Laser weapons are about to become reality, with the US Navy recently demonstrating such a system that can shoot drones out of the sky, and announcing plans to deploy a laser onboard a ship in 2014.
We’ve seen lasers used previously as an anti-piracy measure to dazzle would-be attackers, but now so-called directed energy weapons are likely to become a more familiar sight in warfare as defence companies around the world prepare to introduce their own versions.
The weapons are particularly useful for targeting large numbers of small, low-cost targets with high precision, and some estimates put the cost of each shot of directed energy at just $1.
For our latest reader Q&A we’ve lined up a panel of experts to answer your questions on weaponised lasers, the engineering challenges behind them and how they might change warfare.
Submit your questions using the comments box below by midday on Thursday and we’ll publish the answers in the next digital edition of The Engineer (as well as on our website).
Your questions will be answered by:
- Raytheon, the US defence firm who began publicly demonstrating their laser weapons in conjunction with the US Navy back in 2010.
- MBDA, the European missile manufacturer whose German operations last year demonstrated a 40kW laser that could pierce a 1.5 inch-thick steel plate in seconds.
- Dr Mike Cathcart, a senior research scientist at Georgia Tech Research Institute in the US who specialises in directed energy technology and recently chaired the Directed Energy Conference in London.
- Dr J Doug Beason, author of ‘The E-Bomb: How America’s new directed energy weapons will change the way future wars are fought’ and a former associate laboratory director of La Alamos National Lab.
Comments are now closed. Thank you for your questions. Check out the May digital edition of The Engineer for the answers.
How much energy would be needed to perform a shot similar to a gunshot from a handgun or assault rifle? And is it possible to make it portable ?
With usage of advanced armours including ceramic elements in modern combat vehicles. How effective would a laser weapon be at disabling a modern tank? Does this cause the weapon system to be limited to anti-air or anti-infantry?
I’m assuming that the main affect of the LASER would be heating of the target or cutting if the light was focused enough, is this assumption correct?
LASER light is also highly wavelength specific, how much defense can a tuned reflective coating offer a target?
Adding to Anish’s question, what size and mass would a DE weapon require to have similar lethality to, say an SA80 or similar. Ideal answers would be now and 10 years hence).
Also, will weapons be CW or a single shot pulse?
Finally, are all wavebancds where the atmosphere has low attenuation equally useful, or are specific bands favoured – if so, for what reason(s)
Isn’t it always going to be easier and cheaper to develop reflective coatings and deflecting shapes similar to radar stealth measures that make lasers ineffective than to develop the laser weapons themselves.
Laser guided weapons are currenty de-facto and in service with militaries around the world, albeit laser guided missiles are less common than bombs and other munitions.
What benefits do weaponised lasers offer the military? They would be subject to the same jamming, countermeasures and environmental influences as currently available Laser Ranging and Marked Target System, such as cloud, smoke, reflection etc. and surely require much greater accuracy of tracking to ensure the beam is maintained on a consistent point or track. Additionally LRMTS is considerably smaller and thus allows more versatile platform adoption despite requireing additional hardware to perform the ‘kill’ task.
Firstly, the system under discussion is almost certainly in the non eye safe spectral region. For me that suggests that it’s use is tactically strictly limited. Use in any circumstance where enemy personnel are blinded will immediately legitimize deployment by the antagonist of multitudes of compact, dirt cheap dedicated personnel blinders. Such a tactical limit limits broad deployability and thus cost benefit of the development as a whole. Is the US military prepared to open that can of worms?
Secondly, it has been suggested that it can be used for sensor blinding/dazzling and so on. The majority of sensors, tracking systems, utilized in defense systems are MIDIR and TIR. This unit is clearly NIR, and thus out of band then for most critical sensors. It may have an effect despite filtering, but it would represent a gross overscale, overcost and over power draw solution to such applications, and as not eye safe again falls foul of any idea of broad deployability across the battlefield. Again raises the question of breadth of utility, as it is not flexible, and cost benefit issues. What is the real scope of utility of these weapons?
Thirdly, its ability to save engagement cost is touted. That may be true, provided it can engage and the target is suitable – ie – a drone ,slow boat. This is a very small target set, and since the device is strictly fair weather (ideal marine environment – anything else and the scattering related attenuation of NIR will be severe) only, its engagement options may be very limited. By contrast a 20mm cannon, radar or TIR directed can engage under any weather conditions, and the cost per round of a say typical 20mm Vulcan cannon round is perhaps 15$ (40mm Bofors, who knows), but clearly expenditure not crippling. Plus not tactically restricted in deployment. That brings up unit capital cost relative to application space and thus cost benefit. Is stating a $1 per shot costs really valid data for comparison? The costs of laser weapon development have been in the millions(100s of millions?). Considering the huge cost to develop and the limited application scope, should the media not be investigating whether laser weapons are being deployed as a last ditch effort to try and justify the vast cost to date?
Fourthly, scalability, assuming one even intends to live with the non eye safe feature of this approach. For a DE system of this nature one really needs to get to +500kW. Is coherent beam combination of say 250 to 500 fiber lasers really practical, and how robust would it be? Say one wants to scale to 10MW, you are then at 5000 and up fiber lasers. So the question here comes down to the scope and practicality of the concept.
Summarizing, the four prior questions devolve onto the simple common sense of the approach which has been followed here, and thus its cost benefit. It is not eye safe, and thus is inherently limited in application space. It does not leverage TIR/MIDIR capability which would render it broadly deployable within all battlespace and eye safe. It does not currently outperform a 20mm cannon by any metric other than perhaps the spurious cost per engagement, assuming the weather conditions and target are such as to permit it to engage. It may well be technically limited in ultimate scalability to very high power. If anything, it seems to be a step away from those specific and unique laser attainable characteristics which would result in a laser weapon system of capability absolutely distinguishable from current conventional systems. Convince me otherwise please
I’d like to know how closely real laser weapons would compare to sci-fi versions of such weapons when it comes to anti-personnel use (even though these weapons are not portable and have not been developed for that use). If someone was hit by a 150KW (or more powerful) laser weapon with a focused beam (assuming perfect atmospheric conditions), would they be partially incinerated or just lethally cut/pierced? I realize that they wouldn’t just disappear as with a Star Trek phaser, but probably wouldn’t just simply drop dead like people hit with laser weapons in Star Wars.
So what would actually happen to someone unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of such a weapon?
A conventional projectile has a trajectory, so if the target is missed then it will eventually bury itself into the ground not that far away from the original target. Clearly a laser weapon has zero trajectory, so will continue on if the target is missed – how far will it remain lethal?
In the theatre of modern war we are fighting increasingly against insurgents. Current ballistic weaponry carries a risk that the round can continue through or past its target going through walls and injuring civilians. Do weaponised lasers carry the same risk or is eliminating this kind of collateral damage an advantage?
To follow onto the question of Scott regarding eye safety it should be pointed out that there are non eye safe lasers used on the battlefield ( range finders etc ). However their energy and average power is so much less than is being considered with this, and any future scaled, item that to attempt to equate them would be tantamount to equating a safety nail clipper with a full blown Samurai sword. So any attempted justification for use of this non eye safe system based on existing use of range finders etc is not legitimate. Given that, what justification can be provided?
I predict a significant increase in Military spending on Aluminium foil.
To expand on Peter Higgens question. Metamaterials may admit ultimately what amounts to stealth at microwave and shorter wavelengths originating from external illumination. However, what such materials will not be able to hide is the underlying bodies intrinsic thermal signature. That will naturally slant battlefield imaging and tracking to the TIR – making TIR imaging and tracking the predominant smart battlefield critical capability. That makes denial of it very important – and this NIR system is poorly matched to that requirement. How do you propose to get from this to that on a sensible platform, if at all?