AIM Defence have been contracted by the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to build a deployable Directed Energy (DE) system for ongoing counter-drone testing and evaluation.
The $4.9 million contract represents the first time the ADF has acquired a directed energy prototype for ongoing field-based counter-drone trials.
AIM Defence states that their Fractl:2 DE system is powerful enough to burn through steel, and precise enough to track and shoot down a drone travelling at 100km/hour from kilometres away. It is also portable and battery powered.
“Countering drones and other autonomous weapons systems has emerged as one of the most critically needed capabilities for militaries worldwide," said AIM Defence co-founder Jessica Glenn.
"For the past four years AIM Defence has been working with Australia’s defence innovation ecosystem to build a cost-effective, high-precision and deployable directed energy system. Fractl:2 is the culmination of that effort.”
The Fractl:2 relies on AIM Defence’s enhanced eye safety tactical DE laser, which limits the blinding risk associated with typical one-micron systems, making it safer in the field than comparable High Power Laser (HPL) systems.
“We have successfully demonstrated over 200 drone defeats both indoors and outdoors over the last two years, each time improving the Fractl capabilities and learning how to safely deploy directed energy. By having this focus we’ve been able to engineer our 1-micron Fractl:1 system to be orders of magnitude safer than other DE systems," said AIM Defence co-founder Dr Jae Daniel.
"The evolution of Fractl to the Fractl:2 variant reduces the collateral hazard again, by a factor of 100. This makes it the safest and most deployable High Power Laser system in the world, by quite a margin.”
AIM Defence expects Fractl:2 to be in the hands of ADF operators by mid-2024.