Lockheed’s Laser Cannon Shoots Drones Out of the Sky, No Fuss
Don’t mess with ATHENA. That’s the Advanced Test High Energy Asset to you and me, and it’s Lockheed’s astonishingly destructive laser cannon. It’s been developing the weapon in order to take down drones without messy—and position-revealing—recourse to anything as crass as bullets.
By focusing a high-intensity 30-kilowatt laser beam at the airframe of a drone, Lockheed says, it is able to cause “loss of control and structural failure” that downs the aircraft. In tests at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, it brought down five of five 10.8-foot wingspan Outlaw drones. You can see its brutal efficacy on display in the video above.
As Gizmodo notes, this isn’t a new idea: tests of using lasers to down small aircraft have been happening since the 1970s. But with finely tuned optics, upgraded beam control, and a compact Rolls-Royce turbo generator as a power source, this is Lockheed’s most potent laser cannon yet.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
Scientists are finding signals of long covid in blood. They could lead to new treatments.
Faults in a certain part of the immune system might be at the root of some long covid cases, new research suggests.
Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.
And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.
OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora
The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.
Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.
Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.