Monterey, California. (February 22, 2025): There is a special place where the U.S. Navy sends its brightest minds, and the things they come up with are mind boggling. In this photo by Javier Chagoya, three of these advanced thinkers (from left to right) Dr. Leonardo Herrera, Dr. Jae Jun Kim, and Dr. Brij Agrawal show off their latest effort to develop lasers that use artificial intelligence to track and target unmanned aerial vehicles.

Why lasers?

Most sci-fi enthusiasts think lasers destroy a target using short blasts of energy lasting only milliseconds. The reality is the ability of a laser to destroy a target is driven by how powerful it is and how long it is focused on a target. This latest project attempts to use artificial intelligence to improve the tracking and targeting of multiple drones simultaneously, quicker, and more accurately than a human operator. The study involved creating accurate simulations of drones in flight taken from thousands of images collected by the team. These photos were used to create a targeting model with AI assistance which was then laboratory tested.

Clever ideas like these are developed and evaluated in the Navy’s Postgraduate Program, established in 1909, which offers master's and doctoral degrees in more than seventy fields of study. The school is open to members of the U.S. Armed Forces, Department of Defense civilians, and international partners.

America can be assured that the nation’s brightest minds are hard at work developing technologies to defend against the emerging threat posed by unmanned drones.