(TRUNEWS) Mary J. Miller, the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Research and Technology, said the military is “very close” to developing offensive and defensive directed-energy weapons, or more commonly known due to sci-fi movies, laser weapons.
Addressing the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, Miller said said extensive tests were being carried out to ensure lasers could combat threats ranging from rockets and mortars to drones and cruise missiles.
“We’re trying to make sure that we understand, before we offer it to a soldier, what it can do and that they understand its capabilities,” she said while adding, “what we need to do now is build trust with our operators so they understand what lasers can do. Lasers have been promised for an awful long time and they’ve never held up or delivered what was asked for.”
This technology was coined by Air Force General Hawk Carlisle as an instrument for Fifth-Generation Warfare, during a presentation at the Air Force Association Air & Space conference in Sep. 2015 in National Harbor, MD.
‘I believe we’ll have a directed energy pod we can put on a fighter plane very soon,’ Carlisle said while adding, ‘that day is a lot closer than I think a lot of people think it is.’
Ben Goodlad, principal weapons analyst at IHS Aerospace, Defence and Security, told the Telegraph that he expected laser weapons to appear on the battlefield within the next decade.
Goodlad said, “they are very much for close in defense rather than a long range weapon. The main attraction once you have the technology in place is it doesn’t require reloading or a logistics chain.”
To explore Miller, Carlisle, and Goodlad’s claims further, TRUNEWS has put together a compilation of updates on this technology across the U.S. military and foreign armies.
U.S. House Armed Services Committee REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
U.S. Army
The Telegraph has reported that the United States Army is planning to deploy the first laser weapons on the battlefield in 2023.
In the 2017 military budget request of $148 billion, the director for the Army budget, Maj. Gen. Thomas Horlander, has asked for $7.5 billion, $2.2 billion of which will go to science and technology. This field according to DefenseSystems includes funding to refine concepts and key technologies for continued investment in high-energy laser technology to defeat airborne threats ranging from mortars to UAVs.
Another application of the developing laser technology can be found in the Recovery of Airbase Denied by Ordinance (RADBO), which is being developed through the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center Prototype Integration Facility (AMRDEC PIF) and will be used by the military’s mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles to detonate IED’s and unexploded ordinance.
An Afghan truck is driven past U.S. Army Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) armored vehicles of 508th Special Troops Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division, at an Afghan Police checkpoint on the Highway One, the main Afghan road around the country, outside the town of Kandahar, southern Afghanistan in this March 25, 2010 file photo. Washington this year has started attacking the Taliban’s funding channels ahead of withdrawing most of its forces by 2014, ending the country’s longest war. REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov/Files
U.S. Marines
Boeing and Raytheon are both quickly becoming leading firms in the world of directed-energy weapon technology. They are both actively working on creating a laser for the U.S. Marines small enough to be carried on a tactical ground vehicle.
Known as the Compact Laser Weapon System (LWS), representatives from Boeing told the Albuquerque Journal that the platform was tested by a team of Marines in 2015 in the desert near Yuma, Arizona. The two kilowatt laser proved able to identify targets from 22 miles away, and was powerful enough to disable or deny a target. Such weapons can track and hit Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) from 1.86 miles away, and weigh roughly 650 lbs.
“Say it’s an unmanned aerial vehicle, the laser could burn the wing and crash the drone — you wouldn’t need to blow it up or set it on fire, just make it crash. Or you can disable the drone’s sensing system to make it inoperable,” Boeing representatives said.
U.S. Marines REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
U.S. Air Force
From their portion of the 2017 military budget, the U.S. Air Force has requested $2.5 billion for science and technology.
Richard Bagnell, the program manager for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) “Shield” effort sponsored by Air Combat Command (ACC), says due to a culmination in the long years of development of “Star Wars” technology, U.S. fighter jets will be mounted with high-powered lasers by 2021.
Bagnell said the Air Force has not yet settled on a platform to host the laser, although the team is considering the legacy F-15, as well as the F-22, F-16 and F-35 joint strike fighter as possible hosts.
Bagnell’s team of engineers have been working since Feb. 2015 to take advantage of the latest developments in solid-state laser technology, which combine many smaller lasers, similar to ones found in a Blue Ray machine, into an effective high-power beam with over 10 kilowatts of power.
“The idea here is to take power that’s in those beams, which travel at the speed of light, and be able to protect the aircraft in a threat environment,” Bagnell said.
Laser technology research for the U.S. Air Force, Army and Navy is currently being conducted at the AFRL’s Starfire Optical Range on a 6,240 ft hilltop at Kirtland Air Force Base, NM.
According to Dr. David Walker, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for Science, Technology and Engineering, the U.S. Air Force has also already begun trialling lasers. Walker told the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities that the Air Force had “spun out lower-power lasers that give us a capability to protect our aircraft flying in theatre today.”
“The Air Force is flying every day with lasers under its large aircraft, using them as an infrared countermeasure system. As we get larger power outputs and better thermal management out of smaller package lasers, [we’ll be] able to transition these to other aircraft besides our large transport aircraft. And as we build those powers, eventually [we’ll] move from defensive capability to using that same laser to give us offensive capability as well,” Walker said.
On the subject of offensive capabilities, Walker also said the Air Force was working with Special Operations Command (SOC) to develop a laser that would be fitted to AFSOC AC-130 gunships, a powerful close air support (CAS) military asset.
Kelly Hammett, the chief engineer for the AFRL’s directed energy directorate, told CNN that laser technology has reached a national tipping point, noting that “we see the technology evolving and maturing to the stage where it really can be used.”
Hammett said the AFRL is also working on a defensive laser shield, or rather a 360-degree laser ‘bubble’ which would surround a U.S. warplane and disable or destroy anything that comes inside, like a missile or another aircraft.
Hammett noted that the shield would need a turret that doesn’t interfere with the aerodynamics of the warplane, and would utilize small lasers like General Atomics’ High-Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS) that is expected to be ready for use by 2020.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) says these weapons show ‘unprecedented power’ and are about to begin testing against live targets on firing ranges.
“The goal of the HELLADS program is to develop a 150 kilowatt (kW) laser weapon system that is ten times smaller and lighter than current lasers of similar power, enabling integration onto tactical aircraft to defend against and defeat ground threats,” DARPA says.
Hammett also stated that the United States is not the only nation that wants these new laser weapons, though he wouldn’t identify the countries by name. “We do know that there are other nations developing similar technologies,” he said. “We see research out of near peer countries developing technologies in these areas.”
An F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter takes off on a training sortie at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida in this March 6, 2012 file photo. REUTERS/U.S. Air Force photo/Randy Gon/Handout
U.S. Navy
On the USS Ponce (AFSB(I)-15) Afloat Forward Staging Base the U.S. Navy has already deployed a working laser cannon, designed to shoot down drones or ignite small attack boats.
Dubbed the Laser Weapon System (LaWS), six lasers converge in the LaWS to create a destructive beam with a range of 10 miles.
U.S. Naval Commander Kevin Stephens said, “this is the first operational testing in an operational environment. It’s performed as expected generally speaking.”
The laser weapon system (LaWS) is tested aboard the USS Ponce amphibious transport dock during an operational demonstration while deployed in the Gulf in this November 15, 2014 U.S. Navy handout photo provided December 11, 2014. REUTERS/John Williams/U.S. Navy/Handout via Reuters
The Navy has debuted a series of new Ford-class carriers designed with a host of emerging technologies to address anticipated future threats and bring the power-projecting platform of aircraft carriers into the accelerating future of modern warfare..
Three such Ford-class carriers, the USS Gerald R. Ford, USS Kennedy and USS Enterprise, are built with four 26-megawatt generators, capable of bringing a total of 104 megawatts to the ship. Rear Adm. Thomas Moore, Program Manager for Carriers, stated in 2014 that this power is necessary to support future weapons systems such as lasers and rail guns.
“Lasers need to get up to about 300 kilowatts to start making them effective.” Moore said, continuing to note that “the higher the power you get the more you can accomplish. I think there will be a combination of lasers and rail guns in the future. I do think at some point, lasers could replace some existing missile systems. Lasers will provide an overall higher rate of annihilation.”
The rail gun mentioned by Moore was first conceived a century ago and patented by French inventor Louis Octave Fauchon-Villeplee. Using an electromagnetic force known as the Lorenz Force, the rail gun accelerates a shell weighing 10kg between two rails that conduct electricity, before launching it at seven times the speed of sound, or 5,400mph over 100 miles.
The railgun can fire further than conventional guns and maintain enough kinetic energy to penetrate three concrete walls or six half-inch thick steel plates.
The railgun is being considered for installation in the new Zumwalt-class destroyers.
Britain
The British Ministry of Defense (MoD) will begin a £100 million building project in 2016 called the Laser Directed Energy Weapon Capability Demonstrator (LDEWCD) to create an experimental laser system for “tracking and hitting moving targets” in any weather condition.
“The potential of laser based weapons systems has been identified as an opportunity and offers significant advantages in terms of running costs as well as providing a more appropriate response to the threats currently faced by UK armed forces,” the MoD said.
This is not the first time the British MoD has identified the strategic benefits laser weaponry could provide, as a recently declassified letter between the then Defense Secretary, Michael Heseltine, to Prime minister Margaret Thatcher show that the British military equipped naval ships with rudimentary laser weapons in the 1982 Falklands War.
In the top secret letter Heseltine wrote “we developed and deployed with very great urgency a naval laser weapon, designed to dazzle low flying Argentine pilots attacking ships, to the Task Force in the South Atlantic.”
“The weapon was not used in action and knowledge of it has been kept to a very restricted circle.”
Also stated in the letter, Heseltine wrote that he believed the Soviet Union could be able to field laser weapons by the mid-1980s, though it was not clear how useful they would be.
Soldiers of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy stand guard in the Spratly Islands, known in China as the Nansha Islands, February 10, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer
China
As already shown in their advances in the cyber-warfare and anti satellite technology, China has comparable technological and scientific research and development. In the realm of weaponized laser systems, the Chinese Academy of Physics Engineering debuted a combat-ready laser turret at the Beijing Weapons Expo in July 2015.
The system, dubbed the Low Altitude Guard I, is a 10 kilowatt laser capable of disabling low flying drones up to 2 kilometers away, with a tracking system which can identify targets up to 5 kilometers out. Popular Science noted that promotional literature included at the exhibit bragged that the system was also capable of automated fire control, giving the operator the ability to engage targets by only pressing a firing button.
The Low Altitude Guard’s small size allows for stealthy placement on high-rise buildings and around critical infrastructure like airports and dams.
The Academy plans to develop a more powerful, truck-mounted version, the Low Altitude Guard II, which will extend defenses against drones, aircraft, missiles and artillery shells out to several kilometers, roughly the capabilities of modern auto-cannons.
In addition to the Low Altitude Guard II, a report from state-owned China News Service said researchers have circumvented the field’s bottleneck created by western countries previously banning the export of laser technology to the country.
The report noted that experts have finally created China’s first dual-beam pulsed laser deposition system, which has already successfully passed hypersonic wind tunnel tests. This system will exponentially increase China’s capabilities to produce future laser weapon technology.
Laser Legality
There are questions about whether using lasers to attack troops would violate an international treaty called the Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons. The treaty says: “It is prohibited to employ laser weapons specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to un-enhanced vision, that is to the naked eye or to the eye with corrective eyesight devices.”
The Pentagon attempted to rectify this potential legal obstacle, with a report in 2007 which argued that laser weapons are legal under U.S. And International Law.
Somali pirates stand at the dock during their sentencing at a court in the Kenyan coastal town of Mombasa October 23, 2013. REUTERS/Joseoph Okanga
Fighting Pirates and ISIS
A paper published by David Rudd in the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies titled “Maritime Non-state Actors: A Challenge for the Royal Canadian Navy?”, suggests that unmanned aerial vehicles, which are now commercially available and relatively affordable, will soon be utilized by modern day pirates and ISIS to cause terror.
Here’s how Rudd describes a hypothetical threat from an ISIS-like actor:
While the Islamic State (IS) is not a littoral-based organization, its use of heavy weaponry captured from the Iraqi army further illustrates the potential technical proficiency of non-state actors. This, combined with the availability of drone technology for surveillance and possibly weapons delivery, means that lethal encounters with state parties do not necessarily have to be at close quarters.…The proliferation of drones could radically alter the tactical battle space. For the first time, non-state adversaries would have an air force.
Rudd’s study also focused on how to counter this threat employing tech, includes the use of laser weapons.
Rudd writes:
The emergence of more powerful lasers to destroy incoming targets may also be worthy of consideration…. However, there are doubts as to whether escort-type vessels will be able to generate the power needed to generate and maintain good beam quality to neutralize a fast boat – especially in cases of fog, rain or sea spray where water droplets refract light.
As this technology is being sold as a deterrent to drones and terrorism and a cheaper safer version of air defense for military and city planners, it is likely that the progression of laser systems will quickly replace kinetic based weaponry throughout the globe.
The post Fifth-Generation Warfare: Laser weapons on the Battlefield by 2023 appeared first on TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles.
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