Air defense

Air Force awards contract for $16M drone-killing microwave weapon

The Pentagon has awarded a contract worth nearly $16.3 million to Raytheon for a prototype high-power microwave weapons system, officials announced this week.

The system is the first direct energy weapon said to be able to destroy certain types of drones, Popular Mechanics reported Tuesday. The system uses microwaves that emit "radio frequencies in a conical beam," destroying a drone's circuit with "a burst of overwhelming energy," the publication said.

“It's not a thermal effect, it's an electric-field effect that is basically imposed on the electronics to either upset or permanently damage them. And the effect is essentially instantaneous,"  Raytheon's missile systems' chief technologist for directed energy, Don Sullivan told the outlet.