The British Ministry of Defense has issued an official press release stating that the British army, or rather the warriors of the 16th Regiment Royal Artillery, have for the first time used high-energy laser weapons mounted on the Wolfhound Tactical Support Vehicle (TSV) against unmanned aerial vehicles. It is noted that the event took place at Radnor Range in mid-Wales, where the military were able to target and hit unnamed UAVs using a laser system.
The message of the UK Ministry of Defense notes that this is a development that was created in cooperation with a number of structures and companies.
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In particular, this has been developed through a collaboration between the MOD’s Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) and Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) – known as Team Hersa – and an industry consortium led by Raytheon UK.
Among other details in the defense department’s statement, it is worth noting the words of the trials manager for the British Army’s Mounted Close Combat Trials and Development Group, Matthew Anderson, who noted that every case of using the laser during testing led to the downing of a drone, noting how quickly a drone can be destroyed using laser weapons. “While we’ve been testing a variety of distances, speeds and altitudes, one thing has remained – how quick a drone can be taken out,” Warrant Officer Matthew Anderson said.
More details about this event are told in the Defense News publication, in particular, they cite data from the UK Ministry of Defense, which notes that dozens of quadcopters were destroyed during the tests within a 5-kilometer testing range, where 40-mm guns are usually tested, as well as other weapons.
In general, the UK is paying a lot of attention to the development of laser weapons, in particular in the interests of combating unmanned aerial vehicles.
It is worth mentioning the DragonFire project, given the fact that the British previously expressed their willingness to transfer a prototype of this system to Ukraine for combat testing.
We will also recall that the Ukrainian Defense Forces received British Wolfhound armored vehicles in 2022
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Read more: British Wolfhound Armored Vehicles in the Hands of Ukrainian Airborne Forces: Paratrooper Tells About Real Performance on the Battlefield
