There are all kinds of creative ways of dealing with rogue drones: Radio jamming. Other drones with nets. Trained eagles. None of these are really designed to handle military drones, however, and large, fast-moving UAVs are still a potential threat, especially if more than one is coming at you at once. It’s no surprise that the U.S. Army has been developing solutions for this potential threat— we’re not sure what they’re working on now, but as of late 2013, Raytheon was successfully testing a long range, high power directed microwave weapon capable of taking out swarms of drones in milliseconds.

The Phaser is essentially a high powered microwave (HPM) cannon that runs on a diesel engine. Exactly how powerful this thing is (and what its range is) is still classified, but we do know that it can be tuned to either “disrupt” or “damage,” where for most drones, “damage” seems to be synonymous with “destroy.” It’s also effective against cars and other vehicles, and almost anything else that wouldn’t work properly without functioning electronics.

No matter how heavily cooked you like your drones, microwaves can achieve the desired effect in milliseconds, which is a major advantage of the Phaser over laser weapons: lasers typically require several seconds to burn through a target, and it’s very difficult to keep them focused on a small, fast moving, and far away point for that amount of time. One commonality that all directed energy systems have is their very low cost of operation, which is in the range of cents per firing, far cheaper than either projectile weapons or missiles.