Raytheon [RTN] has dusted off its high-power microwave (HPM) demonstrator as a result of renewed interest from the U.S. government in cheaply knocking enemy unmanned aerial systems (UAS) from the sky with bursts of energy instead of missiles.
Though it originally was designed to fry the computing components of Tier 1 and 2 unmanned aerial systems, the HPM demonstrator is powerful enough to stop vehicle engines and other targets with electronic components, Steve Downie, site director for Raytheon’s advance missile systems facility in Albuquerque, N.M., told reporters at the company’s Arlington, Va., offices on Monday.
It is similar in function and capability, if not size and shape, to the counter-electronics high-power microwave advanced missile project (CHAMP) developed by Boeing [BA] and K-Tech Corp., which was bought by Raytheon in 2011. It was developed for an Army application as one element of a modular, multi-layered air defense system.
Raytheon has been marketing the HPM demonstrator to “various DoD customers” since the 2013 test firing but interest in the capability has spiked recently because of the need for such a weapon to counter emerging threats, Downie said.
“It’s important for people to start to realize that this technology does exist,” Downie said. “A lot of people, we have found, in recent discussions don’t know about it.”
There is no published requirement for an HPM system, though U.S. military services have expressed immediate interest. A formal request for proposals in this calendar year would fulfill a Raytheon desire, but is unlikely, Downie said.
More likely, according to another industry source, is that a combatant commander files an emergency operational needs statement for either a counter-UAS capability or an HPM specifically and purchases them that way. Army officials up to Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley have publicly warned that Russia has superior capability to use UAS for artillery spotting and intelligence gathering and the Army has no credible deterrent or counter.
“There were observers at the Fort Sill [Okla.] demonstration that have surfaced since that demonstration was given and have shown interest,” Downie said.
The Fort Sill demo was before a crowd of multiple potential customers during a periodic industry show-and-tell in 2013. In it, Raytheon’s HPM demonstrator was aimed at a mountain and emitted a field pulse through which small UAS were flown individually and in groups. Exactly what effect the HPM has on electronics or communication hardware is proprietary to Raytheon.
“The effect is instantaneous,” Downie said, describing a video of the test that Raytheon is working to make public. “A soon as they are illuminated, they just take a nose dive into the ground…It is a system that is designed to attack electronics – to make electronics non-functioning.”
The one HPM demonstrator Raytheon has built is a 20-ft transportable container designed to be hauled behind a truck. Raytheon already has a design for one half that size with the same power and capability output. It is topped with two dishes that generate, focus and project the microwave pulse and is powered by a self-contained gasoline generator making the whole system self-deployable.
U.S. military officials have asked Raytheon to come up with ways to mount similar systems on particular vehicles, though Downie would not say which services or platforms. He did not know if the capability was part of Raytheon’s comprehensive response to the Army’s Styker lethality upgrade program.
“We know we can cut it in half, the volume, and we have concepts for reducing it significantly beyond that,” Downie said.
Raytheon is marketing the HPM as an alternative to laser weapons, which have also been demonstrated in a counter-UAS role. Lasers have been under development for much longer and have had a much larger funding stream applied to that research. They also are a more-focused directed energy technology than HPM, but they have “dwell time” requirements to heat up and destroy a singular target, Downie said.
The effect from a high-power microwave pulse is almost instantaneous and is capable of projecting a field of effects that can disable multiple targets within a certain target area, Downie said. The difference is between seconds and milliseconds, which matters when a swarm of UAS is inbound, he said.
“If you are addressing a swarm and there are multiple targets in that swarm, the HPM system is going to put out a field and anything that flies through that field…it’s going to be impacted and it’s going to go down,” he said. “With a laser, you are going to illuminate a target for some number of seconds and it will go down and then you go to the next target. With ours if they are flying close enough together they are all going to get hit at the same time.”
Both systems address the military’s main requirement that counter-UAS technologies be affordable to fire on relatively inexpensive enemy drones. The HPM demonstrator Raytheon has already tested at Fort Sill is capable of emitting a pulse field the size of a football field, he said.
“You can’t send multi-million-dollar missiles after a $10,000 UAS,” Downie said. “The government is looking for something that addresses that cost-exchange ratio and both technologies do that. … Once you’ve invested in the system itself, the cost is cents per firing because you are talking about the electricity it takes to generate the pulse. By doing that and because with HPM you can get multiple kills per shot, the cost is negligible compared to a missile.”
So far, the company has built only the one prototype fired in the 2013 demonstration. Given an order from the Army or some other customer, Downie said the first system could be delivered within 18 months and build five to 10 a year out of the existing facility in Albuquerque. To deliver greater quantities, production would be expanded and moved to another Raytheon facility, he said.