U.S. Navy Looks To Equip Humvees With Lasers To Counter Drones

If you have watched Sharknado, you would most probably know just how cheesy things can get, but and I am quite sure that the idea of laser-mounted sharks have also tickled your imagination at least once in the past. Well, here is a more modern take on that thought, where the U.S. Navy intends to equip Humvees with a laser weapon. This laser will be used to shoot down drones as part of an effort to counter these flying devices.

Known as the Ground-Based Air Defense Directed Energy On-the-Move program, or GBAD for short, this particular program intends to deliver an affordable alternative to traditional firepower so that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from the enemy camp will not be all that pesky anymore, and it might do its bit to stop them from tracking and targeting Marines that are on the ground.

In fact, the U.S. Navy hopes that in due time, all the relevant bits and pieces of such a system will be miniaturized to such a point where it can be mounted on light tactical vehicles like the Humvees while packing an adequate amount of punch to counter such threats. Other than the Humvee, the GBAD system can see action on the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle as well.

So far, they are looking to increase the laser’s power from 10kW laser to 30kW laser, where the latter is tipped to be ready for field testing some time in 2016 as more complex trials take place. With this in mind, the Twitter Quadcopter will not stand a chance. [Press Release]

Edwin Kee
Categories: Military
Tags: laser, navy