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Headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, AFRL has also pursued what its leaders have called “game-changing” battlefield technology, including hypersonic weapons, autonomous drones and artificial intelligence.
AFRL’s Directed Energy Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., developed and tested the weapon called CHAMP, or the counter-electronics high-powered microwave advanced missile.
“The purpose of that weapon is to non-kinetically take out computers and (information technology) infrastructure,” retired Maj. Gen. Thomas Masiello, a former AFRL commander, said in a 2014 interview with this newspaper.
The technology was tested over a Utah range, AFRL leaders have said.
RELATED: Drones, lasers, hypersonic weapons will be ‘game-changers’
‘We were very successful in flying in a cruise missile a directed energy, high-powered weapon,” former AFRL Executive Director Ricky Peters also said in a 2014 interview. “If we can miniaturize that so it could carry it on those platforms than we’ve got another game-changer.”
NBC reported White House officials discussed the weapons in August, but the weapon is not operational.
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