A Northrop Grumman Space Technology engineer in Redondo Beach, Calif., monitors a solid-state laser, in a photo from January 2007.
(Credit: Northrop Grumman)From the week gone by on the directed-energy weapons front: defense contractor Northrop Grumman reported that it got a solid-state laser to fire a beam with a potency of 105.5 kilowatts.
For the ray-gun wing of the military-industrial complex, the 100-kilowatt threshold is a major milestone, marking the entry point to weapons-grade laser weapons. Adding to the appeal is that solid-state lasers are much more compact, and less noxious, than chemical laser systems such as the one in the works for the 747-centric Airborne Laser.
The technical details of Northrop's achievement break down this way, starting with a modular, "building block" approach that bodes well for scalable systems, the company said:
For building blocks, the company utilizes "laser amplifier chains," each producing approximately 15kW of power in a high-quality beam. Seven laser chains were combined to produce a single beam of 105.5 kW. The seven-chain JHPSSL laser demonstrator ran for more than five minutes, achieved electro-optical efficiency of 19.3 percent, reaching full power in less than 0.6 seconds, all with beam quality of better than 3.0.
Adding an eighth chain that the system was designed for would increase laser power to 120 kilowatts, Northrop says.
Where this test saw five minutes of continuous operation for the laser, altogether the system has been operated at above 100 kilowatts for a total duration of more than 85 minutes.
The efforts are part of the Pentagon's Joint High Power Solid State Laser (JHPSSL) program.
Even though 100 kilowatts has long been the "proof of principle" sought for weapons systems, Northrop says that "in fact, many militarily useful effects can be achieved by laser weapons of 25 kW or 50 kW, provided this energy is transmitted with good beam quality, as our system does."
Of course, this is still a laboratory laser system and not a field-tested, ruggedized product. "It is still a little heavy and a little big," Dan Wildt, vice president of Northrop's directed energy systems program, told the LA Times.
Shiny on the outside, sparkly on the inside? This is Northrop's laser weapon system demonstrator.
(Credit: Northrop Grumman)That's probably a significant understatement. Says Noah Shachtman at Wired's Danger Room blog of the news from Northrop:
Does that mean energy weapons are a done deal? Hardly. There are still all sorts of technical issues--thermal management and miniaturization, to name two--that have to be handled first. Then, the ray gunners have to find the money. The National Academies figure it'll take another $100 million to get battlefield lasers right.
In a separate post, Shachtman reports on what's involved in getting specific laser systems ready to go over the next several years.
Earlier this year, Boeing said that it had used a "kilowatt-class" solid-state laser to shoot down a UAV from a ground-based system. The company hopes that the Airborne Laser, meanwhile, will do its first-ever aerial target shoot sometime in 2009.
Laser technology may yet yield the weapons of the not-so-distant future, but the future is certainly not now.
For the moment, it's all R&D business as usual. Earlier this week, both Boeing and Northrop Grumman put out statements about their ongoing work on U.S. Army's High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator, or HEL TD. And for Boeing, it was also a chance to crow about a contract win: $36 million to continue its work on a HEL TD design.
The work on the HEL TD is intended to lead eventually to a truck-mounted laser weapon that could shoot down rockets and artillery shells.
(Credit: Boeing)With that money, Boeing says it will first finish its design work, and then move on to building and testing a ruggedized beam control system on a heavy-duty truck (specifically, the Army's Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck). The defense contractor finished the preliminary design of the beam control system earlier this summer. Boeing also plans to develop the systems-engineering requirements for the complete HEL TD laser weapon system.
Northrop Grumman, for its part, this week said that it has completed all preliminary design review requirements for a rugged beam control subsystem for the HEL TD.
Testing of the beam control systems, with low-power lasers, is expected to take place somewhere around 2010.
Eventually, the HEL TD work will be joined up with the work being done separately on a high-energy solid-state laser--the namesake element of the laser weapon system. The SSL is expected to be in the 100-kilowatt class.
But the lead times are long on projects like this. "Due to resource constraints, we are targeting somewhere in 2016 time frame for a limited deployable system," said Bill Gnacek, HEL TD program manager for the U.S. Army.
The laser weapons platform that emerges from the HEL TD program is intended to target rockets, artillery shells, and mortar rounds.
Boeing is also working on a similar project called the Laser Avenger--a Humvee-mounted laser weapon system that would direct its light beam at more Earth-bound targets such as roadside bombs and other unexploded ordnance. The Laser Avenger, a variation on the existing, Stinger-missile-equipped Avenger air defense system, is internally funded by Boeing.
August has been something of a landmark occasion for Boeing and its laser weapons projects, which have been notable for their slow progress. Earlier this month, the company said it had done the first ground test of the entire weapon system in its Airborne Tactical Laser aircraft, which fired its high-energy chemical laser through its beam control system. Boeing expects to fire the laser in flight at a ground target before the end of this year.
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