In March 2022, Saudi Arabia shot down 13 drones using the China-made “Silent Hunter” (寂静狩猎者) laser weapon system. This might be the laser weapon’s first showing in real war.
Currently many countries lack effective ways to deal with invasive drones. The traditional ariel defense weapon (e.g. an air-defense missile) is too expensive to use to shoot at a drone and also a drone might be too small for a large-sized air-defense radar system to find.
The advantages of China’s Silent Hunter system are:
- It has a low cost. The cost of one shot is less than $1.
- It is powerful. Its standard output is 30K watts and its maximum distance is 4,000 meters. It can penetrate 5 layers of a 2 millimeter thick steel plate at a distance of 800 meters and a 5 millimeter steel tank at a distance of 1,000 meters.
- It has a high mobility.
- It has a high degree of automation. It automatically captures and locks on the target, it can strike multiple targets at the same time, can switch to a new target and complete aiming in six seconds, and it can hit its targets at an extremely high hit rate.
Source: Phoenix, February 4, 2023
https://news.ifeng.com/c/8N8VrBhtl1w