermeasure Radiating Overwhelming Waves Against Virtual Enemies (MICROWAVE)
AHOHA 3y ago
Both way, I did some projects with military and they care much about these acronyms for some reason.
- macintux 3y ago
  I imagine when you’re dealing with so many weapons systems it’s helpful to have memorable names. Beats the heck out of X1, X2, X3, X4, X5, X6 (not to pick on BMW, but to pick on BMW). (Update: not to mention the need to appeal to Congress to keep funding these systems.)
  - AHOHA 3y ago
    Yep, it’s mainly for catchy names for funding.

hendersoon 3y ago

They say it's a wide beam. Is that a misinterpretation of the spectrum used or did they mean physically a wide beam, as opposed to a thin maser? That would be extremely inefficient compared to a pinpoint accurate defense, wouldn't it? I assume military drones are difficult to spot, so maybe they need a shotgun pellet approach.

zacharycohn 3y ago
Judging from the size of the dish, I assume it's a physically wide beam. That also means you don't have to aim as well, and you can - like they demonstrated in the video - point and sweep to take out a large swath at once without having to acquire each target individually.

epolanski 3y ago

Serious question, what if instead of pointing it to drones it was pointed to organic flesh? Wouldn't that microwave burst the water contained in someone's body?

jiveturkey 3y ago
that already is a weapon. as an example, they believe a low power version is what was used in havana.
- reilly3000 3y ago
  Came to say this. It’s not a big mystery like the news keeps saying it is. How can one defend against this?
  - Firmwarrior 3y ago
    Tinfoil hat lining
    - alasdair_ 3y ago
      Please make a tinfoil hat and cook it in your microwave and let us know how it goes.
- verdverm 3y ago
  The latest I heard about Havana is they believe that to not be the case any more. There are however crowd control versions for anti-riot purposes. They induce a burning feeling on the skin without permanent damage, supposedly.
  - smegger001 3y ago
    I wonder who is doing the studies to prove no long term harm.
    - 3y ago

jameshart 3y ago

“non-kinetic, speed-of-light microwave pulses” Presumably the version that uses kinetic faster-than-light microwave pulses is still classified.

sidewndr46 3y ago
actually the pulses went back in time and killed the systems inventor. So it no longer exists.
reilly3000 3y ago
Shhhh. Don’t want to be on THEIR naughty list.
- nerpderp82 3y ago
  It isn't like they are generating plasma conduits with the microwaves and then using a hyper velocity gas gun to propel a slug of plasma down the conduit!
  - all2 3y ago
    Hammer's Slammers, anyone? In the series of books they would use a laser to carve a hole in air and then inject a plasma made of super-heated copper into the collapsing channel. I always thought it was a pretty neat concept. That, along with their flying tanks. They used big fans to lift these M1 Abrams style battle tanks. I cannot imagine the power consumption for all of it.
    - justinclift 3y ago
      Sounds similar to that "guide lightning using a laser" thing from a few months ago: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-17/scientists-use-laser-to-guide-lightning-bolt-for-first-time/101861990 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-17/scientists-use-laser-...
Retric 3y ago
I recall reading about some microwave or laser weapon which was pulsed to in theory increase effectiveness. Part of the design was using kinetic effects and the sub light speed propagation of pressure waves through the material. Basically rather than trying to vaporize armor you heat or blast chunks off in rapid succession which can do all sorts of things including creating strong magnetic fields. Which was then possibly more efficient in defeating armor etc. I can’t find the exact source but this seems related: https://www.nre.navy.mil/organization/departments/aviation-force-projection-and-integrated-defense/aerospace-science-research-351/directed-energy-weapons-uspl-and-atmospheric-characterization https://www.nre.navy.mil/organization/departments/aviation-f...

hn8305823 3y ago

> THOR engaged the targets and knocked them out of the sky using its non-kinetic, speed-of-light microwave pulses. Maybe that's military jargon but in Physics photons definitely carry and deliver kinetic energy.

zacharycohn 3y ago
A kinetic weapon is one that damages the target by smashing into it. Blunt projectiles like rocks, arrows, bullets, etc. This is a non-kinetic weapon, because it does not damage the target through kinetic force.
- hn8305823 3y ago
  > This is a non-kinetic weapon, because it does not damage the target through kinetic force. It is literally the kinetic energy of the photons and nothing else that is disabling the drones. The photon kinetic energy is transferred to electrons that either overheat components or destroy control electronics with excessive voltage (the article did not specify which).
  - nostrademons 3y ago
    Intended audience: not physicists.
  - zactato 3y ago
    Unnecessary pedantry. You know what the title meant.
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    It's the kinetic energy of a HEAT round that damages a tank too, but that's not classified as a KEW either, since a KEW is where the sole damage done is by the energy of a projectile (and a HEAT round it's the chemical energy in the round that produces most of the damage, after being converted to thermal and kinetic energy). I will propose that (generally speaking) a projectile has mass, which would exclude photons from the definition.
- 3y ago

SEJeff 3y ago

Let’s also not forget LEONIDAS, which is a bit more mobile but smaller. https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/01/24/epirus-counter-drone-microwave/amp/ https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/01/24/epirus-counter-dro...

themodelplumber 3y ago

That promo video has "suck it Iran" written all over it. Right down to the truck launches and drone shapes. I do admit I wonder about single point of failure with this, so hopefully it's part of some layered strategy. Maybe with some flingy nets, those matrix-barrel guns with like 100 barrels in a grid, eagles trained to swoop down and pick apart the props, etc. etc.

uhtred 3y ago
> eagles trained to swoop down and pick apart the props I assume the eagle dies or gets a horrific injury in this scenario?
- zdw 3y ago
  Generally not: https://www.michigan.gov/egle/Newsroom/MI-Environment/2020/08/13/shoreline-mapping-egle-drone-sent-to-watery-lake-michigan-grave-by-u-p-bald-eagle https://www.michigan.gov/egle/Newsroom/MI-Environment/2020/0...
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  They tried that, in The Netherlands, I think. They stopped the initiative. Not sure why, but they didn't think it was effective.
- SimonPStevens 3y ago
  Surprisingly they seem very capable of taking down drones uninjured. They have very strong legs, and with a flexible attack from below they can avoid the props. Here's a video of some french trained eagles showing how easy it is. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b8kZupqPbJs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b8kZupqPbJs
- prawn 3y ago
  I had a wedge tailed eagle take down one of my drones while filming. Drone ended up dropping to the ground damaged while the eagle wasn’t too bothered. It just perched nearby and watched me picking up pieces, not preening or appearing at all injured.
- 3y ago

amelius 3y ago

Anyone have a formula for E(x,t) and H(x,t) for the actual wave?

barbegal 3y ago

Lots of words but not much detail. What I'm interstates to know: - The effective range of the system, if the range is only 100m or so then you might need a lot of these to protect a larger strategic area. - How it neutralises the drones, does it overheat certain components or just inject sufficient noise into the system that the flight controller stops working or just disrupt any command signals.

narigon 3y ago
My guess is it just overwhelmems the control. Solving auto-homing sounds like a hard problem and it's more feasible to just have the drone land on the loss of control.

AHOHA 3y ago

While I’m working mainly on drones/robotics, counter drones is also becoming a big talk with a lot of interest from investors, however, countring drones isn’t that easy, even with latest sensors (sound/visual/Lidar/radar sensors), there’s a lot of false positives when deployed in real scenarios, one trial we tried near an airport, the system we tested caught a lot of birds as drones, you tune it not to detect it, then drones goes undetected. Some systems tries to us AI to study the fly path and find some anomalies and trigger based on that, but so far I didn’t see personally an acurate system that can reliably detect and neutralize. Swarm on the other hand, might be easier given how easy to detect them.

runtime_blues 3y ago
Airport is probably a very different environment, though? I imagine that if you have a military installation, you don't mind blasting some birds with RF every now and then (and the birds probably don't mind either).
- excalibur 3y ago
  As a passenger on commercial aircraft, I don't mind reducing the bird population near an airport.
- version_five 3y ago
  A bird is small and largely non-conducting. I'd guess it could plausibly survive a burst of microwave that could disable a drone, at any practical distance from the weapon.
  - dist-epoch 3y ago
    Microwave tends to "cook" you.
    - Retric 3y ago
      Microwave covers a huge range 300 MHz to 300 GHz and they want something that will work in the rain or fog which means minimizing absorption by water as much as possible.

hk1337 3y ago

aka Point Break

nerpderp82 3y ago

This thing is easily defeated with a small amount of software and tactics.

wayeq 3y ago

Thor is he-yah!

aidenn0 3y ago

Anyone know what this would do to a more traditional airborne threat (e.g. cruise missile or fighter)?

JoeAltmaier 3y ago

Now we need steam-powered drones?

denton-scratch 3y ago

I'd like to know more, like the power of the beam, and what it does to the drones. I'm not wow'ed to learn that an electronic circuit can be influenced by microwaves, nor that a HF radio beam can be jammed. I note the article didn't claim this thing can be used to disable an autonomous cruise missile using inertial/map-based guidance, and having no radio receiver.

dmbche 3y ago

I wonder if these devices could ever become powerful enough to be mounted on missiles and thrown at helicopters or planes and have them drop out of the sky - or mounting them on Growlers! Could be interesting as an alternative to explosives

TheRealPomax 3y ago

Did they also trial it against a drone swarm that knew about THOR (which an assailant would) and had put the drones in "not even Faraday mesh" but just a fairly open wire sphere because microwaves are trivially neutralized with a "mesh" that has several inches of space between the wires? (E.g. wired cages that are already commonly used by drone-operators in the ducting/smoke stack/container/etc inspection business to prevent their $50k industrial drones from crashing into walls/ceilings) Because a test that doesn't test "what happens when the enemy knows the weaknesses" is not a test.

_8j50 3y ago
The drones would fly in a faraday cage? Really? Even if so, that's more cost and less weight they can carry. I am sure the US mil would also be concerned its own drones can be shot down like that. A faraday cage protects against interference but does it shield against energy? Are they using microwaves to excite components in the drone or is it more like a MASER where microwave is used to deliver energy? If this was light for example, I would equate what you are saying to coating the drones with a mirror, but if it is something like a LASER it would still damage the drone.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Conductive paints/coatings exist.
- TheRealPomax 3y ago
  You've clearly never heard of building inspection drones. The drones fly in a sperical cage, which you can trivially run wires through, or over, to create a Faraday cage after programming the drones to fly whatever pattern you need them to. Hell, buy some copper tape, off you go. Just because you didn't know about this thing, doesn't mean drone operators in military positions don't know about this either.
  - _8j50 3y ago
    I did not know, I did not presume what military folks know either.

rdtsc 3y ago

Very neat. Wonder if drones could fly lower and swarm around it in an almost full circle. There could be anti-THOR suicide drones attacking first before the rest fly in. Then, would any shielding work or even some kind of a microwave energy reflector, like an inverted cone, to concentrate the energy back at the THOR system to use its energy against itself.

vonnik 3y ago

Fwiw, large-scale jammer systems using radio frequencies are already deployed and quite effective in Ukraine. Curious what the advantage is here.

Wistar 3y ago
Perhaps effective against completely autonomous vehicles?
- vonnik 3y ago
  There are three ways I know to bring down a drone with electronic warfare: - jam the operator's signal (RF) - jam or spoof GPS/GLONASS (RF) - fry the electronics There are degrees of autonomy. Some autonomous vehicles do not rely on their operators, but continue to rely on GPS et al. Fuller autonomy requires an internal navigation system based on local data of the terrain to be navigated. In that case, the only thing left is to damage the on-board electronics. Google tells me this is what microwaves do... https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/drone-killer-fires-microwave-beams-to-disable-uavs/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/drone-killer-...

cwkoss 3y ago

Gonna be pretty gnarly when these get introduced into a theater of war and some desperate person points them at human flesh. :-|

xjlin0 3y ago

Does it work in rainy days?

stevenjgarner 3y ago

It looks like this system might not have 360 degree coverage. Is that a weakness?

smoyer 3y ago

This should be useful in Florida!

two_in_one 3y ago

anti-drone 'rifles' are used a lot in Ukrainian war by both sides. As I understand they mostly target GPS receivers and force 'disoriented' drone to land. Also there are attacks on control frequencies. Which are countered by frequency changes or hopping, obviously. Attack on drones electronics itself requires significant power. So that thing likely to have short range. AI powered drones, which don't need constant control and GPS, will be much harder to take down. They can be made today for about $1k, more for bigger ones.

arcastroe 3y ago

According to the article, this anti drone system works by targeting the electronics inside the drone with microwave pulses. Dumb question: why couldn't the electronics be shielded like the door of your kitchen microwave?