American aviation and defense enterprise Boeing says it is continuing to develop Compact Laser Weapon System (CLWS) which they already sold the current version in the US.
Rick Lemaster, Senior Regional Director at Boeing told DefenseHere CLWS can be installed to protect a field and building against drone attacks.
He said “It uses laser beams to shoot down and burn like you see there on that top drone. So the drone, when it falls out of the sky, is no longer a threat. You can use several of these combined energy in order to burn through it quicker. You can also set them up to provide a wider area of coverage. You can have it mounted on a vehicle or you can have it in a ground installation.
And it’s something that we’re hopeful that many customers in this region will find useful.”
CLWS initially made news for having Xbox controllers to control the weapon as “soldiers’ assumed familiarity with the Xbox controller.” First batch of CLWS were delivered to U.S. Marine Corps for testing in 2018 and upgraded versions were delivered to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in 2020.
In 2021 Boeing was awarded a five-year $2.5 million contract by the U.S. Marine Corps to sustain the CLWS units.
Latest milestone in CLWS’ development came at the end of 2023 when “the high-energy 5-kW CLWS successfully completed several demonstrations of its capabilities, validating its readiness for deployment.”