Laser weapon

[Don]

[waltky]

New weapons comin' down the road to fight jihadis...

Laser Weapons Edge Closer to Battlefield Use
29 May 2017 - The toy-like drones destroyed during an Army field exercise at Fort Sill, Okla., last month weren't anything special; however, the way they were brought down -- zapped out of the sky by lasers mounted on a Stryker armored vehicle -- might grab people's attention.

The first soldier to try out the lasers was Spc. Brandon Sallaway, a forward observer with the 4th Infantry Division. He used a Mobile Expeditionary High Energy Laser to shoot down an 18-by-10-inch drone at 650 yards, an Army statement said. "It's nothing too complicated but you have to learn how to operate each system and get used to the controls which is exactly like a video game controller," said Sallaway, who hadn't fired a laser before the exercise. The drone-killing laser was relatively low energy -- only 5 kilowatts -- but the Army has tested much more powerful weapons. A 30-kilowatt truck-mounted High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator shot down dozens of mortar rounds and several drones in November 2013 at White Sands Missile Range, N.M.

Since then, researchers have made rapid advances in laser weapons, said Bob Ruszkowski, who works on air dominance projects and unmanned systems in Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works facility. "We're really on the cusp of seeing the introduction of lasers in future systems," he said. The weapon tested at White Sands is about to double in power with a 60-kilowatt laser the Army plans to test in the next 18 months, he said in a phone interview May 12. The laser generates its beam through fiber optic cables like those used by telecom companies, said Robert Afzal, a senior fellow for laser and sensor systems at Lockheed. "We demonstrated that we could combine large number of these fiber lasers and link them to a weapons system," he said.

Lockheed Martin's 30-kilowatt Accelerated Laser Demonstration Initiative, known as ALADIN.

Lasers are very efficient at converting electrical power to a laser beam, Afzal said. That's important for the platforms that carry them, he said. It means they don't need a large generator or cooling system and that high-powered lasers can be easily transported. "This was the key puzzle piece that needed to be solved before we could begin to deploy these laser weapons," Afzal said. "The technology is getting real. It's the dawn of a new era where the tech can be made smaller and powerful enough to be put on vehicles, ships and aircraft." Scientists showed the potential of more powerful laser weapons in 2015 by burning a hole through a truck's hood at a range of one mile. "It was the most efficient high-powered laser ever demonstrated," Afazal said of the test, which mimicked what might happen if a laser was fired at a vehicle from an aircraft.

During an operation, a laser might be used to disable a vehicle where the goal was to capture rather than kill an individual, Ruszkowski said. "The laser is a surgical weapon and it's something customers are interested in," Afazal said. "Something like that can be easily integrated into an AC-130 gunship. That is something the Air Force is planning on demonstrating in the next two to three years." Researchers believe they have the key ingredients to make such a system work, Ruszkowski said. "When we realized that laser technology was maturing enough that we could be close to having something we could integrate on an aircraft we started looking at other difficulties that might arise," he said. Airflow around a plane can destabilize lasers, so engineers developed a way to minimize turbulence, said Ruszkowski, who added that the Navy has deployed a laser weapon on board the USS Ponce in the Persian Gulf.

Laser weapons could be arriving just in time to defeat a growing menagerie of cheap-to-make drones and missiles in the hands of terrorists and rogue states, which could threaten expensive American military hardware. "The threats are proliferating and changing," but laser weapons could counter some of them, Afazal said. An advantage of laser weapons is that they don't need ammunition, he said. For example, a forward-operating base could protect itself from airborne threats with a laser as long as there was enough fuel to power a generator and recharge its batteries. Use of such weapons on enemy troops is a gray area that, for now, the U.S. military is steering clear of since international agreements ban the use of weapons intended to blind, Afazal said. "Before lasers have been deployed and we understand how they work, the policy is conservative," he said.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2...field-use.html

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Next-Gen Fighter, Nuclear Cruise Missile Eyed for Funding Boost
May 24, 2017 - The Air Force wants to boost funding for next-gen technologies such as a sixth-generation fighter and a nuclear cruise missile.

The Air Force wants to boost funding for next-generation technologies such as a potential sixth-generation fighter and a nuclear cruise missile. The service’s fiscal 2018 budget request released Tuesday includes $25.4 billion for research, development, test and evaluation programs — an increase of $5 billion, or 26 percent, from the amount enacted for the current year, according to budget documents. While some of the funding would go toward top acquisition programs such as the KC-46A Pegasus tanker, F-35A Lightning II and B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber, some would also support advanced technology initiatives.

For example, the “Next Gen Air Dominance” program aims to secure $295 million for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, up from just $21 million under the current year. “RDT&E funding allows us to do is to take an idea to — to leap an idea to technology we’ll use every day,” Maj. Gen. James Martin, the Air Force’s deputy assistant secretary for budget, said during a budget briefing at the Pentagon. “The capability gap is closing and we must continue to invest in game-changing technology such as hypersonics, directed energy, unmanned autonomous systems, and nanotechnology.” Next Gen Air Dominance, also known as Penetrating Counter Air, received a hike in line with the service’s Air Superiority 2030 roadmap study completed last May, an Air Force spokeswoman told Military.com Tuesday.

Northrop Grumman in recent years has given a sneak peek into its 6th generation fighter jet concept.

The study is designed to identify shortcomings in the existing fighter fleet that could be addressed with advanced fighter aircraft, sensors and weapons in a growing and unpredictable threat environment. “We have to be ready for not only what we need today but we better be ready for the potential threats … 10, 20 years from now,” Martin said. Another area that saw a proposed increase in R&D spending was the Long Range Stand-Off Weapon, a nuclear-capable cruise missile to be launched from aircraft such as the B-52 Stratofortress. The proposal calls for boosting money for the program from $96 million to $451 million, according to the documents.

The LRSO program would replace the AGM-86B Air Launched Cruise Missile. Democratic lawmakers and nonproliferation advocates have criticized the effort in recent months, saying it would not deter, but rather escalate, tensions with foreign nations. The missile, designed to be retrofitted to carry a nuclear-capable warhead or a conventional one, could be mistaken as a nuclear-only option, critics have said. Lastly, as expected, the B-21 LRS-B — the Air Force’s classified, next-gen stealth bomber — also saw a proposed increase from $1.3 billion to $2 billion as the program ramps up in planning, testing and evaluation and development efforts.

https://www.defensetech.org/2017/05/...funding-boost/

[DGUtley]

Wow!!!

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says dat's one o' dem technologies we got by back-engineerin' dat Roswell UFO...

Air Force Aims for Laser Weapons on a Fighter Jet By 2021
20 Nov 2017 - The SHiELD seeks to equip supersonic warplanes with defensive lasers mounted in external pods.

The Air Force Research Laboratory is forging ahead with a high-energy laser designed to shoot down drones, incoming rockets and mortar rounds and hopes to have a demonstration model ready by 2021, officials say. The Self-protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator program, or SHiELD, which launched this year, seeks to equip supersonic warplanes, such as the B-1 Lancer, F-35 Lightning and F-22 Raptor, with defensive lasers mounted in external pods. The Air Force wants a high-energy laser system compact enough to complement the internal cannon and missiles equipped on its fighter jets.


The new system uses a type of optical fiber as the light-emitting material, instead of the neodymium-doped crystals used in conventional solid-state lasers. Since fiber can be coiled, more power can be packed into a compact system. "We have shown that a powerful directed energy laser is now sufficiently light-weight, low volume and reliable enough to be deployed on tactical vehicles for defensive applications on land, at sea and in the air," Lockheed Martin laser weapons expert Robert Afzal said in a statement.

Lockheed Martin is helping the Air Force Research Lab develop and high energy laser weapon systems for aircraft, including the laser pictured in this rendering.

The electric-powered laser is significantly more powerful than the chemical laser found in the defunct Boeing YAL-1A airborne laser test bed, Afzal said. The YAL-1A was scrapped after 16 years of development in 2011 due to its relatively low power. "One of the problems with the chemical laser is that first of all they're too big and too heavy -- and you have to carry the chemicals with you," Afzal told CNBC on Friday. "With an electric laser, your platform which is driving, sailing, flying around, usually has a power system that can recharge your battery back. But in a chemical laser, once the chemicals are gone you have to go back to the depot." The SHiELD program includes a beam control system to direct the laser onto a target, a housing pod mounted on the fighter jet to power and cool the laser and the high-energy laser source itself.


Lockheed Martin also recently demonstrated a laser capable of being based on the ground or at sea for the military. In September, the company demonstrated its Advanced Test High Energy Asset, or ATHENA, in tests run by the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. The laser brought down five Outlaw drones. "The tests at White Sands against aerial targets validated our lethality models and replicated the results we've seen against static targets at our own test range," Keoki Jackson, Lockheed Martin's chief technology officer, said in a statement in September.


http://www.military.com/daily-news/2...t-by-2021.html

[waltky]

Looks like the Army already beat `em to it...

Navy Likely to Be First Service to Field Laser Weapons, Expert Says
22 Mar 2018 - If one service has made sufficient progress to use laser weapons in its arsenal in the next few years, it's the U.S. Navy.

If one service has made sufficient progress to use laser weapons in its arsenal in the next few years, it's the U.S. Navy, according to the former director of the Missile Defense Agency. "The Navy right now is the most forward-leaning because they're the only service that has actually fielded an operational prototype weapon, the Laser Weapon System that they put on the USS Ponce," said Trey Obering, an executive vice president at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton who leads the directed energy innovation team. Military.com spoke with Obering, a former Air Force lieutenant general, fighter pilot and NASA space shuttle engineer, in the midst of this week's Directed Energy Summit hosted by Booz Allen Hamilton and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Getting the laser in the hands of sailors to survey how and when they would use the LaWS was critical to making laser weapons a reality in wartime missions, Obering argued. The Air Force and Army have struggled to do so. Obering recognized that each of the services operates in very different environments, which affect range and power levels. While the Army, "a close second to the Navy," he said, is looking to get directed-energy weapons on its Stryker vehicles, the Air Force has hit some speed bumps. "For the Air Force, the challenge is size, weight and power," Obering said. "They need to be able to use them in either pods under the wings, or on unmanned drones." The difficulty will be to get enough power for the size of the weapon should it be mounted to the aircraft.

The Afloat Forward Staging Base (Interim) USS Ponce (ASB(I) 15) conducts an operational demonstration of the Office of Naval Research (ONR)-sponsored Laser Weapon System (LaWS) while deployed to the Arabian Gulf

Obering said he is pleased to hear the Air Force may test laser weapons on F-15 Eagle fighter jets this summer. Citing a conversation Jeff Stanley, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for science, technology and engineering, had with reporters Tuesday, The Japan Times reported the F-15 will use 50-kilowatt lasers for drone zapping exercises as part of the Self-protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator project, known as SHiELD. "The Air Force in the past has certainly been on the forefront in research and development, and put a lot of money into the Airborne Laser program," Obering said, referencing a now-defunct, multi-billion-dollar program dating back to the early 1990s. "But they got a little gun shy … because of some of the limitations we found with that system," mainly how complex and restrictive it was for its awkward, massive weight and size, he said.

Obering's comments come as the military service secretaries have begun meeting to discuss how to better collaborate on technology, lasers included. He noted, however, each service will have contrasting applications for laser tech no matter what conclusions are reached in those meetings. "Anywhere you need the speed of light, it makes it ideal because the weapons operate at the speed of light," Obering said. "The ranges we're talking about, it's instantaneous … at 186,000 miles [per] second." But "for the application, you may want a different lasing source: a different wavelength, a different frequency," he said. "I don't see that everybody's going to go to the same lasing source, but they all have power requirements, they have to generate cooling capability, they're going to have size requirements, and power input requirements," Obering said.

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Raytheon's Laser Dune Buggy Set to Fry Enemy Quadcopters
20 Mar 2018 - The funny-looking vehicle promises to give maneuver formations defense against drones.

It may look like R2-D2 from Star Wars slapped on top of a dune buggy, but Raytheon says its new laser weapon holds the promise of providing maneuver formations with portable air defenses against drones. "This can identify a quadcopter out to five clicks," or 5,000 meters, and then fry it with a laser, said Evan Hunt, business development lead for high-energy lasers at Raytheon. Hunt spoke as he stood in the Pentagon's courtyard Monday in front of a Mad Max-style Polaris off-road vehicle mounted with a Raytheon Multi-Spectral Targeting System, a combination of electro-optical and infrared sensors with a high-energy laser (HEL). The system can operate remotely or as part of an integrated air defense network, he said. "You can park it at the end of a runway or at a [forward operating base]," Hunt said.

But one of its main advantages, he said, is that the laser can be carried by an off-road vehicle with maneuver formations to provide defense against unmanned aerial systems, or drones. "Basically, we're putting a laser on a dune buggy to knock drones out of the sky," Dr. Ben Allison, director of Raytheon's high-energy laser product line, said in a company release. The company says the concept grew out of a meeting between Allison and Raytheon Chairman and CEO Tom Kennedy on adversaries' increased use of small drones for surveillance and as weapons when fitted with small explosives. In the siege of Mosul last year, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) used small drones extensively to target the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF).

Raytheon mounted a high-energy laser on a dune buggy that may offer maneuver formations defense against drones.

Kennedy told Allison he had heard that a Patriot missile had been used to shoot down a cheap drone fitted with a grenade-type munition, and they both began thinking there had to be a better cost-to-kill ratio, Raytheon said. The quadcopters used by ISIS are worth a few hundred dollars, while Patriot missiles cost about $2 million apiece. "So, the question became, 'What can we do for a counter-UAS system using a high-energy laser, and do it quickly.' We wanted to take the assets and capabilities Raytheon has today and use them to really affect this asymmetrical threat. We settled on a small system that's hugely capable," Allison said.

Art Morrish, vice president of Advanced Concepts and Technology at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems, said of the system, "Right now, it's a shoot-on-the-halt capability. You drive the vehicle wherever you're going to drive it. You stop, and then you fire up the laser. "That makes it great for protecting forward operating bases and places where convoys have to stop. The next step is to set it up so you can actually shoot on the move," he said. Raytheon is expected to demonstrate the system at the Army's Maneuver Fires Experiment at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, this December. The Polaris mounted with the laser was part of a number of corporate displays in the Pentagon's courtyard in a sign of the military's growing interest and investment in directed energy weapons to defend against an array of threats.

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