Laser

New class of laser beam doesn't follow normal laws of refraction

University of Central Florida researchers have developed a new type of laser beam that doesn't follow long-held principles about how light refracts and travels.

The findings, which were published recently in Nature Photonics, could have huge implications for optical communication and laser technologies.

"This new class of laser beams has unique properties that are not shared by common laser beams," says Ayman Abouraddy, a professor in UCF's College of Optics and Photonics and the study's principal investigator.

The beams, known as spacetime wave packets, follow different rules when they refract, that is when they pass through different materials. Normally, light slows down when it travels into a denser material.

Laser

Army Starts Construction On Prototype Lasers

After years of lower-power field tests and more than one thousand hours of soldier feedback, the Army is on track to field-test two different types of high-energy lasers in 2022: a 50-kilowatt weapon to destroy enemy drones and incoming artillery rockets, and a 300-kW weapon that could potentially shoot down cruise missiles. Key components are now under construction for both systems, the directed energy chief at the Rapid Capabilities & Critical Technologies Office said. And, Craig Robin told me ahead of today’s Space & Missile Symposium, the service plans many more “soldier touch points” to come on both programs, especially once the prototypes are built and available for field tests.

Furthest along is the 50-kilowatt laser, to be mounted on an 8×8 Stryker armored vehicle. It’s known in Army jargon as DE-MSHORAD (Directed Energy – Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense). Four prototype laser Strykers – a full platoon – will be fielded to an actual combat unit in 2022.

Laser

The US successfully tested a laser weapon that can destroy aircraft mid-flight

A US Navy warship has successfully tested a new high-energy laser weapon that can destroy aircraft mid-flight, the Navy's Pacific Fleet said in a statement Friday.

Images and videos provided by the Navy show the amphibious transport dock ship USS Portland executing "the first system-level implementation of a high-energy class solid-state laser" to disable an aerial drone aircraft, the statement said.

The images show the laser emanating from the deck of the warship. Short video clips show what appears to be the drone burning.

The Navy did not give a specific location of the laser weapons system demonstrator (LWSD) test, saying only that it occurred in the Pacific on May 16.

Laser

U.S. Special Forces Test Laser Gunship For Covert Strikes

The prospect of laser fire from above moved closer with an announcement from the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) that they will test fire a high-energy laser weapon from an AC-130J aircraft in 2022. The plan was disclosed at the at the Virtual Special Operations Forces Industry Conference this week.

The AC-130J Ghostrider is a fearsome flying arsenal. Like its Vietnam-era gunship predecessors, it carries a radar-guided 105mm howitzer and 30mm rapid fire cannon. The modern version also has precision strike capability, dropping 250-pound GPS-guided GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs and 34-pound laser-guided AGM-176 Griffin missiles.

Laser

U.S. Navy Laser Creates Plasma ‘UFOs’

The U.S. Navy has patented technology to create mid-air images to fool infrared and other sensors. This builds on many years of laser-plasma research and offers a game-changing method of protecting aircraft from heat-seeking missiles. It may also provide a clue about the source of some recent UFO sightings by military aircraft.

The U.S. developed the first Sidewinder heat-seeking missile back in the 1950’s, and the latest AIM-9X version is still in frontline service around the world. This type of sensor works so well because hot jet engines exhausts shine out like beacons in the infrared, making them easy targets. Pilots under attack can eject decoy flares to lure a missile away from the launch aircraft, but these only provide a few seconds protection. More recently laser infrared countermeasures have been fielded which dazzle the infrared seeker.

Laser

Surprise: Navy Submarines Could Soon Shoot Lasers From Beneath The Waves

Indeed, Optical Physics Company, a California-based technology firm, has designed a beam director—which steers the beam toward the target—for a mast-mounted submarine laser. “OPC has designed such a beam director with the right form factor for insertion into a submarine mast,” says the description on the company’s Web site. “This beam director can track the target and aim an approximately 12-inch diameter beam onto the target. The beam director can optionally contain adaptive optics components to condition the wavefront of the HEL [high energy laser] beam and compensate for the atmospheric distortions that reduce beam effectiveness in a maritime environment.”

If the Navy can develop electrical hull connectors, power generation and other systems needed for a submarine-mounted laser weapon, the potential could be enormous. A stealthy submarine emerging from the depths to fire a surprise laser shot could be devastating.

Laser

Watch Israel’s wild new laser weapon shoot drones out of sky

An Israeli drone defense system fit for “Star Wars” has shot down multiple maneuvering targets with a high-powered laser beam, according to reports.

“The system achieved 100 percent success in all test scenarios,” defense technology company Rafael said in a statement about its Drone Dome C-UAS, or Counter-Unmanned Aerial System, the Times of Israel reported.

“The stages of the interception included target detection, identification and interception” with the laser beam, it said in a video of a recent demo of the system.

In the footage, a vehicle-mounted system is shown engaging the targets, including zigzagging drones. In one test, three drones flying in formation were downed in rapid succession.

“Drone Dome is designed to address threats posed by hostile drones both in military and civilian sites,” Rafael said.

The system offers “advanced solutions for maneuvering forces and military facilities, critical border protection, as well as civilian targets such as airports, public facilities, or any other sites that might be vulnerable to the increasing threat of both terror and criminal drones,” the company said.

Laser

US Navy is developing LASERS for submarines that could 'disable drones and blow up small boats'

The US Navy is reportedly arming nuclear submarines with lasers that will be capable of disabling drones and blowing up small boats. 

According to a report from Popular Mechanics, the Navy has plans to arm the Virginia-class nuclear submarines with high-energy lasers.

Despite the fact that lasers don't work under water, experts say that adding a laser onto a submarine isn't entirely impossible, but it would 'require innovative designs'.

Researcher, Sidharth Kaushal, told the outlet that lasers put on the Virginia-class submarines, which are generally used for intelligence gathering, would have to attach to the sub's photonics mast, which is a sensor that functions similarly to a periscope.

Laser

Will U.S. Navy Submarines Be Armed With Laser Weapons?

...Indeed, Optical Physics Company, a California-based technology firm, has designed a beam director—which steers the beam toward the target—for a mast-mounted submarine laser. “OPC has designed such a beam director with the right form factor for insertion into a submarine mast,” says the description on the company’s Web site. “This beam director can track the target and aim an approximately 12-inch diameter beam onto the target. The beam director can optionally contain adaptive optics components to condition the wavefront of the HEL [high energy laser] beam and compensate for the atmospheric distortions that reduce beam effectiveness in a maritime environment.”

If the Navy can develop electrical hull connectors, power generation and other systems needed for a submarine-mounted laser weapon, the potential could be enormous. A stealthy submarine emerging from the depths to fire a surprise laser shot could be devastating.

“Above the water, a 100-300 kilowatt laser would be powerful enough to destroy small UAVs, damage larger aircraft, damage optical sensors, or defeat slow anti-ship missiles,” Clark says.

Laser

Boeing achieves significant milestone with new Laser Weapon System

The world’s largest aerospace company Boeing announced that its Compact Laser Weapon System (CLWS) recently completed a series of key demonstrations with the U.S. Air Force and Army.

The high-energy 5kW CLWS successfully completed several demonstrations of its capabilities, validating its readiness for deployment, according to a recent company news release.

Test operators used handheld, game-style controllers to acquire, track and disable small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in flight. With the CLWS in a fixed-site configuration on a standard shipping container, the first-time system operators successfully defeated approximately 30 targets.

“We received great feedback on the ease of use and maturity of the CLWS system, and its seamless integration into the command and control (C2) network,” said Boeing CLWS Program Manager Kurt Sorenson. “In the past year, Boeing has demonstrated CLWS capabilities with first-time military operators at five test venues. They successfully engaged and defeated hundreds of UAVs with a very high success rate.”

Laser

EXCLUSIVE Killing Cruise Missiles: Pentagon To Test Rival Lasers

The Army, Air Force, and Navy may be only three years away from a 300-kilowatt laser weapon, one powerful enough to shoot down cruise missiles — using the same basic technology as the checkout counter at your local supermarket.

“We are in the process of negotiating contracts with three different performers for three different electrically powered laser concepts,” Thomas Karr, who works for Pentagon R&D chief Mike Griffin as assistant director for directed energy, said. (DE includes both lasers and high-powered microwaves). These will be demonstration models for testing, not prototypes of operational weapons, he emphasized in an interview with Breaking Defense.

Industry has proposed several designs that “have all been demonstrated at lower power levels, 50 to 150 kilowatts,” Karr said. Those power levels are enough to burn through drones and rockets, but not larger, faster and tougher targets like cruise missiles.

Laser

Following Army, Air Force Tests ATHENA Laser That Can Destroy Multiple Drones

The Air Force recently tested Lockheed Martin's Advanced Test High Energy Asset anti-drone laser as Pentagon interest in emerging counter-drone technologies continues to grow.

The U.S. Air Force put ATHENA -- also the name of the Greek goddess of war -- through its paces, shooting down multiple Class 1 and 2 fixed-wing and rotary drones at a government-owned training range at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the company said in a news release Thursday.

It marked the first time the service operated the system instead of Lockheed engineers, tracking targets with a military-owned command-and-control (C2) system.

"The radar track was provided to airmen who operated ATHENA via cues from the C2, then ATHENA's beam director slewed, acquired, tracked and defeated the drone with a high-energy laser," Lockheed said in the release.

Laser

Army Works to Slim Down Powerful New Laser Defense System

The Army is working on a powerful new 100-kilowatt laser system to defend against enemy missiles, artillery and drone swarms but will eventually have to make it smaller and lighter to deploy.

"We're trying to get it small enough and efficient enough to put on a platform," Robert Snead, an engineer with the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command based at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, said Thursday, referring to the High Energy Laser Tactical Vehicle Demonstrator (HEL TVD), which the service described as being in the "pre-prototype" stage.

He said testing of the HEL TVD "will inform the Army's decision on how to use directed energy on the battlefield."

The system, currently mounted on a cumbersome six-wheeler truck, is not deployable, Snead said, adding that the design could change substantially to make it capable of being fielded on a tactical vehicle. He spoke at the annual "Lab Day" display of military technology in the Pentagon's courtyard.

Laser

Anti-Satellite Laser Base Discovered in China's Xinjiang Province

Recently released images, which were provided by retired Indian Army Col. Vinayak Bhat, a satellite imagery analyst who specializes on China, have revealed the presence of an anti-satellite laser base in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the base is located roughly 145 miles south of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, and is situated near a lake.

"In terms of satellite tracking, Chinese technology has grown in leaps and bounds. There are now many space tracking stations dotted all over the country - like one in Ngari, Tibet - which provide accurate data about satellites to be targeted," Bhat said in his report for Indian outlet The Print.

"Once the accurate satellite path and other data is known, directed energy weapons (DEW) located at five different places can take over the task. One such facility is located in Xinjiang."

In his analysis of the base, Bhat notes that it features four main buildings with sliding roofs, and that three of those buildings are linked to "two vacuum spheres," which suggest that "chemical lasers are being used with rare earth metals like neodymium." Bhat based his speculation off both the shape and size of the buildings.

Laser

Chinese navy trials laser weapon

Chinese media have reported that a prototype laser weapon is being tested by the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).

An article published on 5 April on the Sina news website contains several screengrabs taken from footage broadcast by China Central Television (CCTV) showing a trainable optical device mounted on a mobile chassis with a large main lens.

This is surmounted by two smaller devices, possibly optical and radio frequency ranging and tracking sensors. One of the images also shows an auxiliary trailer that could be used as a mobile generator, as well as Chinese troops nearby in naval uniform.

No definitive information relating to the capability of the system has been disclosed but the Sina report suggests that a truck-mounted variant could form part of a coastal defence battery, and that a shipborne device could be an alternative to the HHQ-10 short-range surface-to-air missile system, implying that the laser-based system may have a range of about 5 km.

China has produced several examples of road-mobile laser weapons. For instance, in late 2017 China released information about a laser weapon system that had successfully destroyed an unmanned aerial vehicle at a range of about 300 m.

Laser

The U.S. Military Wants to Kill Nuclear-Armed ICBMs with Lasers

The Missile Defense Agency is engineering air-launched, high-powered, long-range laser weapons to destroy attacking nuclear-armed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles during launch and even as they travel through space -- bringing new levels of offensive and defensive layered firepower to existing missile defense technologies.

The Pentagon is, as an initial phase, looking at “laser scaling” to integrate enough laser energy and power to “burn a hole through the metal” of an ICBM, US military officials say.

This involves ground tests, laboratory work and ongoing computer simulations to assess the technical feasibility of firing lasers, traveling at the speed of light, from an air platform to derail, intercept, jam or destroy long-range enemy nuclear weapons -- such as an ICBM.

Laser

Imagine This: Air Force Fighters Like the F-35 and F-22 Armed with Lasers

The US Air Force is refining its combat strategy, tactics and concepts of operation to accommodate the rapid emergence of laser weapons, technologies which promise to alter the landscape of modern warfare and substantially expand the envelope of attack possibilities for fighter jets.

The service anticipates having aircraft and fighter jet-fired lasers in operation as soon as the early 2020s, as mobile power systems and other integral technologies continue to evolve rapidly.

Not only do laser weapons bring increased precision attacks at the speed of light to incinerate targets, but they can be scaled or adjusted to achieve a desired effect - such as total destruction, partial damage or an even smaller, more measured impact, depending upon the threat.

“Laser weapons offer warfighters opportunities for quick and precise target engagement, flexibility and lighter and more responsive support logistics,” Eva Blaylock, spokeswoman for the Air Force Research Laboratory, told Warrior Maven in a written statement.

Laser

Dreaming of death rays: the search for laser weapons

Lasers first emerged nearly 60 years ago, but the idea of using powerful beams of heat or light is hardly new. In the third century bc, for instance, Greek scientist Archimedes allegedly used mirrors reflecting the Sun’s rays to attack Roman ships off Sicily. Millennia later, ‘death rays’ — concentrated light or electricity — became a science-fiction trope, from H. G. Wells’s 1898 The War of the Worlds to the Star Wars franchise.

As often happens, futurist fiction sparked the real thing. And that’s the story told in Lasers, Death Rays, and the Long, Strange Quest for the Ultimate Weapon.

As the title indicates, Jeff Hecht’s book is not about the mundane, ubiquitous lasers of supermarket checkouts and CD players. Hecht, a science writer who has covered lasers since the 1970s, instead records efforts to adapt the technology for military use. In 1934, for instance, inventor Nikola Tesla — instrumental in developing the alternating-current electricity system — announced that he had attempted to design a device that would send a ‘death beam’ of concentrated particles to detect and destroy submarines. As Hecht relates, US government agents looked into the proposal after Tesla’s death, but reviewer John G. Trump, an electrical engineer (and uncle of the current US president), declared it too speculative.

Laser

The Air Force's 'Laser' Future: Firing Laser Weapons from F-35s, F-15s and C-130s?

The Air Force will one day fire high-tech laser weapons from drones and fighter jets to destroy high-value targets, conduct precision strikes and incinerate enemy locations from the sky.

The first airborne tests are expected to take place by 2021, Air Force officials have said. The developmental efforts are focused on increasing the power, precision and guidance of existing laser weapon applications with the hope of moving from 10-kilowatts up to 100 kilowatts. Air Force weapons developers are also working on the guidance mechanisms to enable laser weapons to stay on-track on a particular target.

Air Force leaders have said that the service plans to begin firing laser weapons from larger platforms such as C-17s and C-130s until technological miniaturization efforts can configure the weapon to fire from fighter jets such as an F-15, F-16 or F-35. Given the state of current technology, cargo planes are better equipped in the short term to transport the requisite amount of mobile on-board power needed for airborne lasers.

The Air Force Research Laboratory is already working on a program to develop laser weapons for drones and manned aircraft to arm air platforms by the mid-2020s. When it comes to drone-fired lasers, there does not yet appear to be a timetable for when they would be operational weapons - however weapons technology of this kind is moving quickly.

Laser

Here Come the Lasers: The Dawn of Energy Weapons Is Here

Directed-energy weapons—or “lasers,” as they are commonly known—present the possibility of transforming warfare due to numerous operational advantages, such as incredible speed and range, light-weight, improved accuracy, and limited collateral damage. [1]

In some respects, this innovation is already on the brink of implementation. With forthcoming architectural changes, such as new platforms on which we can mount lasers, operational use could be just on the horizon. In other areas, however, development has stalled because of international laws prohibiting the use of directed-energy weapons against personnel.

It is crucial the defense industry find ways to harness the power of a discriminate laser weapon within the Law of Armed Conflict and continue to develop a technology which can target adversarial weapon systems and defend against inbound missiles. If the Law of Armed Conflict is adjusted to permit directed-energy weapons, which could minimize suffering to the most extent possible, using aerial lasers with the power to target personnel on the ground can redefine the way the U.S. Air Force utilizes airpower within the close air support, counterinsurgency, and counterterror attack missions.