Engineers at Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have modified a laser, usually used for cutting thick plastic for greenhouses, to an air defence weapon that can destroy airborne drones and other small aerial threats.
Credit: Pixabay
The university engineers and colleagues from a range of industrial sectors have created the company OptiDefense to develop and commercialise the system it's calling Light Blade.
The current design of drones need to keep a continuous communications link to their handler or to GPS, and can be easily exploited by electronic jamming systems which enact a 'soft kill' on the threat.
Autonomous drones of the future will navigate using onboard sensors and cameras, avoiding the use of an exploitable communications link. In order to neutralise these threats, a 'hard kill' option is required - targeting and shooting down the drone.
With support from Israel’s Border Police Commander Yaakov (Kobi) Shabtai, Prof. Amiel Ishaaya of BGU’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and two colleagues developed the Light Blade system that can be used in urban environments.
“In order to operate most high-powered laser defence systems, the airspace needs to be cleared for many kilometres…so the laser does not accidentally blind anyone. Our system operates on a lower frequency which makes it safe for urban environments. Airports, for example, could station our systems around to provide complete coverage without endangering any pilots or passengers,” Prof. Ishaaya said.
Israel has experienced recent attacks along the border with the Gaza Strip from balloons carrying incendiary devices.
“He said, ‘we just worked on a laser system for cutting thick plastic for greenhouses. Kites and balloons are made of similar materials,'” said Prof. Ishaaya.
A working prototype of Light Blade was developed within a year and in February 2020, it was teamed with Elbit’s SupervisIR threat detection system.
“We succeeded in downing everything that came within our field of fire,” said Prof. Ishaaya.
Back to Homepage
Back to Multimedia
Back to Aerospace & Defence