High-Powered Microwave

The term phaser became commonplace thanks to Star Trek. When you hear the word, you know exactly what it means, even if you've never seen anything like it before, because what exactly is a phaser? PHASER is now an actual thing, and the US military has it. It's the name they gave to a high-powered microwave weapon. The PHASER, which resembles a satellite dish mounted on a shipping container, is a cannon that emits radio frequency in a cone-shaped beam. Rather than using heat to destroy a target, a burst of energy can be used to damage circuits.

This technology is currently being employed defensively; the objective is to use the PHASER to destroy opposing drones. It only takes one microsecond for a PHASER shot to disable and destroy a drone's circuitry. Because of the pattern of the beam it produces, it can also take down many drones with a single blast. The PHASER is the first direct energy defensive weapon ever deployed. The Air Force spent little more than 16 million dollars developing it, and testing was expected to be completed by the end of 2020. If the technique can be proven in the field and is scalable, mobile PHASERS could be employed on a regular basis in the future. Aircraft may fly over a population and effectively destroy every item of technology below with a few bursts, effectively returning any city to the Stone Age.