Defence

Boeing has confirmed that it downed six unmanned manned air vehicles at various ranges with two developmental portable laser beam systems during tests at the Naval Air Warfare Centre at China Lake, California in May.

Five of the UAVs were tracked and shot down by the US Air Force-funded Matrix mobile research system that uses a single 2.5kW high energy laser. Laser Avenger, a second system being developed by Boeing with internal funding and based on the existing surface-to-air missile Avenger air defence system, also brought down a UAV during the exercise.

Boeing did not reveal the type of UAVs or flight conditions in which the vehicles were tracked or downed.

In addition to light energy, Boeing has also been experimenting with a 25mm machine gun mounted to the Avenger system "to potentially further the hybrid directed energy/kinetic energy capability against UAV threats", says the company. Avenger is normally equipped with eight Stinger missiles in two pods.