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Russia's Rostech Corporation is to unveil a super-high frequency weapon capable of taking down all kinds of drones, missiles and other high precision weapons. The presentation will be made at the Army-2015 military expo. The Mosow Radio Engineering Institute has developed a super-high frequency (SHF) "cannon." It's designed to knock out aircraft, drones, guided missiles and any airborne high precision weapons using electronics. The cannon creates an air-exclusion zone within a reported radius of over 10 kilometers around the defended object or installation, though the system's exact characteristics are classified.
"This mobile microwave irradiation complex performs off-frequency rejection of electronics aboard low-altitude aerial targets and warheads of high precision weapons," a source in Rostech Corporation told TASS, adding this system puts close range air defenses on a whole new level. "In terms of performance capabilities, the complex has no competitors in the world," the source said. All the equipment is mounted on a tracked Buk missile air defense transportation platform.
http://rt.com/news/267187-shf-cannon-russia-drones/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS
NOTE: I wandered around the net for several minutes, looking for alternative news sources on this cannon. I found exactly three other sources, all of which quote RT. Propaganda? Vaporware? You'll have to decide for yourself.
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @03:43AM
There are many anti-armor munitions that are programmed or simply kinetically designed to attack the least-armored side: the top. Combine that with this invention being placed on a Buk and it is not really a threat. A shell, a sabot, a missile already lined up and at speed will not be stopped by guidance system failure. At worse, operating procedure will have to add another conditional: If SHF detected fire one unaffected munition at source before using vulnerable ordinance.
It is some neat tech though. Would be very useful against lower-tech or poorly outfitted adversaries.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday June 16 2015, @08:57AM
> It is some neat tech though. Would be very useful against lower-tech or poorly outfitted adversaries.
Depends just how low-tech. Would this weapon be any use against a WWII-era fighter like a Spitfire or a Zero?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @02:04PM
That is a worthless statement isn't it? The thing would not be viable against rocks and sticks either. Why didn't you point that out?
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday June 16 2015, @02:58PM
Well, if this very expensive bit of kit could be foiled by a relatively low-cost, easy to build counter-aircraft, then surely that's significant.
There has been criticism of Western militaries arming and equipping to fight another cold war / another WWII, when in fact the only people they actually fight these days are AK-wielding guerillas in the middle of the desert against whom aircraft carriers, air-superiority jets and cruise missiles are of far less use than thousands and thousands of boots on the ground. Could this be Russians falling into the same trap? I can easily imagine some Russian military commander imagining himself completely immune to everything in the sky, then scrambling for his rifle as he sees some home-built single-prop kamikaze planes buzzing in towards him...