Lockheed Martin’s Silent Crow

I thought several years ago there was an EMP drone test where it flew over a building out in the desert and there were a lot of computers inside setup like an office or command center and when it flew over they were all disrupted? I am surprised you dont hear more about EMP drones being used everywhere. But I thought this was pretty cool even though it was dated 2020:

breakingdefense.com...

WASHINGTON: After successful flight tests of Lockheed Martin’s Silent Crow prototype last year, the Army took a big step to rebuilding its electronic warfare capabilities, awarding the company $74.85 million to develop, build, and test operational EW pods.

Largely developed at Lockheed’s own expense, the Silent Crow pod is now the leading contender for the flying flagship of the Army’s rebuilt electronic warfare force. Army EW was largely disbanded after the Cold War, except for short-range jammers to shut down remote-controlled roadside bombs. Now it’s being urgently rebuilt to counter Russia and China, whose high-tech forces – unlike Afghan guerrillas – rely heavily on radio and radar systems, whose transmissions US forces must be able to detect, analyze and disrupt.

now I see there are war games coming up and they will be tested:

breakingdefense.com...

New drones – launched by helicopters in flight and built by the Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office – will reach out “hundreds of kilometers.” Marine F-35s, 82nd Airborne troops, and Special Ops will also participate in exercise EDGE21.

WASHINGTON: The Army will host an interservice aviation exercise in May to prove its Chief of Staff’s recent claim that the service can bring “speed and range” to future battlefields. Known as EDGE21 — Experimentation Demonstration Gateway Event 2021 – and held at Dugway Proving Ground, the experimental wargame will be the Army’s latest bid to prove it plays a vital role in far-ranging and fast-paced All Domain Operations.

During last year’s Project Convergence, UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters launched a swarm of ALTIUS mini-drones — known in Army jargon as Air-Launched Effects (ALE) – to “flood the zone” out to more than 60 kilometers (37 miles). In EDGE21, Rugen said, the Black Hawks will carry a bigger drone — roughly six feet long — developed by the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) and known as ALE-Large. Its exact capabilities are classified, he said, the new air-launched drone will reach out “hundreds of kilometers.”

Surely we are using some kind of EMP Drones right now somewhere in the field right?

a reply to: ColoradoTemplar

Surely we are using some kind of EMP Drones right now somewhere in the field right?

CHAMP isn’t EMP, it’s microwave. And it’s a cruise missile, not a UAV. Pretty damn effective though.

a reply to: Zaphod58

There was a friend of the family that passed away several years ago and he was in the Airforce in EW. He said that he had to sign paperwork when he was getting out that he wouldnt build any of the items he was working one, but said with 2 car batteries and some parts from Radio Shack he could build a device that would make all police radars within a mile of him start smoking on their dashboards.

a reply to: ColoradoTemplar

It doesn’t take large amounts of power to affect a small area. The trick is directing it, and hitting a larger area.

a reply to: ColoradoTemplar

Related article from yesterday...

Army To Test Its Biggest Interactive Drone Swarm Ever Over Utah (April 22, 2022)

The U.S. Army plans to launch a swarm of up to 30 small drones networked into a swarm later this month over the Utah desert as part of an international exercise. Deployed from an advanced echelon of a dual air-assault mission by helicopter-borne troops from the U.S. Army and allied participants, the swarm will be the largest group of interactive air-launched effects (ALEs) the Army has ever tested.

A mix of Area-I's small Air-Launched, Tube-Integrated, Unmanned System 600 (ALTIUS 600) and Raytheon-built Coyote drones will be launched from a variety of aircraft and ground vehicles at the Army’s 2022 Experimental Demonstration Gateway Exercise (EDGE 22) that runs from April 25 to May 12 at Dugway Proving Ground near Salt Lake City, Utah.

“We feel like we're going to be flying the largest interactive drone swarm ever in partnership with DARPA and our science and technology experts out of Aviation and Missile Command.”

“What's really on my mind, and you can see it play out in Ukraine, is our enemies fire on detect. We fire on identify,” he said. “We're already in kind of a latent position, because of our culture and our values and we're gonna hold to that. So we’ve got to speed it up and that's really what I'm very, very interested in. I want to be faster than them even though they're kind of cheating.”

a reply to: XtheMadnessNow

A nice drone swarm yesterday at Thunder Over Louisville

www.wlky.com...

12 minute video.

Have a great Sunday