Microwaves and lasers are SCAMS. THREAD: 1/7 Let’s take the US’s mighty THOR anti-drone microwave energy weapon. How it’s supposed to work is that it fires small bursts of microwave energy at drones to fry their electronics like flight controller, ESCs, IMUs, camera etc. Each THOR system costs $18m comes with the actual microwave unit and requires a power source such as a large diesel generator/gas turbine to power it. The range is estimated to be 1km.
Gonna be perfectly honest here, these sorts of drone swarms are essentially a non-issue for modern militaries.
— Analytica Camillus (@AnalyticaCamil1) September 30, 2024
That’s about $200 to $300 per drone (more if they have sophisticated software and launching platforms), and they can be effectively obliterated by an oversized version… https://t.co/Nbx9UoT7hQ pic.twitter.com/BKJMJIvKIs
2/7 The reason for this short range is because microwaves lose their energy rapidly with distance. Like all EM waves, it follows the inverse square law, the power of any microwave/laser/light gets weaker by the square of the distance. Basically at 2 metres range, the power
3/7 So how do you defeat these microwaves? Well the answer is right in your kitchen. All microwave ovens use a metal mesh to prevent the microwaves from leaking out. All you would need is to cover your drone’s electronics in a metal mesh to act as a faraday cage. The highest
4/7 These microwave anti-drone machines are meme weapons. They might look cool in graphics but have NEVER been combat-proven. Billions have been invested into laser and microwave energy weapons since the 1960s and the only thing these “weapons” can do is disable a $300 drone
5/7 Some might say “But but but what about US Navy’s HELIOS laser?!!!!” This laser cost $150m to develop and it can shoot down a drone up to 1km away, but it takes 10 seconds to shoot down the drone. This means a group of 5 drones travelling at a slow 100km/h would defeat this
6/7 It gets even worse. This 1km range ONLY works on unprotected drones. If you were to cover the drone in a cheap heat shield, you’d prevent almost all the heat from reaching the drone. A pair of Houthi Qasef drones covered in $20 thermal heat shields, would defeat any naval
7/7 That’s why we’ve not seen Israeli or American lasers defeat any Palestinian or Yemeni drones. The Israeli Iron Beam laser was created in 2014, but has been in “development” for over 10 years and we’ve still not seen any effective use. These weapons are essentially investor
