KUANTAN, June 26, 2026 - Malaysia has taken a significant step forward in homegrown defence technology with the launch of Birdie-X, the country's first locally developed anti-drone laser system, which promises to dramatically reduce the cost of neutralising aerial threats while keeping the entire defence supply chain within national borders.
Developed through a three-way collaboration between the Royal Malaysian Air Force, the National Defence Research and Development Institute, known as Stride, and private defence firm Benua Defence Sdn Bhd, Birdie-X is classified as a directed energy weapon system.
Its creation addresses one of the most pressing economic dilemmas in modern military doctrine, the deeply lopsided cost equation between the drones being used to wage warfare and the expensive conventional weapons deployed to stop them.
Lieutenant Colonel Hairul Zaimy Ibrahim, the system's creator and lead developer, explained that the proliferation of low-cost commercial drones in contemporary conflicts has fundamentally altered the calculus of aerial defence. Modified commercial drones, often costing a fraction of the hardware used to counter them, have proven capable of threatening or destroying military assets worth billions of ringgit.
Under the conventional approach, neutralising a single hostile drone required firing an interceptor missile costing millions of ringgit, a response that Hairul Zaimy described as highly inefficient and representing a serious tactical economic loss.
Birdie-X changes that equation entirely. By harnessing high-powered laser beam technology, the system reduces the operational cost of disabling a drone to the price of the electricity consumed, amounting to just a few hundred ringgit per engagement. The contrast with conventional missile-based countermeasures is stark, and Hairul Zaimy said the shift to laser technology represents a critical step toward ensuring that national defence assets and public funds are deployed as efficiently as possible.
The fully indigenous nature of Birdie-X carries significant additional advantages beyond the per-shot cost savings. Because every component of the system was developed locally, all maintenance, repairs and future upgrades can be carried out entirely by Malaysian experts from the RMAF, Stride and Benua Defence, without recourse to foreign defence contractors who typically impose substantial royalty and service fees.
Hairul Zaimy said this approach keeps defence spending circulating within the domestic economy, minimises the outflow of national funds and reduces Malaysia's dependence on external suppliers for critical military technology.
He described Birdie-X as a future-ready platform designed to ensure that every ringgit of taxpayers' money contributes directly to safeguarding the nation's airspace, positioning the system as both a strategic defence asset and a symbol of Malaysia's growing capability in indigenous military technology development.
Photo: NST