LIGHT BLADE USER SLASHES THREATS FROM THE SKY

摘要

A laser developed to cut thick plastic for greenhouses has been modified to destroy airborne drones and other aerial threats. An engineer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and colleagues from industry have formed OptiDefense to optimise and commercialise the system, which has been dubbed Light Blade. Current drones need to maintain a communication link to their handler or to GPS, and electronic jamming systems can exploit that weakness to enact a 'soft kill' on the threat. Future autonomous drones will navigate via onboard sensors and cameras, eschewing any sort of exploitable communication link. In order to neutralise them before they reach their target, a 'hard kill' option is needed to physically target and shoot down the drone.