While it was intended to be used against airborne drone threats, it has the ability to knock out ground vehicles and sea vessels; it works against any electronics, and has been demonstrated to disable an outboard ship motor.
[1][2][3][4] Due to its use of gallium nitride transistors previously used in radars instead of magnetron vacuum tubes, Leonidas can maintain a durable microwave beam while being smaller and requiring less power.
As a directed EMP, the system has advantages over other DEWs; lasers can only be used against one target at a time while an HPM can focus on a large area, and it works against autonomous UAVs with no link back to an operator that radio jamming would be ineffective against.
[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] The Leonidas Expeditionary Directed Energy Counter-Swarm (ExDECS) was unveiled in September 2024 as a small version for mobile forces such as the U.S. Marine Corps.
[8] On 23 January 2023, Epirus was awarded a $66.1 million contract by the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) to deliver the Leonidas to the U.S. Army as part of the Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High-Power Microwave (IFPC-HPM) program after outperforming six other systems.