Ukraine prepares for final tests tryzuban anti-drone laser system developed by the local company Celebrate Tech. The company assures that the weapon is already close to being deployed on the battlefield and that the objective is to use it against FPV drones, other types of UAVs and, later, drones Shahidone of the weapons most used by Russia against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, Army Recognition reports.
Tryzub means ‘trident’ in Ukrainian, a national symbol that appears on its coat of arms. It is not a missile or an interceptor drone, but a trailer-mounted directed energy system. According to Celebra Tech, the current version can destroy FPV drones at between 800 and 900 meters and UAV at about 1,500 meters. The company also works so that you can hit Shahed type targets at distances close to 5 kilometers.
The interest of the system is in its economy. Ukraine has been facing a common problem in modern conflicts for years, in which relatively cheap drones are shot down with very expensive air defense missileswhich is not sustainable in the long term. A Shahed can cost between $20,000 and $50,000while interceptors such as Patriot PAC 3 cost between 3 and 4 million dollars per unit. Even cheaper options, such as IRIS T, $430,000 each, or NASAMS with AIM 120, between 1 and 1.5 million dollarsare still too expensive to be widely used against low-cost drones.
Faced with this situation, cheap interception systems have gained importance, of which the best-known example is Stinga drone developed by the Ukrainian Wild Hornets to hunt Shahed in flight. This type of interceptors costs between 1,000 and 3,000 dollarsdepending on the model.
But while Sting or P1 destroy the target through impact or explosion, Tryzub seeks to disable it with directed energy, which has an even lower cost per shot.
Tryzub is not a substitute for conventional air defense systems, but could serve as an additional layer to protect power plants, logistics centers, critical facilities or urban areas against drones that come within their range.
The company assures that the system has improved a lot in recent months. Tryzub incorporates AI-assisted guidance, automatic target capture and tracking, integration with radars and electro-optical systems. In previous tests, the laser was tested against drones of different sizes, including 7-, 8-, 9- and 13-inch models, between 17.8 centimeters and 33 centimeters. The weapon not only seeks to burn a part of the fuselage, but damage sensors, electronics, optics or structural components until leaving the drone out of combat.
The least clear part remains the technique. Ukraine has not published the power of the laser, its architecture, wavelength, cooling system, energy autonomy or the number of sustained shots it can fire. They are important details because a laser does not perform the same in a controlled test as it does in a real environment with fog, rain, dust, smoke or suspended aerosols. In those conditions, the beam loses effectiveness and needs to stay on the same point on the target for longer.