In tests conducted at a base in New Mexico, the US Navy for the first time shot down a drone, representing a subsonic cruise missile, using a 100% electric high-energy laser.
Big advantages
Funded by theOffice of Naval Research (ONR) from United Statesthese tests were intended to demonstrate the ability of the Lockheed Martin Layered Laser Defense (LLD) to track and destroy large targets as well as a wide range of threats, including robotic aerial vehicles, quadcopters and subsonic cruise missiles.
” The ground-based laser system aimed at the moving drone, firing a high-energy beam invisible to the naked eye. A fiery orange glow and smoke were observed from its engine and a parachute opened as the craft disintegrated, neutralized by the laser beam “, reports theU.S. Navy on his site.
Laser weapons have a number of advantages. Using a high-resolution telescope, they are able to track and identify incoming targets, determine the damage the laser will inflict on them, and can also be dimmed in power to disable sensors or temporarily blind forces. hostile.
Not dependent on propellants, which makes them inherently safer on board ships, they also have a theoretically unlimited supply of ammunition as long as power is available, greatly reducing the cost to fire.
A completely solid system
Unlike previous laser technologies, which were fueled by chemicals, the LLD is entirely solid, composed of coils of glass fiber optics doped with various elements. These coils can be grouped together and the lasers they generate combined into a single powerful beam and projected through optics that direct it, focus it and compensate for the atmospheric refraction.
L’U.S. Navy had already deployed laser weapons in 2014 aboard theUSS Ponce in the Persian Gulf and theUSS Portland in 2021, having disabled drones without shooting them down, but both were demonstrations.
If the organization does not plan to make LLD a standard weapons system, the latest tests highlight the growing capabilities of such technologies, relying on artificial intelligence to track and target threats.
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