Ukraine is turning to a new, low-cost weapon in its fight against aerial drones: a silent laser system known as “Sunray.”
The device reportedly emits no visible light during operations, with a setup resembling a telescope flanked by cameras along its sides.
In a recent field test, it set a drone ablaze from “a few hundred yards away” within seconds from initiation.
Developers said Sunray took two years to create, with overall costs reaching millions, yet each unit could eventually cost “a few hundred dollars” to produce.
Compact enough to be mounted on the roof of a pickup truck, the system signals real deployability for frontline operations.
Part of Domestic Counter-Drone Network
Faced with shifting priorities in international defense support, Ukraine has been pushed to build more homegrown solutions to survive its war against Russia.
That effort has yielded high-speed interceptors, long-range missiles, unmanned ground vehicles, and electronic warfare tools to jam hostile drones.
Ukraine’s evolving counter-drone network has been likened to a cheaper “Iron Dome” model, leveraging low-cost technologies to neutralize higher-value threats.
“The anti-drone dome is not about the future,” Defense Minister Mykailo Fedorov said, as quoted by The Atlantic. “It’s about survival today.”
