Epirus Wins Navy Contract for Havoc Anti-drone Microwave System

The contract, awarded through the Office of Naval Research, will deliver early next year a High-power Microwave Autonomous Vehicle Operational Capability (HAVOC) system that can autonomously identify drone targets and drop them from the sky with an electromagnetic pulse. The award follows prototype testing of the similar Expeditionary Directed Energy Counter-Swarm (ExDECS) weapon that Epirus delivered to the Marine Corps last year under a $5.5 million contract. Compared with ExDECS, HAVOC will have three times the power, improved ruggedness and range, and autonomous capabilities to simplify decision-making for human operators, the company said.

We’ve tripled the power density nearly in this system. So think of it, from a laser point of view that a lot of people are familiar with, like going from a 50-kilowatt to 150-kilowatt type laser in the same size package. So that directly kind of contributes to lethality, range, these types of things, Epirus CEO Andy Lowery told Defense News in an interview.