Pentagon Pilot Will Test KBR's Firefly Laser Against Drones at Bases

KBR's Firefly, a mobile high-energy laser built by its subsidiary Kord Technologies, has been chosen for a Pentagon pilot program on defending U.S. military installations from drones, Military Times reports. The aim is to bring down cheap drones without spending multimillion-dollar missiles on them.

Key points

• The pilot: Directed-energy weapons will go to bases around the country for a yearlong assessment. Troops will run and maintain them and collect data, while the Pentagon tracks cost and logistics.
• Controls: Operators use an Xbox controller. KBR senior director David Zoller Jr. said this cuts training time because people already know the "buttonology."
• Performance: Kord says Firefly works from negative 15 to 35 degrees Celsius. At an August demonstration in Alabama, company officials said a truck-mounted unit took only a few seconds to bring down a small drone.
• Human in charge: Radar flags a possible threat and an operator checks it with built-in cameras. Zoller said a person still decides when and where to fire, and the beam can be aimed at a specific propeller, engine or fuel tank.
• Limits: Firefly can engage only one target at a time, so in a swarm the most urgent threat has to come first.

Quick take

Zoller told Military Times that high-energy lasers are "not a silver bullet." His answer to a swarm is to have several systems working on the most imminent threat at once.

Read the full story at Military Times.