The Army's Drone-Killing Lasers Are Getting a Tenfold Power Boost

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The Army's Drone-Killing Lasers Are Getting a Tenfold Power Boost - U.S. Army laser guns will increase in power by a factor of ten by 2022.
By Kyle Mizokami - Jul 18, 2017
RE: http://www.popularmechanics.com/mili...g-laser-power/

The U.S. Army's laser weapons will experience an enormous increase in power over the next five years as the laser industry continues to make rapid technological gains. The army's two main laser programs will each receive a tenfold increase in power, giving the weapons the ability to destroy larger targets farther away. For now, the weapons are best suited to burning drones out of the sky, but someday they want to target cruise missiles and manned aircraft.

Laser weapons, a staple of science fiction for almost a hundred years, are finally coming into their own. Lasers can engage targets at the speed of light, burning holes in enemy equipment with pulses of focused energy. A laser weapon can blind pilots, drivers, and sensors; damage airframes to the point where they fall out of the sky; and cause fuel and explosive warheads to ignite by exposing them to insanely high heat.

The technology has made some pretty big strides over the past several years, as solid-state lasers have boosted energy output while reducing the size of the overall package. The Army has focused on two programs: a test-bed vehicle called the High Energy Laser Mobile Test Truck (the incongruously named HELMTT) that mates a heavy Army truck with a 10-kilowatt commercial laser, and a 5 kilowatt laser installed on a Stryker armored vehicle nicknamed the Mobile Expeditionary High Energy Laser, or MEHEL. Both are controlled by soldiers looking at an LCD screen, using an Xbox-type controller to zero in on an incoming drone and shoot it down. Here's a video of the Stryker MEHEL vehicle:

Now, according to Breaking Defense, the Army plans to increase the power of the HELMTT laser to 50 kilowatts by 2018, a fivefold increase. By 2022, it plans to have a 100-kilowatt laser on an armored vehicle, likely a M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle or another Stryker.

Early on, it looked like the Army had a long road to travel to build laser weapons that are actually useful. Contemporary laser weapons are relatively low-powered and useless against traditional threats such as artillery shells, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and manned aircraft. The quick rise of military and civilian unmanned aerial vehicles, however, especially the Islamic State's pioneering work in weaponizing civilian drones, has created an entirely new category of air defense: drone defense.

Fortunately for the Army, its state-of-the-art current lasers are actually good enough to destroy drones. During the Maneuver Fires Integrated Experiment, held at Fort Sill in April 2017, a Stryker killed a drone for the first time with an onboard 5-megawatt laser. The 18-by-10-inch drone was shot down at a distance of 600 meters.

A Stryker armored vehicle with a 100-megawatt laser still won't be powerful enough to shoot down aircraft, but it will be powerful enough to down drones at longer ranges and in inclement weather. Unlike other weapons, lasers are degraded by particles of dust, water, and sand in the atmosphere. Dust storms, fog, and rain will all reduce a laser's power, making it less lethal and reducing its effective range. Even if it can't shoot down a drone, a laser can make a "mission kill," blinding the drone's sensors so it can no longer fulfill its mission.

Another use for a laser-armed Stryker: intercepting incoming artillery rockets and shells, heating them in flight until their propellant or high explosive warheads explode. Rockets and artillery shells are small and fast, previously making them impossible to shoot down. A laser, on the other hand, travels at 186,000 miles per second, virtually eliminating the intercept time. Unlike anti-drone lasers, which use video game controllers, anti-artillery lasers would likely be fully automated, programmed to stand guard over an Army unit and shoot down any projectile heading its way.

Another aspect of lasers the Army likes: ammo is cheap. While the actual laser system might be expensive, the fuel to run the electrical generators that power the laser is very cheap, amounting to pennies on the shot. While the system isn't quite the "unlimited magazine" the Army is touting—there is always a finite amount of fuel—the cost per shot is even cheaper than the kinetic alternative, a .50 caliber machine gun or 25-millimeter chain gun, and definitely cheaper than a missile.

Source: Breaking Defense