A groundbreaking, cost-effective weapon system to combat drones could be ready for deployment as early as next year, according to Alex Cresswell, CEO of Thales UK. The new Radio Frequency Directed Energy Weapon (RFDEW), currently being tested with the British military, aims to shoot down drones by disrupting their electronics.
The step from successful tests on the Salisbury Plain to a deployable system in Ukraine is indeed large, but achievable within a year," said Cresswell in an interview with the Financial Times. He added that the system could be deployed as early as next year if the demonstration is successful.
Thales UK, the British subsidiary of the French defense and technology group Thales, is leading the development of this weapon system as part of an industrial consortium on behalf of the British Ministry of Defence. However, the decision on the deployment location and timing of the system lies with the British government.
With costs of only 10 pence per deployment and a range of up to 1 kilometer, the system offers a cost-effective alternative to conventional missile defense systems, which often cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per shot. The technology can be mounted on military vehicles and uses a mobile energy source to generate radio frequency waves or pulses that disrupt the electronics of a moving target.
Cresswell emphasized that the industry has been working on countermeasures against incoming attacks for decades. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, both sides have heavily relied on drone attacks, prompting governments and industry to invest more in countermeasures. "One aims for weapon systems that are much more cost-effective for the fighting power they provide," said Cresswell.
Thales, whose largest investor is the French government, achieved a revenue of 18.4 billion euros in 2023 and is increasingly hiring new employees worldwide. In the United Kingdom, where the company employs more than 7,000 people, revenues have risen by 20 percent to over 1.1 billion pounds in the last two years.
Cresswell expects that revenue in the UK will increase by another 10 percent this year, as the company benefits from higher government contracts. Thales manufactures missiles and launchers at two locations in Belfast and supplies sonar systems for the Royal Navy's nuclear submarines.
The rockets manufactured in Belfast are also being supplied to Ukraine through the British Ministry of Defense. The Ukraine conflict has not only depleted government weapon stocks but also shown that these stocks are often too small for prolonged and intense conflicts.
The production at the Belfast plants, where Thales manufactures the Starstreak short-range air defense system and the Saab NLAW anti-tank system, has doubled in the last 18 months, reaching its highest level in the past two decades. Cresswell announced that Thales will double production again over the next two years to meet increased demand.
There is a seismic shift in how weapons and ammunition are procured, with a much stronger focus on built-in resilience, capacity building, and scalability," Cresswell concluded.
