Energia-aseet: laser ym.

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Despite a lot of progress in recent years, practical laser weapons that can shoot down planes or missiles are still a ways off. But a new liquid laser may be bringing that day closer.

Much of the effort in recent years has focused on high-power fiber lasers. These lasers usually specially doped coils of optical fibers to amplify a laser beam, and were in originally developed for industrial cutting and welding. Initially, fiber laser were dark horses in the Pentagon's effort to develop electrically powered solid-state laser weapons that began two decades ago. However, by 2013 the Navy was testing a 30-kilowatt fiber laser on a ship. Since then, their ability to deliver high-energy beams of excellent optical quality has earned fiber lasers the leading role in the current field trials of laser weapons in the 50- to 100-kilowatt class. But now aerospace giant Boeing has teamed with General Atomics—a defense contractor also known for research in nuclear fusion—to challenge fiber lasers in achieving the 250-kilowatt threshold that some believe will be essential for future generations of laser weapons. Higher laser powers would be needed for nuclear missile defense.

The challenging technology was developed to control crucial issues with high energy solid-state lasers: size, weight and power, and the problem of dissipating waste heat that could disrupt laser operation and beam quality. General Atomics "had a couple of completely new ideas, including a liquid laser. They were considered completely crazy at the time, but DARPA funded us," said company vice president Mike Perry in a 2016 interview. Liquid lasers are similar to solid-state lasers, but they use a cooling liquid that flows through channels integrated into the solid-state laser material. A crucial trick was ensuring that the cooling liquid has a refractive index exactly the same as that of the solid laser material. A perfect match of the liquid and solid could avoid any refraction or reflection at the boundary between them. Avoiding reflection or refraction in the the cooling liquid also required making the fluid flow smoothly through the channels to prevent turbulence.

The system promised to be both compact and comparatively lightweight, just what DARPA wanted to fit a 150-kW laser into a fighter jet. The goal was a device that weighed only 750 kilograms, or just 5 kg/kW of output. The project that went through multiple development stages of testing that lasted a decade. In 2015, General Atomic delivered the HELLADS, the High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System, rated as 150-kW class, to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for live fire tests against military targets. A press release issued at the time boasted the laser held "the world's record for the highest laser output power of any electrically powered laser." At the time, General Atomics described it as a modular laser weapon weighing in at four kilograms per kilowatt.

Liquid Lasers Challenge Fiber Lasers as the Basis of Future High-Energy Weapons

Boeing and General Atomics are teaming to scale a novel killer-laser technology to 250 kilowatts.

spectrum.ieee.org

Kuidulla 300 kW asti, siitä eteenpäin sädettimet vaativat nestejäähdytyksen.

 

[Olympiakasarmi]

Liquid Lasers Challenge Fiber Lasers as the Basis of Future High-Energy Weapons

Boeing and General Atomics are teaming to scale a novel killer-laser technology to 250 kilowatts.

spectrum.ieee.org

Kuidulla 300 kW asti, siitä eteenpäin sädettimet vaativat nestejäähdytyksen.

1980-luvulla oltiin jo MW-luokassa kemiallisilla lasereilla. Niiden kehittelystä kuitenkin luovuttiin, koska kemikaalit olivat myrkyllisiä ja laserin lataaminen hidasta. Lisäksi yhden laukauksen hinta oli korkea. Tuloksia kuitenkin saavutettiin. Esim. 1983 NKC-135A lentokone torjui 5 Sidewinderiä ilmassa.

 

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As 2021 approaches, Army testers are in the final stages of plans for a shoot-off event to select a maker for the service's first laser-equipped Stryker vehicles.

Teams from Northrop Grumman and Raytheon will take their Stryker vehicle prototype, equipped with a 50-kilowatt laser, to Fort Sill, Oklahoma this spring to face multiple target scenarios designed the test the limits of each prototype's ability to defeat enemy unmanned aircraft systems, enemy rockets, artillery and mortars and other aerial threats, according to a Dec. 21 Army release.

After the shoot-off, one of the laser-equipped Stryker designs will be manufactured to equip the Army with an initial operating capability of four Stryker Directed Energy-Mobile Short-Range Air Defense (DE-M-SHORAD) systems by fiscal year 2022.

Plans for Army's Stryker-Mounted Laser Shoot-Off Enter Final Stages

Teams from Northrop Grumman and Raytheon will take their Stryker vehicle prototype to Fort Sill, Oklahoma this spring.

www.military.com

 

[ctg]

The U.S. Air Force is testing new counter-drone systems that use either direct energy or microwaves to take out unmanned drones that pose a threat to troops and bases overseas.

The service announced this month that it has been testing an upgraded laser system, known as the High Energy Laser Weapon System 2, or H2, through a series of experiments that began last summer at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico.

H2, made by Raytheon Technologies, is a modified version of the company's High Energy Laser (HEL) weapon, and is capable of defeating dozens of unmanned aerial system targets with increased precision over its predecessor, a news release states.

Air Force Testing Out Weapons That Fry Enemy Drones with Directed Energy, Microwaves

The Air Force is testing new counter-drone systems that use either direct energy or microwaves to take out unmanned drones.

www.military.com

 

[ctg]

Western militaries face a number of extremely difficult problems as they attempt to modernize rapidly aging armed forces’ equipment and tactics to confront rising threats. For the United States in particular, the services must field capabilities able to deter and if necessary, defeat China and Russia, while also maintaining an ability to rapidly commit forces to confront rogue state threats such as North Korea and Iran. On top of that, they must continue to service global commitments in a host of lower intensity conflicts and contingency scenarios. In trying to equip and sustain forces able to cover this extremely broad range of mission sets, two problems, in particular, are commonly faced in all of them

The first of these problems is inadequate numbers of advanced munitions to service more than a small portion of the required target sets in many potential conflict scenarios. One aspect of this is adversaries from peer states to insurgent groups fielding capabilities which threaten to overwhelm existing defense systems. These threats range from adapted commercial unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to loitering munitions to cheap and numerous indirect fire capabilities. In most cases, the military has high-end missile-based air defense systems theoretically capable of defeating these threats individually. However, magazine limitations means that the sheer number of relatively cheap hostile systems which can be brought to bear threatens to overwhelm these advanced defense systems by weight of numbers.

The second linked problem is that the US military is consistently on the wrong side of the cost curve. Even where sufficient stocks of advanced munitions can be fielded, using missiles that cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to destroy threats which often cost a few thousand dollars at most is neither efficient, nor potentially sustainable in the face of the rapid increases in the number of small UAS and munitions which can be fielded as already described.

Ideally, what is needed is a capability that can defeat large numbers of massed threats in quick succession, at a cost per shot to allow such a capability to be sustained over time and against a wide range of threat actors in different parts of the world. Directed energy weapons have long been sought as a potential answer to this requirement, but for years have been hampered by high cost, low volume development programs which have sought to tackle some of the hardest problem sets – like ballistic missile defense – as a starting point. However, with the small UAS revolution and the increasing prevalence of loitering munitions in the hands of potential adversaries, several more advanced and much more practical directed energy weapons are now in an advanced stage of testing with the US military.

How Raytheon Is Delivering Laser Beams To The Battlefield

We talk with one of the company's top minds about its buggy-borne High Energy Laser Weapon System and the future of directed energy in combat.

www.thedrive.com

 

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A key House Democrat wants the Pentagon to reassess a Trump administration decision to halt the Missile Defense Agency’s research into laser interceptors.

That decision to move directed energy-related funds to other defense organizations, Rep. James Langevin, D-R.I., argues, could prevent the technology from being used to defend the United States or deployed troops.

“If we move these programs out of [the Missile Defense] Agency, I believe that we will keep them in the labs, the technology, the labs, to test them to death, and they'll never get to the warfighter,” Langevin said Tuesday at a House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee hearing. “At best, it's wasted money. At worst, our systems can't keep up with what adversaries are developing.”

Give Lasers Back to the Missile Defense Agency, Lawmaker Says

Rep. Langevin slams Trump-administration decision to defund MDA research.

www.defenseone.com

 

[ctg]

Israel’s Ministry of Defense (IMOD) has recently completed a series of tests in which an airborne, high-power laser weapon system (HPL-WS) prototype intercepted multiple aerial targets in quick succession. Elbit Systems developed the system under the high-power laser program led by the Directorate of Defense R&D (DDR&D) at the IMOD. This game-changing series was conducted in a testing field in the center of Israel, in close cooperation with Israel’s Air Force flight test center, “Yanat.”

An HPL was installed on a light aircraft during the test series and was tested in several scenarios. It successfully intercepted and destroyed all of the targets that were launched throughout the test. Some of the targets were Elbit System’s own Sky-Striker loitering weapons. The targets were intercepted at various ranges and flight altitudes, about 3,000 ft. above sea level. The test series is the first phase in a multi-year program led by the Directorate of Defense R&D and Elbit Systems to develop a laser system against a variety of long-range threats.

While the HPL-WS prototype has demonstrated the first step in the intercept of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), the new capability will be able to engage more challenging targets. “We believe in the use of a high-power laser to carry out low-cost airborne interception of rockets and hostile unmanned aircraft, closer to their launching areas and away from population centers. It offers a significant change in Israel’s defense capabilities. Oren Sabag, General Manager of Elbit Systems ISTAR, said.

Israel Tested an Airborne High Power Laser Weapon System - Defense Update:

Israel’s Ministry of Defense (IMOD) has recently completed a series of tests in which an airborne, high-power laser weapon system (HPL-WS) prototype intercepted multiple aerial targets in quick succession. The objective HPL-WS will be able to augment Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar (C-RAM)...

defense-update.com

 

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Ahead of putting experimental directed energy weapons onto its fighter jets, the U.S. Air Force is testing how these systems will operate at high speed and high altitude, by trialing them in wind tunnels. Equipping fighters with directed energy, or DE, weapons, which use high-energy lasers or microwaves to engage threats, is a long-standing Air Force ambition, but one that has suffered from some well-documented delays. The latest wind tunnel work may help address some of the problems encountered so far.

The Air Force has announced that recent DE systems tests have taken place in the four-foot transonic wind tunnel, or 4T, belonging to the Aerodynamics Branch of Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC) at Arnold Air Force Base, Tennessee. By experimenting with a DE system in a wind tunnel of this type, it’s possible to assess how the weapon behaves when it encounters shockwaves left by the aircraft carrying it, as well as other disturbances that might affect the weapon’s energy beam and prevent it from engaging the target properly.

Lasers Destined For Fighter Jets Are Now Being Tested In The Air Force’s Wind Tunnels

Wind tunnels are being used to help accelerate the Air Force’s delayed airborne laser ambitions.

www.thedrive.com

 

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The US Army is planning to demonstrate a 300-kilowatt laser weapon, the most powerful ever built, next year. General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) and Boeing are building the device, which is the size of a shipping container and mounted on a heavy truck.

“The high power, compact laser weapon…will produce a lethal output greater than anything fielded to date,” Scott Forney, president of GA-EMS, said in a statement.

The US Navy deployed the first high energy laser weapon, known as LaWS, on the USS Ponce in 2014, with a reported 30 kilowatt output. Most military lasers tend to be in the 30-100 kilowatt range, mainly useful for shooting down small drones, so the new weapon is a significant increase.

Typically such weapons are based on multiple industrial fibre lasers, with the output combined into a single beam. The new weapon instead uses large slabs of glass connected in series. Such slabs have previously been hard to use due to waste heat and issues with beam quality, but GA-EMS says connecting them in series solves these issues and removes the need to combine beams from multiple fibre lasers.

The new laser is part of a US Army project to develop defensive lasers that can shoot down incoming threats. Last year it demonstrated a 10-kilowatt laser defeating small mortar rounds.

Justin Bronk at UK security think tank Royal United Services Institute says the more powerful laser can take on bigger targets as well as engaging multiple targets in quick succession.

“It will allow the system to engage a greater density of incoming threats, and also potentially engage threats which offer a shorter engagement window either due to speed or very low altitude flight trajectory,” says Bronk.

This might allow the laser to defend against ballistic and cruise missiles as well as drones, aircraft and helicopters, he says.

US Army will test its most powerful laser weapon ever next year

Lasers are currently used to shoot down small drones, but a more powerful weapon could take on larger targets

www.newscientist.com

 

[Olympiakasarmi]

US Army will test its most powerful laser weapon ever next year

Lasers are currently used to shoot down small drones, but a more powerful weapon could take on larger targets

www.newscientist.com

Vielä ollaan kunnon jytkystä kaukana. Jenkkien 1980 testikäyttöön ottama MIRACL kemiallinen laser tuotti yli 1MW 70 sekunnin ajan. Kemiallisten lasereitten kehittämisestä luovuttiin myöhemmin hitaan uudelleen latauksen ja polttoaineiden myrkyllisyyden takia.

 

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Kemiallisten lasereitten kehittämisestä luovuttiin myöhemmin hitaan uudelleen latauksen ja polttoaineiden myrkyllisyyden takia.

Kemiallisissa lasereissa ei ole sitä lämpöongelmaa, mutta ihmettelen tuota hidasta latausta. Mistä tässä oli kyse?

 

[Olympiakasarmi]

Kemiallisissa lasereissa ei ole sitä lämpöongelmaa, mutta ihmettelen tuota hidasta latausta. Mistä tässä oli kyse?

Noilla lasereilla oli tarkoitus polttaa reikä esim. ohjukseen, joten säde ei ollut lyhyt pulssi vaan pidempiaikaista ja jatkuvaa. Tämä kuumensi laserin optiikan jota piti sitten jäähdytellä ennen uutta laukaisua. MIRACL vaurioitui 1997, kun sillä ammuttiin käytöstä poistettua satelliittia. Myöhemmin kemiallista laseria kehitettiin ilmavoimien YAL-1A koneeseen.

 

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Tämä kuumensi laserin optiikan jota piti sitten jäähdytellä ennen uutta laukaisua.

Eli komponenttien kuumeneminen oli silloinkin ongelma. Ehkä MW on kynnys asia kun noilla pienemmilläkin tuntuu pärjäävän. 30 kW ei ole lelu. 100 kW rupeaa olemaan tuntuva lämpökuorma vastaanottavassa päässä. Elektroniikka huutaa hoosiaanaa kun tuollainen lämähtää päälle. Ehkä he olivat laskeneet että pidempi säde vaatii megawatin ilmakehässä.

 

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“The high power, compact laser weapon subsystem prototype that GA-EMS will deliver under this contract will produce a lethal output greater than anything fielded to date,” Scott Forney, president of GA-EMS, said in the statement. “This technology represents a leap-ahead capability for air and missile defense that is necessary to support the Army’s modernization efforts and defeat next-generation threats in a multi-domain battlespace.”

The laser system uses two seventh-generation laser heads in “a very compact and lightweight package,” said Michael Perry, GA-EMS’ vice president for lasers and advanced sensors.

“Recent architectural improvements have enabled our single-beam DG Lasers to achieve comparable beam quality to fiber lasers in a very simple design without the need for beam combination,” he added.

GA-EMS and Boeing joined forces last year to build the high-energy laser, announcing its teaming arrangement at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in October. Under the agreement, the companies planned to create a 100-kilowatt laser that would be scalable to 250 kilowatts, they said at the time. The weapon would be able to operate as a stand-alone system or integrated on ground vehicles, ships and aircraft, the companies said.

US Army awards Boeing, General Atomics contract to develop powerful laser weapon

Boeing and General Atomics are onboard to develop a 300-kilowatt laser weapon system for the U.S. Army.

www.defensenews.com

 

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According to information published on EOS website on November 11, 2021, EOS Defence Systems discloses the development of an integrated directed-energy (DE) laser weapon system variant of its T2000 modular medium caliber turret, designed specifically to address the escalating top attack threat posed to infantry/armored fighting vehicles (IFVs/AFVs) by the proliferation and increasing sophistication of hostile unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and air-launched loitering weapon systems.

EOS discloses the development of integrated directed-energy laser weap

According to information published on EOS website on November 11, 2021, EOS Defence Systems discloses the development of an integrated directed-energy (DE)

www.armyrecognition.com

 

[tienvarsipummi]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1471070026748858368

 

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20 metrin matkalla säde rupeaa leviämään, mutta pysyy tasaisena.

 

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Citing a U.S. Government report, China’s energy laser weapons program has a breadth and intensity that should greatly concern American and Allied defense planners. Some Chinese military experts expect that energy weapons will become more prevalent in 10 to 20 years and will dominate the battlefield in 30 years.

At the edition 2014 of Zhuhai Airshow, the China Academy of Engineering Physics displayed its “Low-Level Guard-1,” a 10-kilowatt electric-powered fiber optic laser. This fixed device consisted of a power module and an equipment module housing the laser and optical guidance/tracking systems. This apparently became the basis for the 30 kilowatts Low-Altitude Laser Defending System (LASS) first displayed by the Poly arms marketing company at a September 2016 military exhibit in South Africa. It claims to have a 4-kilometer range at the 30-kilowatt power level and is useful mainly for defeating swarms of small plastic drones.

According to our first analysis, the original crew compartment of the Dongfeng EQ2050 4x4 light tactical vehicle has been modified with a two doors crew cabin at the front and a fully enclosed compartment located in the middle of the chassis. The laser weapon system is integrated on a turret and can be lowered inside the vehicle in road position.

According to a Chinese source, the whole system is able to track and detect drones at a maximum range of 3 km and the laser weapon will be used to destroy UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) after detection.

The Mengshi or Dongfeng EQ2050 is a Chinese-made light tactical vehicle based on the design of the American Humvee, manufactured for government use by the Dongfeng Motor Group. In 2004 a total of 57 EQ2050 vehicles were sent to the PLA for trials and evaluation. The vehicle is now in service with Bangladesh, Belarus, Central African Republic, China, Gabon, Laos, Mali, Tajikistan,, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

The Dongfeng EQ2050 is powered Cummins EQB150-20 turbocharged diesel developing 150 hp coupled to a 5-speed gearbox. The vehicle can run at a maximum road speed of 120 km with a cruising range of over 500 km.

China has developed mobile laser weapon based on Dongfeng EQ2050 4x4 t

According to a picture published on the Twitter account of @sugar_wsnbn on December 28, 2021, the Defense Industry of China has developed a mobile laser we

www.armyrecognition.com

 

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The first set of Stryker combat vehicles equipped with 50-kilowatt laser weapons will be delivered to a unit of Army soldiers at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, by the end of September, according to the head of the service’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office.

The Army has dubbed its Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense system “Guardian.” After testing its first prototype last spring at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, against one-, two-, and three-class unmanned aircraft systems and rockets, artillery and mortars, the service is planning to conduct more tests this month, Lt. Gen. L. Neil Thurgood said at a Jan. 12 event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The testing will continue through the early part of February, he added.

The Army learned from extensive soldier feedback of the first prototype down at White Sands and through virtual simulation, he said. Based on that feedback, the developers have gone back and made some design changes, Thurgood noted.

Army readies to deliver first set of Strykers with 50-kilowatt laser weapons

The U.S. Army nears initial fielding of a powerful laser weapon on Stryker combat vehicle.

www.defensenews.com

 

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2 x 600 kW