China Unveils Man-Portable Anti-Drone Lasers, Signaling a Shift to Infantry-Level C-UAS Networks

That matters because the economics of the drone war have been working in the opposite direction.

The economics of the interceptor

The Lijian II and Lijian III are not China's most powerful lasers. Both produce about 2kW and have an effective range of up to 500 metres. The Lijian III weighs around 25kg and can reportedly burn through a drone's airframe in about four seconds, followed by less than five seconds of cooling before another engagement.

The trade-off is obvious. China is giving up range and power to gain mobility.

Other directed-energy programmes have taken the opposite route. Israel's Iron Beam is a 100kW system, while the United States is testing the 20kW LOCUST on heavy JLTV platforms. China's own Lijian-10G reaches 10kW and a reported 1,200-metre engagement range, but requires vehicle mounting and liquid cooling.

The Lijian II and III occupy a different niche. Their purpose is not to replace high-end air defence. It is to put a cheap, persistent interception capability where small drones are actually threatening soldiers and tactical positions.

That is a response to one of the central problems exposed by the war in Ukraine: a defender can spend thousands of dollars, and in some cases far more, to destroy a drone that costs less than $1,000. When drones are used in large numbers, the arithmetic becomes a strategic problem rather than merely a procurement problem.

A laser changes the calculation because it does not carry a conventional ammunition magazine. Its recurring expenditure is principally electricity, with the briefing estimating the operational energy cost of an engagement at between $0.18 and $5. The weapon itself is expensive - about 2 million yuan, or roughly $295,000 - but once deployed, it is not dependent on a stockpile of interceptors for every shot.

The important question therefore is not whether a $295,000 laser is cheap. It is whether buying one can be cheaper than repeatedly buying the ammunition needed to defend against the drones it is intended to defeat.

From a weapon to a network

The more significant development may be sitting beside the lasers rather than inside them.

Ribri's passive acoustic-optical system is designed to detect drones without broadcasting radar signals. Its microphone array provides an acoustic bearing, while EO/IR sensors provide visual confirmation. AI is then used to classify the target.

That architecture addresses another weakness of conventional air defence: visibility.

A radar can find a drone, but an emitting sensor can also reveal the defender's presence. A passive acoustic system does not face the same electromagnetic exposure. For units operating in an environment where electronic warfare and suppression are persistent concerns, that difference can be operationally important.

The implication is that the laser does not need to solve detection by itself. It can become the final element in a chain: acoustic or optical detection, AI classification, external sensor cueing, automated targeting, and then directed energy.

China's broader 2026 portfolio points in the same direction. Norinco has demonstrated the Hurricane 3000 high-power microwave system, intended to attack the electronics of drone swarms at ranges exceeding 3km. China has also fielded the Guangjian-11E and Guangjian-21A low-altitude laser systems aimed at threats flying at roughly 50–80 metres, including those operating in radar blind spots.

The emerging architecture therefore has several layers rather than a single answer to the drone problem: passive sensing, electronic warfare, high-power microwaves, lasers and, where necessary, kinetic systems.

The strategic attraction is straightforward. Different technologies can be assigned to different threats instead of forcing every drone to be engaged by the most expensive available weapon.

Why the squad matters

For infantry, the change could be more significant than the headline power figures suggest.

Traditional air defence is generally centralised. Missiles and heavier systems are concentrated around important sites or operated by specialist units. A portable 2kW laser introduces the possibility of placing a defensive node directly with tactical formations.

That decentralises air defence.

It also changes the logistical problem. A squad carrying a laser does not need a supply chain delivering a missile for every successful engagement. It does, however, need electricity, cooling capacity and the ability to keep the system operating under battlefield conditions.

This is where the limits of the Lijian concept become clear.

A four-second dwell time is manageable against an individual drone. It becomes much harder when several arrive simultaneously. The system can engage only one beam target at a time, and the cooling cycle is shorter than five seconds but not instantaneous. A swarm of ten or more drones could therefore impose a saturation problem that raw cost-per-shot calculations cannot solve.

A cheap defensive shot is valuable only if the defender can actually make it.

The weather problem has not disappeared

Directed energy also remains exposed to a very old battlefield constraint: the atmosphere.

Rain, fog, dust, clouds, and heavy smoke can attenuate laser beams and degrade performance. A portable system that looks highly efficient on paper may therefore face very different conditions in the field.

The 2kW power requirement introduces another constraint. Continuous firing requires a stable power supply, while thermal management becomes critical when engagements are repeated. The lighter the weapon becomes, the more difficult it is to reconcile portability with the power and cooling infrastructure needed to sustain it.

That makes the Lijian II and III less of a magic-bullet solution than a component in a larger system.

Their role becomes clearer when paired with passive detection and other layers. If a laser cannot reliably engage every incoming drone, another defensive mechanism can take over. If radar use exposes a position, acoustic and optical sensors can provide the initial cue. If a swarm is too large for individual laser engagements, high-power microwave systems offer another response.

The architecture is more important than any one weapon.

Ukraine as the laboratory

Harbin Xinguang says its core technology matured in 2023 and that development was driven by observations of combat in Ukraine. The manufacturer also says Lijian systems have already been installed at selected Chinese military airfields and strategic facilities.

Those claims should be treated carefully. The performance figures are manufacturer specifications, and there has been no independent combat or field validation of the systems described in the briefing.

But the direction of development is difficult to miss.

The war in Ukraine has exposed the vulnerability of infantry, vehicles and fixed positions to inexpensive FPV drones and loitering munitions. It has also made the sustainability of using sophisticated air-defence missiles against mass drone attacks increasingly problematic.

China's response is not simply to build a more powerful laser. It is to change the scale at which the defence system operates.

That distinction matters. A 100kW strategic laser can protect a valuable area. A 2kW weapon carried by a small team potentially protects the people who are producing the battlefield demand for air defence in the first place.

The next contest is architectural

The arrival of portable lasers will not make FPV drones obsolete. Their dwell time, cooling requirements, power demands, and vulnerability to weather leave clear avenues for saturation and adaptation. The briefing does not establish which countermeasures drone designers will adopt, but the pressure on offensive systems is already implicit: if a cheap drone can no longer rely on its low price to overwhelm a defender, the economics of the attack have to change.

That may be the most important consequence of China's approach.

The contest is shifting from drone versus missile to system versus system. The winning side will not necessarily be the one with the most powerful individual weapon, but the one capable of combining detection, classification, electronic attack and physical interception without allowing the cost of defence to outrun the cost of attack.

China's 25kg laser is therefore less interesting as a laser than as a node. Once passive sensors, AI, microwaves, electronic warfare and directed energy are designed to work as a single defensive mesh, the tactical problem changes from finding an interceptor for every drone to building a network in which the cheapest suitable response is always available.