Non-Kinetic Counter-UAS with High Power Microwave: Technology, Actors and European Strategic Autonomy
45 pages · PDF · 08 December 2025 · Licensed single-user copy, watermarked to the buyer
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About this report
The accelerating proliferation of unmanned aerial systems, from inexpensive quadcopters to increasingly coordinated autonomous swarms, has reshaped the economics and the operational demands of air defence.
Conflicts in multiple theatres have demonstrated how saturation attacks by large numbers of low-cost drones can overwhelm traditional kinetic interceptors, creating an unsustainable disparity between the price of the threat and the price required to neutralise it.
Key questions this report answers
- Why do saturation attacks by low-cost drones and swarms break the economics of kinetic air defence?
- How does high-power microwave work as a counter-UAS effector — physics, pulsed power, energy storage and beam-forming antennas?
- Who are the European and allied industrial actors, with a deliberate focus beyond the primes?
- Where do technology readiness, SWaP-C constraints, export controls and supply-chain dependencies leave European strategic autonomy?
Inside this report
- Drone Threats, Swarms and the Need for Non-Kinetic C-UAS
- Physics and Engineering of High Power Microwave for C-UAS
- Pulsed Power, Energy Storage and Microwave Source Technologies
- High-Gain Antennas and Beam Forming for HPM Delivery
- System-Level HPM C-UAS Architectures and Demonstrators
- European and Allied Industrial Landscape (Focus on Non-Primes)
- Technology Readiness, Miniaturisation and SWaP-C Constraints
- Operational Integration and Concept of Employment
- Supply Chain, Export Controls and Strategic Dependencies
- European Strategic Autonomy Assessment: Gaps and Opportunities
- Policy, Finance and Roadmap Alignment for HPM C-UAS
Who it's for
Strategy, corporate-development and investment teams that need an ecosystem-level view — budgets, industrial capacity and technology landscapes — before committing capital or capacity.
Methodology & sources
DFM reports are built from primary and official sources — TED procurement notices, CORDIS and the EU Funding & Tenders Portal, EIB operations, the NATO Innovation Fund portfolio, SIPRI data, official budget documents and company disclosures — read together with the underlying legal texts. Sources are cited in the document; the report reflects them as of its publication date (08 December 2025).
Format & delivery
45-page PDF, watermarked to you (name, e-mail, order number on every page). Delivered immediately after checkout on the confirmation page and by e-mail; the personal link is valid for 72 hours and up to 5 downloads (re-issued on request). Guest checkout — no account required. Single-user licence: see the Terms of Sale.
The full analysis, not the summary
The public briefing linked above tells you what this report found; the report itself shows the full evidence and reasoning behind it, section by section. It is the complete, dated document from the DFM research desk — sources cited, delivered as a licensed PDF you can keep and cite in your own work.
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