Marines to receive new system for zapping drone swarms out of the sky

A defense company making high-powered microwave systems that melt drones announced a new iteration of its product last week.

Developed by Eprius, the long-pulse, high-power microwave technology known as Leonidas Expeditionary can drop swarms of drones with massive and pointed walls of electromagnetic energy.

Epirus has already delivered high-powered microwave systems to the Army as part of a $66 million contract last year.

It developed its latest Leonidas capability in partnership with the Office of Naval Research, Joint Counter-Small UAS Office, the U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Lab and the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office (JCO).

The company unveiled the system on Sept. 23 and is expected to deliver the completed system to the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab by the end of this year.

So far there are four iterations of the Leonidas system including the newest, which is formally known as the Expeditionary Directed Energy Counter-Swarm, or ExDECS.

Earlier Leonidas offerings have included systems that can be attached to vehicles or air drones.

Leonidas ExDECS is another systems entry on the smaller side, capable of “swarm defeat,” with a transportable profile that’s highly mobile and provides a low physical signature, according to Andrew Wargofchik, a spokesperson for Epirus.

The crown jewel of the Epirus system, aside from its microwave system, is a technology called Line Replaceable Amplifier Module, or LRAM. It’s an architecture that allows the company to scale systems up or down.

“We like to think of them as sort of very scalable Lego blocks,” Wargofchik said.

The announcement of the Leonidas Expeditionary comes on the heels of the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, where AI’s role in the defense industry was the talk of the town.

But as the future of warfare arrives, Wargofchik said Epirus doesn’t buy into the concept that killer robots are on the horizon.

He noted projects like the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or unmanned fighter jets, as a better embodiment of what lies ahead.

Half-man, half-AI is the defense landscape the company envisioned – manned systems existing harmoniously alongside unmanned ones.

“Our CEO, Andy Lowery, likes to call it centaur warfare,” Wargofchik said.

While some in the industry criticize the Defense Department for not adopting existing and emerging AI and machine learning technologies quickly enough, Epirus is more optimistic.

One of the main challenges involves bridging the gap between research and development to mass production, Wargofchik said.

Though the company began with the explicit goal of providing high-powered microwave systems for counter-drone missions, it’s expanding the development of the same systems as a counter for any-and-all electronics.

In April, Epirus demonstrated its capability to effectively take out certain vessel motors at sea during a Navy event.

“We’re kind of arriving at the shores of a whole new beach of maritime applications,” Wargofchik said.