Laser weapons are seen as a potential low-cost alternative to missiles for shooting down drones.

The UK has successfully fired a high-power laser weapon against an aerial target for the first time in a trial.

It is hoped that the test will pave the way for a low-cost alternative to missiles to shoot down targets like drones.

The DragonFire weapon is precise enough to hit a £1 coin from a kilometre away, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) says.

  • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
    1·
    6 months ago

    The cheapest option is a CWIZ but even that thing costs something like $40,000 a minute to fire

    You don't have to spam stupid amounts of individual bullets.

    • Buelldozer@lemmy.todayEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      You don’t have to spam a stupid amount of individual bullets.

      You would against a drone swarm, especially if each drone is more than a meter or two away from the next one.

      I will say that my memory was bad and so my cost was wrong. A CWIZ has a rate of fire of about 3,000 rounds a minute with each round costing something like $30. So the firing cost per minute is $90,000!

      Back to your point; engaging a single target will use about 100 rounds for a cost of $3,000. So if for a modest swarm of 10 drones dispersed such that each has to be targeted individually the total cost would be around $30,000. Contrast that with a HEL system where the total cost would be around $50.

      Even if you could upgrade the CWIZ to “one shot one kill” levels of accuracy it would still cost $30 per drone so our little swarm would cost $300 to deal with.

      I love the CWIZ but the economics are entirely in favor of HEL systems.