Laser focus

In a nondescript industrial park on the outskirts of Canberra, the future of warfare is being redefined. It might be thousands of kilometres from any active conflict but the whirr of movement on the warehouse floor at Electro Optic Systems (eos) tells its own story. eos develops and manufactures a range of military and space-related technology but in recent years has become known for one thing: anti-drone systems. Its pre-eminent status in this nascent field has been underlined by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, where more than 100 eos products are in use every day. As drones become cheaper and more deadly, nations around the world are racing to secure technology that can counter the threat, meaning that eos is suddenly in high demand.

On the factory floor, dozens of anti-drone systems are packaged up ready to be delivered to customers, while others undergo testing to ensure that they can operate continuously in the most challenging of conditions: some are in temperature chambers at a balmy 60c, while others are set to a frosty minus 32c. In the early 2000s, the US was the only military with high-quality drone technology – the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (uav), which was deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. But since then, as the technology has proliferated, its costs have plummeted. “Now it’s an asymmetric form of warfare,” says eos’s cfo Clive Cuthell, whose thick Scottish accent belies his 30 years in Australia. “You can spend $1,000 on a drone and attack an asset that costs $10m, $100m, even $1bn. You no longer need to spend a fortune to attack high-value targets.”

Dealing with one drone is hard enough but the low cost means that an enemy can now launch 100 or even 1,000 drones at a time. “It’s very difficult to deal with that oversaturation,” says Cuthell. “You can overwhelm almost any defence system.” This is a tactic that was deployed in 2024 by Iran’s air force against Israel. One of eos’s newer systems, the Slinger, which went on sale in 2023, has seen great success in Ukraine, where 200 are currently deployed in the field, many of which were purchased by Western powers as military aid. Weighing fewer than 400kg, the Slinger can be mounted on the back of a pick-up truck and has a radar and camera system that can detect and neutralise even the smallest drone. Its demonstration video on the eos website is captioned, “No one kills drones like eos.”

Most of the company’s anti-drone bestsellers feature “multi-layered” responsive weaponry – meaning that operators have a selection of ways to take uavs out of the sky. For example, a battlefield anti-drone platform like the Slinger might have a third-party missile system to take down longer-range drones; a built-in laser to “blind” drone sensors; or a chain-gun, which acts as more conventional anti-aircraft artillery. But companies such as eos are engaged in a literal arms race when it comes to countering drones.

Initially, “soft-kill” mechanisms, such as jammers and spoofers, could easily neutralise uavs but militaries have adapted them to counter such interference, meaning that “hard-kill” methods, which destroy the devices completely, have become essential. “That provides a strong tailwind for us to commercialise our innovations,” says Cuthell. As he inspects a new order bound for Kyiv, eos vice- president of international programmes Glenn McPhee, a former Australian army officer, says that he was attracted to the company both for the “cool Australian technology” and “helping Nato soldiers defend themselves”.

eos began life as an Australian government research institute with a focus on the space sector, including optics and laser technologies. In the 1980s the firm was incoroporated as a private company and, in the early 2000s, listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. Ben Greene, one of its original founders, is a world-leading space physicist who began working in the sector not long after the first moon landing. Today he serves as eos’s chief innovation officer. Perhaps reflecting its academic origins, eos has always excelled at research but traditionally had less success on the business side of things. “It was a strong scientific, engineering, military and academic culture that had invented many things – but not commercialised them,” says Cuthell.

The arrival of Andreas Schwer in 2020 signalled a turning point. A bespectacled German with grey hair and a firm but understated manner, Schwer has decades of experience in the space and defence sectors, including at Airbus and Rheinmetall. In 2017 he was asked by Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman to build up his country’s defence sector by taking the helm at Saudi Arabian Military Industries, where he stayed for three years. “When I was working in Saudi, we had selected eos as the partner for high-energy laser-weapons systems and I had done a deep due diligence,” he says. “I had found out that the company had a huge innovation and intellectual property rights portfolio but is not the best in terms of commercialising it. We wanted to take what was sitting on the shelf in terms of innovation and make real-life products.”

The arrival of new management coincided with significant geopolitical shifts – the Ukraine war, later the conflict in Gaza and rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific. All have led to a surge of interest in eos’s products. “Investment in defence by national governments is higher than it has ever been,” says Cuthell. “Defence is an industry where technology really matters. The technological edge can often be decisive in conflict – and we’re at the cutting edge.”

Part of the leadership team’s ambition is to transform eos into a bigger global enterprise. The firm already has four offices around the world, operates in almost 20 countries and is growing its manufacturing operations in the US and the uae (where Schwer, who became ceo in July 2022, has a base). In 2024 it opened a laser-innovation centre in Singapore. Schwer hints that increased onshoring requirements and supply-chain concerns mean that joint ventures and localised manufacturing will play a big part in eos’s future. “Part of the strategy is to become a truly global player,” he says. Canberra is not known as a hi-tech hub but the Australian capital has a strong university sector (eos sponsors two research chairs) and a large defence industry, with the Australian military’s headquarters just 20 minutes down the road from eos. The buzz of activity on the factory floor suggests that Schwer’s mission has been a success so far. Revenue to December 2023 was up almost 60 per cent year-on-year; while in the first half of 2024, it has almost doubled again. Schwer insists that the push to take products to market is not coming at the expense of ongoing research. “Research was the core,” he says of eos’s history. “And it still is.”

eos’s anti-drone technology has the capability to be fully autonomous, though, for now, many of its customers use human operators. The company’s systems can track and identify drones within a 5km radius, drawing on a database of almost 600 drone types constantly updated by a partner firm. The technology can identify the location and model of the drone, and whether it is friend or foe – an increasingly important function as both sides in many conflicts deploy their own uavs. But armed forces are not the only users of this technology. Drones increasingly pose a domestic risk – whether deployed by local agitators or international terror groups. eos systems are being sought out by organisers of major events. “That has started and will become the standard in the future,” says Schwer. He is tight-lipped about specific civilian deployments. “That’s classified.”

Space also remains a major focus. Not far from the factory, eos shares the Mount Stromlo Observatory with the Australian National University. The firm’s laser technology can track objects in orbit down to the size of a coin, an important capability as the planet’s stratosphere becomes more cluttered with debris. “There is nobody, outside the US, that has this kind of highest accuracy tracking of objects in space,” says Schwer. “So one major application is that we track debris and provide anti-collision warnings to any kind of satellite operator. With our latest evolutions in technology, we can also move space debris, actively avoiding collisions.” Such technology also has military application. “In the long run, war will be decided in space,” he adds. Schwer pulls up a photo on his phone showing a bright-green laser beaming into the night sky. “This is not Photoshop,” he says. “This is how we use laser systems to track objects in space.” Though separate arms of the business, the anti-drone and space sectors are deeply interconnected. The success of the former builds on eos’s decades of research in monitoring objects outside Earth’s atmosphere. “We can track any object in space,” says Schwer. “So it’s easy to downscale this sensor technology, to see further and better than anyone else on the battlefield.”

It is a long way from Canberra to Kyiv. But the cutting-edge technology being manufactured at eos is playing an essential role as Ukraine seeks to defend itself. The conflict in the country has demonstrated in real-time how critical drones and anti-drone technology are to modern warfare – and is setting the tone for conflicts to come. Schwer was one of the first foreign business executives to travel to Kyiv after the war began. He vividly remembers his initial visit: crossing the Polish border at night, in the snow, on an arduous rail journey to meet Ukrainian officials. “Those times were challenging,” he says. “We spent many nights in the bunkers. Many meetings had to be interrupted because of missile alarms.” He laughs and says that the trip was almost derailed by difficulties securing travel insurance. “It was super expensive,” he says. But for eos, the demonstration of commitment to supplying Ukraine with market-leading defence technology was worth every cent. “They will never forget about your engagement and commitment in the early days,” he adds. “You came to them when you were exposing yourself to significant risk.”

Schwer and his team have been back many times since – he estimates that every second month an eos representative is in Kyiv, or often even closer to the frontlines in the east of Ukraine. “We’ve established very close contact to the leaders, to the commanders, to the officers at the frontline, to get first-hand experience and have those lessons learned introduced to our ongoing development programmes,” says Schwer. That information feeds directly into product development: eos has simplified systems to make them more user-friendly in the field. “We are learning day by day, week by week.” The eos boss cites the example of the Abrams tanks donated to Ukraine by the Americans. “The US has lost more than half of its donated Abrams in Ukraine by drone attacks,” Schwer says. The remaining tanks have been removed from the battlefield, awaiting an upgrade; eos systems are being trialled for possible integration.. Sometimes videos appear on social-media platform Telegram of eos weapons protecting key Ukrainian infrastructure from Russian drone attacks. As soldiers cheer in the background, half a world away, Schwer’s team is energised. “That makes us proud.” — L