Pentagon will test cruise missile warhead lasers

The US Department of Defense intends to conduct large-scale tests of combat lasers. This was announced by the Pentagon Assistant Director of Development weapons directional energy transfer Thomas Carr transmits "NPlus1" with reference to Breaking Defense.

The Pentagon plans to test combat lasers for their ability to shoot down cruise missiles. Tests will be conducted in the interests of the Air Force, Navy and the US Army. According to the Pentagon plans, tests of 300 kW lasers should pass in 2023 year, 500 kW power - in 2024 year.

Currently, the US Department of Defense is in talks with three developers of combat lasers to create demonstration models of powerful laser weapons and conduct their tests.

In the event that the laser tests are successful, the Pentagon will order the development of a combat laser system with an output of 1 megawatts.

It should be noted that a single-megawatt laser system has already been developed in the United States. It was jointly developed by the American companies Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, commissioned by the United States Missile Defense Agency. An ABL air-borne chemical missile laser was deployed in the bow of a modified Boeing 747-400F cargo aircraft.

In 2010, the U.S. military conducted ABL tests, during which they managed to shoot down two ballistic missiles in the upper part of the trajectory, but soon the project was closed. The Pentagon considered the laser system and its carrier too heavy and large to be used as part of the missile defense system.

Comments

[rocket757]

Pentagon will test cruise missile warhead lasers

But this is really interesting!
Laser age \ period, it is not so far from the beginning! Need to be in the forefront!

[Shurik70]

Zerg Rush can penetrate any defense.
And riveting hundreds of cheap rockets or drones is any easier than one heavy, expensive one.
I wonder, "rush" to "zerg-rush" from the word "Rush"?

[Aleksandre]

Quote: Shurik70

I wonder, "rush" to "zerg-rush" from the word "Rush"?

From the word "rush"

[rocket757]

Everything has limits. Both defenses and attacks are excellent until the moment when counter-measures are not taken against them.
The eternal battle of the sword against the shield!

[cniza]

Quote: rocket757

Pentagon will test cruise missile warhead lasers

But this is really interesting!
Laser age \ period, it is not so far from the beginning! Need to be in the forefront!

So it seems that we are already armed ..., but in general types of weapons acquire the principles and methods of the times of the fantastic literature of our childhood.

[rocket757]

Quote: cniza

So it’s like we are already armed ...

Yes, even on wheels! while these are the first steps of a new weapon. The boom is to wait until it really becomes a shock force or a serious element of protection.

[cniza]

I think it’s not long to wait, everything is changing so quickly.

[rocket757]

Quote: cniza

I think it’s not long to wait, everything is changing so quickly.

The technique is changing, but not yet \ in great leaps!
But SOURCES OF ENERGY !!! this is GREAT BRAKE where a lot!
There are no breakthrough innovations in the technology of creating POWERFUL COMPACT, relatively economical energy sources!
This fact is holding back MUCH!

[KCA]

Nuclear reactors have been making quite compact for a long time, they even fly into space (exactly reactors, not RITEG), unlike America, this topic is not publicly displayed here, there are no official statements about Peresvet, Poseidon, Petrel with the characteristics of power plants, only someone's assumptions

[rocket757]

Quote: KCA

Nuclear reactors have long been compact enough

I do not think that they are not trying to solve this problem. Perhaps there are already promising developments ??? But this is such a breakthrough !!! What will they ring about him before it starts to be applied both here and there!
But they tried to release devices with nuclear power plants on the battlefield, ON THE EARTH ... but so far they have refused. Harmful and dangerous. Maybe then it will come before that, I do not want to make a guess.

[KCA]

So it was a very long time ago and it was not just power plants, but nuclear power plants on tracks, which were supposed not to provide their own motion and to solve highly specialized tasks, to power those same lasers, but to supply consumers with electricity

[rocket757]

So far, AR produces only thermal energy, i.e. not learned differently. It turns out a complex, bulky transforming installation ... or an explosion, which is simple, but learned to use only for destruction!
About something else has not yet been announced, more than laboratory, theoretical research. It’s for now, but then, it’s not necessary to wait how long.

[Earth]

Quote: Shurik70

Interestingly, "rush" in "zerg-rush" from the word "Rush"

no
Rush (English Rush, literally “onslaught, pressure”) - in real-time strategies and first-person shooters, a quick attack at the very beginning of the game. The main thing with rush is the speed of preparation.
In strategies, the danger of a rush forces players from the very beginning to pay special attention to protecting the base and spend resources on strengthening it, which prevents them from rapidly improving in technology. On the other hand, if the opponent reflects the rush, the player himself loses the initiative, since all resources during the rush are given to the construction of units. From strategies emerged the concepts of tank rush (a massive attack with well-armored units, first appeared in the Command & Conquer games), zerg rush (tactics of rushing for zerg in StarCraft using zerglings or cockroaches, since these units appear in the game very early, cheap and quickly produced and very effective against other low-level units for the same resources). It is also used in other real-time strategies, for example, the Age of Empires line. (There, if you remember, you can disperse the peasants with fast cavalry and damage the enemy's economy in this way)
And finally, the perfect rush is in Generals ZH. Do you want a rush tank, do you want a rush rush, do you want a rush infantry ..
In the real world, Rush is like a blitzkrieg. Middle game is partisan and total. When the economy decides.

[iConst]

Quote: rocket757

Laser age \ period, it is not so far from the beginning! Need to be in the forefront!

Sword-shield, armor-shell, laser -...

[rocket757]

Quote: iConst

Sword-shield, armor-shell, laser -...

Come up with! So far, there are not so many weapons like that! That's when there IS, they will get the development of an anti-laser, probably because they are doing it on the eve of!

[musketon64]

Sword-shield, armor-shell, laser -... mirror.

[Thunderbolt]

Quote: iConst

Sword shield, armor shell, laser.

Circuit breaker.

[rocket757]

Quote: musketone64

Sword-shield, armor-shell, laser -... mirror.

This movie is very effective and simple! In real life, you can reflect, but the mirror should be ... in short, not from powder.

[musketon64]

"In real life, you can reflect, but the mirror should be ... in short, not from a powder box."
--------------------------
I agree. But I recalled American cartoons from the 80s when the Yankees scared the USSR with space lasers located at orbital stations and shooting down Soviet ballistic missiles from near-Earth orbit. And I read somewhere that supposedly Soviet scientists proposed to give the missiles rotation around their axis and apply a reflective coating (mirror) to them, thus preventing the laser from focusing on the missile body.

[rocket757]

The plane, its lining, cannot rotate quickly.
We did not defend ourselves with the intensity corresponding to the REAL THREAT! As soon as possible!

[Polite Moose]

Quote: iConst

Sword-shield, armor-shell, laser -...

Swords, shields, armor, shells. Wholesale and Retail.
Laser Moiseevich. tel ............

[The leader of the Redskins]

Always interested in the impact of this type of weapons on high-speed types of targets.
Are the ideas of "engineer Garin's hyperboloid" being embodied?))

[Alien From]

There were of course developments in the last century. The world is moving by leaps and bounds to create high-energy weapons. Artillery of the future, anyway!

[G. Georgiev]

Mr. Putin showed the weight of the world, the mobile laser "Peresvet" .. and so how many kW does this laser power. 1 Mgw?

[Vadim237]

Most likely Peresvet has a capacity of 1,3 MW.

[gabonskijfront]

The final word in the battle will be for the Jedi with laser swords.

[Mountain shooter]

A laser operating in the atmosphere has a limitation on the specific radiation power. This limitation is the "breakdown" of the air, the so-called laser spark. Reflection of laser radiation from a target is the second limitation! Roughly speaking, a target wrapped in aluminum or silver foil reflects 20 times more radiation than a black one. Well, ... precipitation, dust, smoke, aerosols ... As a physicist, I do not understand the prospects of laser radiation as air defense of an object or tactical zone. Driving drones in the clear air above the sea ... Yes. A supersonic cruise missile ... Let them train. Especially if the enemy provides for such a countermeasure and protects the warheads from the laser ...

[betta]

I saw something like a UFO, so his flashlight shone for many kilometers, and then abruptly cut off. This is to ensure that scientists are still tinkering, but find a way to circumvent restrictions.

[DMoroz]

They trained with ABL in 2010 (but on an accelerating trajectory and in no way with hypersound) - shot down 2 and damaged one missile at a distance of 80 km. Two targets (one shot down and one damaged) were Terrier missiles, the third was a Scud simulator.
Two tests in the same 2010 at a range of 160 km both times failed. But then they tested a chemical laser, and the conversation in the article, as I understand it, was already about solid-state ones. The same Northrop Grumman already in 2009 developed a promising solid-state laser at 150 kW and because of this, they only abandoned the chemical laser, and not because of the mass and high cost.

[Air force]

But I’m wondering if cruise missiles will be covered with a mirror surface, at the moment technology can do this. But what about hypersonic missiles, they are flying in a plasma field. And so it seems to me that it’s only drones that will go on burning, somewhere above the desert. And if in another place, then during the rain and fog do not attack the chur, fly lower and quieter and then we will slam you 100%.

[knn54]

.... "The reality is that you need a laser 20-30 times more powerful in order to hit the launching missiles at the proper distance. To put this system into operation, we need to have 10-20 aircraft carriers of 1,5 billion dollars apiece with a maintenance cost of $ 100 million a year, and I don't know a single person in uniform who believes that such a concept can work. "
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on "megawatt lasers"
I REALLY WANT to drag Russia into the arms race.

[Klingon]

Quote: gabonskijfront

The final word in the battle will be for the Jedi with laser swords.

no too utopian. all the more so for the Jedi, whatever one may say, swords are not laser but plasma, since the laser beam cannot end in half a meter. the last word will be for phasers, disruptors and the telaron bomb

[Operator]

1 MW in comparison with 10 MW "Peresvet" is about nothing.

[nikolai.kolya]

ours, after all, has no analogues in the world ....
what is there to compare!

[Operator]

The difference between "Peresvet" and any other megawatt laser is not in the emitters (silicon carbide diodes), but in the power source - the nuclear power plant instead of the chemical one.

And to a mobile nuclear power plant with an electric capacity of 10 MW to Western countries, both on foot to the Moon

[nikolai.kolya]

Can you throw off a couple of vidos from tests as a "developer"? otherwise there was no information about him, and no ...

[Operator]

"Whoever gives the correct answer will receive 10 years" (C)

[G. Georgiev]

10 MW? ... is fantastic. there is no information about "Peresvet"

[voyaka uh]

10 MW? - this is Mt.
This user writes about everything in TNT equivalent.
Petrel, Poseidon, overexposure, etc. - everyone has at least 200 Mt and MW. The main thing is "mega"

[Amateur]

Solar complex “Sun” (Parkent, Uzbekistan) - a solar furnace, one of the largest in the world. The height of the concentrator is 54 m, the width is 47 m, and it also includes 62 heliostats [2] [3]. The furnace was built in 1981-1987, began to work in 1987, has a capacity of one megawatt. Temperatures above 3000 ° C can be obtained in a few seconds. The diameter of the sunspot is 40 cm.

When the heliostats are inconsistent, the spot power is orders of magnitude less, but also very decent. So that the tower does not burn out and does not melt, a small waterfall flows down the doors, from which steam flows decently.
The furnace - according to the results of the work - is a complete analogue of a heavy duty laser.

[umah]

A laser is not just focused light. This is radiation of the same wavelength with the same frequency. Therefore, the laser beam is less scattered and carries energy over a greater distance.

So the furnace is not a complete analogue of the laser. But it looks impressive!

[voyaka uh]

The sailors have so far (these days) mount a 100-120 kW laser on the ship. Already the second.
The first weak 30 kW, but in operation for the 5th year at the UDC.
And on the first BMPs, the Strikers began to mount small lasers against drones.

[Vkd dvk]

Technical reasons (according to the source - PV Zarubin "Akademik Basov ...") consisted in the fact that at a micron wavelength of laser radiation it was practically impossible to focus the beam onto a relatively small area. Those. if the target is at a distance of more than 100 km, then the natural angular divergence of optical laser radiation in the atmosphere as a result of scattering is 0,0001 degrees. This was established in the Institute of Atmospheric Optics at the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Tomsk, specially created to ensure the implementation of the program for the creation of laser weapons, which was headed by Acad. V.E. Zuev. From this it followed that the laser radiation spot at a distance of 100 km would have a diameter of at least 20 meters, and the energy density over an area of ​​1 cm2 at a total laser source energy of 1 MJ would be less than 0,1 J / cm2. This is too little - in order to hit the rocket (create a hole in it of 1 cm2, depressurizing it), more than 1 kJ / cm2 is required

At a small distance, where, in principle, it is possible to accurately focus on a small surface, the angular movement of the target relative to the weapon does not allow heating to a sufficient temperature due to the short time the laser spot is kept at one point.
Further. Any of the readers can calculate the divergence of the beam at a shorter distance, for example, at a distance of 10 km. What can a beam smeared over an area with a diameter of 2 meters burn through?
(Posted by me).

[Vadim237]

Maybe it's pulsed combat lasers.

[Vkd dvk]

Quote: Vadim237

Maybe it's pulsed combat lasers.

Do you think there is a difference in the behavior of the beam, it is constantly generated, or by an impulse? What are the properties of the beam itself? Optics bringing it to the target?
Microsecond laser pulses will heat up the missile’s body and destroy it by burning through the question. To achieve the desired temperature, you need both power and time.

[Vadim237]

In service with the Strategic Rocket Forces, they showed the operation of a pulsed laser against optical sights, where he almost destroyed the lenses in smithereens in a split second.

[Vkd dvk]

Quote: cniza

I think it’s not long to wait, everything is changing so quickly.

I think that the laws of Nature are unshakable in eternity. If it’s impossible today, then it will never be possible.

[Vadim237]

There are opportunities to deceive the laws of nature, creating special conditions for the construction of mechanisms, etc.

[Vkd dvk]

Quote: Vadim237

In service with the Strategic Rocket Forces, they showed the operation of a pulsed laser against optical sights, where he almost destroyed the lenses in smithereens in a split second.

I think this is a real useful application of a combat laser. The defeat of all kinds of sights, both in ammunition of all types, and at the disposal of man. For this, special power and superconcentration of the beam diameter is not necessary.

[Vkd dvk]

Quote: Vadim237

There are opportunities to deceive the laws of nature, creating special conditions for the construction of mechanisms, etc.

Oh well. I wish you success. First, defeat gravity, and here on Earth. And surpass Copperfield himself, with his tricks and dough boarded up on deceit.

I am convinced, and there is no desire to even argue about this. Laws must be known, and not circumvented, but skillfully used.