One Burst, Dozens Down: How Leonidas Uses High Power Microwaves to Stop Drone Swarms

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Epirus markets counter-UAS tech to Army

By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill

A mobile weapons system, capable of traveling autonomously to the battlefield and shooting down swarms of hostile drones using beams of microwave energy might seem like the stuff of science fiction, but it could be showing up soon in war zones across the world.

Los Angeles-based defense technology company Epirus and a subsidiary of global defense contractor General Dynamics recently teamed to create the Leonidas Autonomous Robotic vehicle (Leonidas AR), a mobile counter-UAS system. The new weapon integrates Epirus’s Leonidas’s high-power microwave (HPM) counter-drone platform with General Dynamics Land Systems’ Tracked Robot 10-ton (TRX) unmanned ground vehicle, to counter the emerging threat posed by swarms of hostile drones.

“Epirus’s partnership with General Dynamics Land Systems is an industry-leading collaboration that continues to deliver real results. Together, we are bringing world-first capabilities to market that directly answer the call of the Army Transformation Initiative,” Epirus CEO Andy Lowery, said in a press release.

The Leonidas AR is just the latest iteration of Leonidas, Epirus’s flagship counter UAS platform, which at a recent Department of Defense demonstration, achieved a 100% success rate, downing a total of 61 out of the 61 drones it was tested against, including a “killing” every UAV arrayed in 49-drone swarm with one burst of electromagnetic interference.

microwave counter drone system

“This is a watershed moment for Epirus,” Lowery said in a statement after the demonstration at Camp Atterbury, Indiana last month. “We believe showcasing our weaponized electromagnetic interference is the most effective way to communicate that Leonidas is the only mission-capable, counter-swarm solution for the one-to-many fight.”

In an emailed statement, Epirus described Leonidas as “a solid-state, software-defined, scalable, modular and safe high-power microwave platform that delivers a weaponized electromagnetic interference capability to counter swarms of drones across domains.” The system uses high-powered microwave technology to shoot drones out of the sky, without the attendant costs and safety hazards or kinetic counter-UAS technologies, such as missile systems.

“While most of the world is just now coming to terms with the reality of the drone swarm threat, Epirus saw this coming years ago—that’s what led to the company’s founding in 2018,” the company statement said.

Epirus was founded by Joe Lonsdale, managing partner of investment firm 8VC and co-founder of Palantir, Grant Verstandig, chairman and CEO of Red Cell Partners and others. CEO Lowery brings decades of leadership at the intersection of national security and technology to Epirus. Prior to joining Epirus, he led multiple defense technology startups including Daqri and RealWear and was previously chief business area engineer at Raytheon.

Company formed to meet emerging technologic threats

Epirus’s corporate mission “is to overcome the asymmetric challenges inherent to the future of national security. Asymmetric, saturation attacks from robotic, growingly autonomous swarms of drones are one of the most pressing national and homeland security threats of the modern era.”

In recent years, drone warfare has become the most dominant and pervasive threat facing military and civilian target across the world, as demonstrated by Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web and Israel’s Operation Rising Lion, the company said.

Epirus said it established itself as company to meet the expanding threats to freedom driven by the rapid advancements in technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics. Its corporate culture “blends the rapid product development and disruptive innovation of Silicon Valley with the industry know-how, scale and sustainment” of the world’s major defense contractors.

Financed through private-capital fund, Epirus was able to deliver its Leonidas system to the U.S. Army in record time. The company first demonstrated the effectiveness of Leonidas in 2020 and since then has continued to upgrade the system. In July Epirus introduced Generation II of its Leonidas HPM platform, marked by significant increases in power and range in the same form factor as Generation I. To date, Epirus has delivered four Integrated Fire Protection Capability HPM (IFPC-HPM) systems to the Army.

in January 2023 the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) awarded Epirus a $66M contract for four IFPC-HPM systems in January 2023. The company delivered the first system in November 2023 and all four systems in May 2024. In a statement the Army confirmed that the Epirus systems marked the first deployment of the type of counter-UAS technology. “IFPC-HPM is the first material-released directed energy weapon system specifically designed to counter groups and swarms of drones.” the Army said. In July, the Army purchased two more Leonidas systems and the company said it is on track to deliver those systems soon.

The Leonidas’ use of HPM technology gives the system a “one-to-many,” defeat capability that other counter-UAS systems, which rely on kinetic or radio jamming methods to bring down hostile drones, lack. “Traditional one-to-one counter-UAS solutions like kinetics (i.e. missiles) and high-energy laser systems are not sufficient for saturation attacks due to magazine depth and cost constraints,” the company statement said. “Kinetic systems are depletable, logistically intensive and unsustainable when faced with a swarm.”

In addition, although laser-based counter-UAS systems offer incredible precision they “demand perfect conditions—clear skies, uninterrupted line of sight and sustained tracking. They are costly, difficult to maintain and hamstrung by significant maintenance and power burdens.”

Likewise, the use of traditional electronic warfare techniques such as jamming a drone’s communication link require a radio frequency (RF) signature to be effective. “With fiber-optic guided drones that have taken center stage in Ukraine, jamming is rendered useless because there is no RF signature and no communication link to jam,” Epirus said.

In contrast, the Leonidas HPM technology platform does not require an RF signature to bring down hostile drones. Its weaponized electromagnetic interference overloads the critical electronics of a target drone, resulting in system failure and a certain crash landing.

Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.