The US Military is Testing an Autonomous Laser Sentry Turret
Enter the Archimedes Laser Sentinel.
The US military has tested a laser weapon system mounted on an autonomous sentry turret during a field experiment, officials recently revealed.
In a story published to the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) on March 20, the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) announced that a prototype Archimedes Laser Sentinel developed by San Francisco-based defense startup Aurelius Systems had successfully destroyed several small unmanned aerial vehicles during a Joint Interagency Field Experimentation (JIFX) event at Camp Roberts in California in February.
Described as an man-portable, edge-deployed system and powered by a truck-mounted “advanced high-voltage battery system” provided by fellow startup Chariot Defense, the 2 kilowatt Archimedes prototype engaged static and moving UAVs at ranges of 50 and 110 meters despite heavy rain, according to the NPS. More importantly, it did so in an autonomous “sentry mode,” as Aurelius Systems CEO Michael Laframboise put it in the NPS release.
“We have our own in house [command and control], so we do sensing, identification, control and lasing all 100% autonomous,” Laframboise told Laser Wars in an email.
Aurelius Systems is a relative newcomer to the directed energy space. The company raised $2.1 million from several venture capital firms in July 2024 and an additional $1.25 million from entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant that October. The company also received an award for an unspecified sum as part of the Defense Innovation Unit’s US-Singapore Joint Challenge for novel counter-drone systems this past February.
The Archimedes, along with the other technologies showcased at JIFX, were evaluated not just by NPS personnel, but other Defense Department stakeholders from Air Force Special Operations Command, Army Futures Command, Joint Special Operations Command,, Navy Special Warfare, US Central Command, and US Transportation Command, among others.
Aurelius isn’t the first company to marry autonomy with laser weapons. As I previously reported, the most crucial element of the BlueHalo LOCUST Laser Weapon System that’s currently blasting drones out of the sky for the US Army in the Middle East is its ‘Wisard’ artificial intelligence-based acquisition, tracking, and pointing software. And in February, NPS revealed that it was actively working to integrate AI into its Humvee-mounted High Energy Laser Expeditionary (HELEX) demonstrator ahead of upcoming live-fire tests.
The Archimedes test comes amid growing demand for directed energy weapons like high-energy lasers across the U.S. military in the face of a rising tide of low-cost weaponized adversary drones both at home and abroad. As recently as March 10, the Air Force published a request for information on counter-UAV systems “that include defeat options such as directed energy and low collateral effects interceptors” to better protect air bases from drone incursions.
“The Air Force requires a counter-small unmanned aerial system (C-sUAS) that is fully developed and ready to deploy to multiple installations now,” the RFI reads.
Aurelius Systems plans on bringing the Archimedes to the next JIFX event in May for another round of testing, according to NPS. In the meantime, the company is hard at work scaling up the power of the system and extending its range.
"We're on our way and will be deployable soon as we extend our range and demonstrate with DoD and industry partners,” Laframboise told Laser Wars. “Our mission is clear - we're on our Great Crusade, we're out ahead, and we're providing the first truly edge-deployed low shootdown cost DEW on the market."