ThinKom’s Truck-Mounted Microwave Gun Fries drones at US Army Test – UAS VISION
AI Analysis
ThinKom Solutions successfully demonstrated a truck-mounted High Power Microwave (HPM) weapon system at the U.S. Army’s Cross Domain Fires Concept Focused Warfighting Experiment. The system, utilizing their VICTS antenna technology, is designed for counter-UAS and other counter-electronic warfare applications, and notably emphasizes portability. This represents a potential shift towards more mobile and rapidly deployable directed energy weapons.
Key Takeaways
- ThinKom, traditionally a satellite antenna manufacturer, has entered the HPM weapons market.
- Their VICTS (Variable Inclination Continuous Transverse Stub) antenna technology allows for high power handling through mechanical beam steering, avoiding thermal issues of electronic scanning.
- The demonstrated system is remarkably portable, mounted on a standard pickup truck without requiring a trailer or large generator.
- The system was tested with Echodyne’s EchoShield radar for target cueing.
- ThinKom has already proven its VICTS phased arrays to gigawatt-level power handling.
Why It Matters
The development of portable, high-power microwave weapons offers a significant advantage in countering the increasing drone threat. This technology could provide a non-kinetic, rapid-response capability for neutralizing drones without causing collateral damage or expending ammunition. ThinKom's approach, focusing on portability and power efficiency, could disrupt the HPM market and accelerate adoption by military forces.
ThinKom’s Truck-Mounted Microwave Gun Fries drones at US Army Test – UAS VISION
A California company better known for building antennas that connect aircraft to satellites has quietly entered one of the most competitive markets in defence – and at the U.S. Army’s recent Cross Domain Fires Concept Focused Warfighting Experiment, its mobile High Power Microwave system showed up mounted on a pickup truck, cued by Echodyne’s EchoShield radar, ready to fry drone electronics without firing a single round.
ThinKom Solutions, headquartered in Hawthorne, California, announced its entrance into the High Power Microwave directed energy weapons market in August 2025, developing systems for counter-UAS, Integrated Air and Missile Defense, and other counter-electronic missions.
The move was not a pivot so much as an extension — the company spent more than two decades building phased array antenna systems for satellite communications, and the core technology behind those systems, a proprietary design called VICTS, turns out to be unusually well suited for handling the extreme power levels that High Power Microwave weapons demand. ThinKom has already proven its VICTS phased arrays to gigawatt-level power handling in development and testing.
The image that accompanied the CDF CFWE reporting tells the story efficiently: a VICTS-based HPM system, finished in military olive drab, mounted on the flatbed of a standard pickup truck in an open field. No trailer. No generator the size of a shipping container. No dedicated vehicle or specialized chassis. A truck, a system, and the ability to move. That portability is not incidental — it is the entire argument ThinKom is making about why its approach to HPM is different from what has come before.
VICTS stands for Variable Inclination Continuous Transverse Stub, a steerable mechanical phased array antenna that ThinKom developed and patented for the satellite communications market. Where most phased arrays steer their beam electronically — shifting the signal’s phase across an array of fixed elements — VICTS steers mechanically, which allows it to handle significantly higher peak power without the thermal and efficiency penalties that electronically scanned arrays suffer at extreme power levels.
Bill Milroy, CTO and co-founder of ThinKom, said at the company’s market entry announcement in August 2025:
“Building on our long heritage of ground and airborne satcom systems, we realized that our antennas are uniquely suited for handling extremely high power levels and are investing heavily to develop HPM systems for the warfighter.”
ThinKom pairs the VICTS antenna with traditional vacuum electronics to achieve what it describes as best-in-breed power density in a compact, steerable, low-profile package.
High Power Microwave weapons work by directing concentrated electromagnetic energy at a target — in this case, an incoming drone — with enough intensity to damage or destroy the electronics inside it. Unlike radio frequen