Navy to Fire Anti-Drone Microwave Weapon at Sea

By Olawale Abaire, Warrior Editorial Fellow

In 2026, the U.S. Navy is set to trial an anti-drone microwave weapon at sea, per the fiscal year 2025 budget documents. This initiative, known as Project METEOR, aims to develop a high-powered microwave (H.P.M.) prototype system that will be installed on naval vessels.

The METEOR system is designed to offer a low cost-per-shot, deep magazine, tactically significant range, and short time engagement for a multi-target approach, along with dual deception and defeat capability. This will be the Navy’s inaugural high-powered microwave system, a directed energy weapon that the Army, Navy, and Air Force are investigating to counter inexpensive unmanned aerial systems.

Unlike the Navy’s existing directed energy systems, the METEOR prototype will employ a unique kill mechanism to neutralize targets. Rather than using a concentrated beam of light, HPM systems utilize microwave energy to damage the electronics within targets.

The Navy anticipates that this unique mechanism, exclusive to HPM systems, will effectively neutralize anti-ship ballistic missiles, similar to those deployed by China’s People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force. The Joint Force currently lacks redundant, resilient hard kill/soft kill options against Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBM). This problem is particularly pronounced in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility due to the vast geographic distances, ship magazine size, and adversary actions.

US Navy attack submarines could say Taiwan

The Navy is also funding a separate HPM project, also named METEOR, which is focused on expediting technology development to address this ASBM issue in the Pacific. This project is being financed as part of the Navy’s Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve (RDER) initiative, started by Heidi Shyu, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, in 2021. The aim of RDER is to identify projects or programs that address capability gaps identified by the services or combatant commands and then fast-track their acquisition.