How much energy, how long is the pulse, how close were the drones?
Regardless I think the primary challenge with these systems will be energy on site and a surge of it during waves of attacks. Charged up capacitors can only handle so many waves.
1 millisecond pulses and 70 kW continuous usage[1] which is roughly equivalent to the AN/TPQ-53[2]. 2 km range.
> Regardless I think the primary challenge with these systems will be energy on site and a surge of it during waves of attacks. Charged up capacitors can only handle so many waves.
That is not how this kind of thing works. Capacitors are a terrible energy source. Their voltage drops off exponentially as they discharge and almost all electronic are very particular about the voltage they require. A railgun wants current and does not care about voltage. Radio transmitters care a lot about voltage.
Regardless, a 70 kW generator fits on a small trailer. Smaller than the weapon itself. It will run for days on a good sized tank of diesel.
[1] https://www.twz.com/land/army-puts-50m-bet-on-next-gen-leoni...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/TPQ-53_Quick_Reaction_Capab...
They're a pretty good way of storing energy in a way you can deliver it _really really_ fast. Sure, not in a way your carefully designed electronic circuits can make use of it, but if you need a really really big ZAP! capacitors are a reasonable option. After all, clouds and dirt are not the most efficient choice for capacitor plates, and air is not an ideal dielectric, but lightning goes ZAP! quite satisfyingly.
As I posted elsewhere here,you might enjoy Lightning On Demand's Lorentz Cannon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lix-vr_AF38
At full load and a thermodynamic efficiency of about ~31% a 70kW generator is about 300hp mechanical. Those fit on a trailer. Not a "small" trailer. A dual axle type trailer with ~1.3 tons of capacity (Cummings C70D2RE.) Military generators tend to be heavier than commercial units. It will burn about ~175 gal/day of diesel, so yes a "good sized" tank about: about ~3.2 55 gal drums every day.
Now, they're imagining "625 element" systems for adequate coverage of a high value site, like an air base. About 2000 bbl/day. That's a little more than 10 large tanker trucks of fuel.
Logistically non-trivial. The Russian's have learned that large fuel trucks are short-lived in drone-dense environments.
Of course, that all for 100% 24/7 operation. I suspect that any real system will quickly become adept at running far less than 100%.
Sure seems like NATO would love to get a hold of some of these.
Are these Masars? If not, square cubed to the rescue.
In fact at the limits of performance lasers (and particularly masers) are quite bad at generating straight beams, because they are quite small sources of light and divergence is inversely proportional to the width of the emitter. It is a misconception that they are low-etendue.