Air Force to Mount Laser Cannons on War Planes by 2020

Ben Graham | September 21, 2015
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We’ve mounted a laser cannon to an Army aircraft and are testing a laser weapon system (LaWS) on the Navy’s USS Ponce - both can shoot missiles, drones and aircraft out of the sky in mere seconds. Now, the Air Force claims that it will have tactical “directed energy pods” mounted to war planes by 2020. Basically, we’re making one more step towards getting X-Wings from Star Wars. 

There have been multiple advances on vehicle mounted weapon technologies in just the past year and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon. American military research has been dabbling in producing viable laser weapon technology and the results are both exciting and slightly terrifying. 

In this case, fighter jets will be armed with powerful laser cannons that are not only more accurate, but also much cheaper per-shot than current weapons mounted and military aircraft.

"I believe we'll have a directed energy pod we can put on a fighter plane very soon,” said General Hawk Carlisle who spoke of this leap in technology at a “Fifth Generation Warfare” lecture last week. "That day is a lot closer than I think a lot of people think it is.”

The current forerunner for the USAF contract is General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) HELLADS system. HELLADS stands for “High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System.” The most recent prototype is small enough to fit onto a Predator C UAV and runs off of a single lithium ion battery supply. GA-ASI hopes to deploy said drones by 2018.

“The goal of the HELLADS program is to develop a 150 kilowatt (kW) laser weapon system that is ten times smaller and lighter than current lasers of similar power, enabling integration onto tactical aircraft to defend against and defeat ground threats.” said DARPA’s Dr. David Shaver. “With a weight goal of less than five kilograms per kilowatt, and volume of three cubic meters for the laser system, HELLADS seeks to enable high-energy lasers to be integrated onto tactical aircraft, significantly increasing engagement ranges compared to ground-based systems.”

According to the Joint Technology Office’s Jack Slater, “The system produced the best beam quality from a high energy laser that we have yet measured with the [Government Diagnostic System]. We were impressed to see that the beam quality remained constant with increasing output power and run-time.”

Before the system is approved for use in the field, it has to go through a taxing set of tests against mortars, rockets, UAVs, surface-to-air missiles and both ground and air vehicles. Though, with claims like those by Gen. Carlisle, it’s easy to see that the Air Force is very optimistic about this project.

This video shows just how effective a laser weapon can be against enemy aircraft. Now, we just need a "Top Gun" sequel that features jets armed with laser weapons like this.

 

 

 

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