Boeing compact lasers down Group 3 drones for first time

In a first, Boeing’s Compact Laser Weapon System (CLWS) engaged and defeated Group 3 uncrewed aerial systems (UASs) — a category of larger drones weighing up to 1,320 pounds (~ 600 kilograms) and capable of carrying heavier, advanced payloads — with a 5-kilowatt laser at the Red Sands Integrated Experimentation Center in Saudi Arabia.

Two Boeing field engineers integrated the system with the Army’s Forward Area Air Defense (FAAD) Command and Control (C2) network to receive cues from a radar system within minutes prior to carrying out the demonstrations alongside representatives from U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) and U.S. Army Central Command.

Why it matters: The annual counter-UAS exercise, dubbed RED SANDS, was a collaborative event hosted by the U.S. Central Command and the Saudi Arabian Armed Forces to test select industry capabilities in a realistic environment to counter the rapidly proliferating UAS threat.

“There’s no substitute for getting to work alongside servicemembers in real theater conditions where you have desert heat, dust, atmospherics — you name it — to fine tune our c-UAS systems and show what they can do,” said Ron Dauk, program manager for Boeing’s Directed Energy portfolio. “As the only directed energy system at RED SANDS, CLWS again showed that it fits a warfighter need as an important piece of the broader layered air defense puzzle on the modern battlefield.”

• RED SANDS followed a counter-UAS challenge hosted by DEVCOM at Fort Drum, New York, where Boeing CLWS units integrated with a military-grade all-terrain vehicle and Army C2 networks to defeat small drones in a variety of scenarios.
• Plus, CLWS units recently returned from a successful multi-year overseas deployment with the U.S. Marine Corps.

Zoom out: Boeing’s CLWS has now defeated nearly 500 drones — ranging from Group 3 and first-person-view drones to swarms — in dozens of demonstrations, scenarios and environments by operators using an Xbox controller with as little as one hour of training. The combat-proven, multi-mission system is capable of:

• Providing a full counter-UAS response at distances ranging from 650 feet (200 meters) to 1.6 miles (2.5 kilometers);
• Meeting U.S. and international integrated C2 requirements;
• Operating in a fixed containerized or mobile configuration; and
• Individually or cooperatively detecting and defeating both single and multiple UAS simultaneously.

Go deeper: Watch the official RED SANDS recap video.