The US Navy shot down a drone with a laser

A ray laser as a defensive weapon to destroy a missile cruising is no longer science fiction, this is what just test successfully the US Navy. As a subsonic missile, it was actually a drone and the shot disabled its engine. The test was conducted at the US Army Test Center White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. The weapon used was designed by Lockheed Martin.

No ammunition, no explosives, a cost limited to a dollar per shot, but a lot ofenergy for this railgun which can be embarked on board a warship while avoiding the explosion of its ammunition in the event of an attack, as the Russian army has just suffered with its cruiser Moskva. This is not the first time the United States has sought to use these laser cannons as a weapon. They have been used for decades, but their exploitation remained too heavy for them to be really operational. With technological progress, the laser cannon has evolved enormously and it was able to be deployed eight years ago to neutralize drones, without destroying them.

A powerful weapon to destroy missiles

With this test, it was a question of testing the follow-up of a voluminous target which could be a cruise missile, a aircraft rotary wing or airplane. The weapon is associated with a telescope at high resolution which is assisted by a AI to locate, identify and track the threat in real time. baptized Layered Laser Defense (LLD), this laser uses the same type of technology as the GA-EMS designed by General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) and Boeing. It is a matter of combining several lentils optics to focus the laser beam and amplify it to achieve destructive power.

Unlike previous systems, the barrel heats up much less to deliver much more energy. The United States is not the only country looking to equip itself with defensive railguns. It is with this type of armament that Japan seeks to create a hypersonic anti-missile shield to protect his territory. It must be said that the war in Ukraine is an opportunity for the major military powers to show their progress and to communicate on their tests ofhypersonic weapons. Thus, Russia demonstrated that it could use them on the battlefield. In a demonstrative video, one can ostensibly see a missile of this type under a Mig-31 landing in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

The United States will soon test the most powerful laser weapon in the world

The US military plans to test a 300 kilowatt laser cannon. This will be the most powerful weapon of this type. Rather than shooting down small drones, it could be used to precisely engage and destroy nearby missiles, planes and choppers.

Article by Sylvain Biget, ppublished on 07/11/2021

A laser cannon mounted on a heavy truck and capable of shooting down a missile, plane or helicopterhere is tear that intends to test theU.S. Army next year. A weapon capable of delivering a laser of 300 kilowatts, that is to say, at least three times more powerful than what exists today. This laser weapon system, the most powerful ever, is being jointly designed by General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) and Boeing. The artist’s view of the whole is less impressive than the armament, since it is a large container placed on a tank or missile truck. Obviously, for the moment the manufacturer only delivers few technical details on the machine, but we know that it is not at all the same system as on the existing models.

New technology for more destructive power

Thus, on the other laser guns, several so-called fiber (optical) laser transmitters are assembled, the rays of which are concentrated into one. The only concern is that this type of laser heats up a lot, which limits its power to a range of 30 to 100 kilowatts in the best case. The weapon is then just sufficient to shoot down small drone, or mortar ammunition. It is this type of laser weapon, called LaWSwhich had been loaded onto a landing craft transport from theU.S. Navy from 2014.

For this new laser cannon, GA-EMS combines large lens plates mounted in series. The first projects its beam into the second, it is amplified by the second and so on. The system heats up less and delivers more energy in the end. For the military, this weapon system remains defensive and should be used to neutralize incoming threats that are very fast or move at very low altitude.