A nice article but it does not even scratch the surface of why we may never see such laser systems on land. Even at sea, I doubt they will go beyond experiments. In addition to the things mentioned:
1. Servicing those is impossible in the field. You need an optics lab, not a filthy mechanical workshop. Btw, where do you want to get all the high power laser, technicians from? It's an incredibly niche specialisation.
2. Just keeping the outer lens clean enough would be an achievement. It has to be extremely clean or the high laser power will hit the debris causing micro fractures, further degrading it and eventually leading to its complete fracture.
3. High power laser optics degrades fast. This degradation depends on many factors but the cost vs effectiveness is not at all that obvious, certainly not pennies per shot as is often quoted. It may still be cheap, but if you want to compare different solutions then you have to compare system to system life cycle costs, not the cost of a laser pulse vs a 35mm programmable shell.
4. I personally do not understand the point of this at all. If you can already track an object with a laser, just use a cheap missile or a shell. The laser power required to actually down a UAV is so large that the range will always be limited anyway, while tracking with a laser can be done from much longer distances.
5. Currently, UAVs are not designed to survive laser beams, but if it was a real threat, they could be. Also, the smaller the object, the harder it is to down it. Such a laser will likely never be effective and reliable against fpv drones.
6. I would expect a 40 year old Gepard to be incomparably more effective CUAV in the field, than any existing or future laser system.
The point? Its cool and futuristic with lasers, who cares about pesky details? (But thanks for informing us uninformed before we run out and buy Sticis in laser producing companies.)
Alas, physics is what it is. I don't think I can convey in writing, just how much the child in me would want lasers to be a battlefield weapon. Unfortunately, it's only a tad more realistic than a railgun (which I would also love to see).
For tracking, maybe. However, the current CUAV systems use radars at specific frequencies. I don't know enough whether there is any point moving from a radar to a laser.
Good points. I tend to think microwave devices will endup being more effective in the short run vs drones. That said I think lasers will probably find a home on ships and fixed locations - even given the limitations you note. US/NATO ships are woefully (in my opinion) under equipped with point defense weapons anyway. A laser or two if compact even if only good in some situations and requiring a full work over in port would be a good addition to a general increase in finding room for more systems with the same job even if they are a mix of more gun and cheap small rocket/missile systems and redundant jamming and or microwave systems.
The problem with using lasers as point defence on ships is that the potential threats for ships are virtually all pretty large (we're not talking FPV quad-drones here, they don't have the range for naval engagements), and moving very fast, with the laser also being a moving source. The tracking and, more importantly, the pointing requirements for any shipboard laser are really significant and this infers a need to do your laser damage in one, ideally, one shot on the same spot. This then implies imparting a significant amount of energy to that one spot driving up the amount of energy to be generated and delivered to the laser.
Another thing to consider is that lasers are also quite inefficient at converting input energy to output energy at the exit optic of the laser. That number can be as low as 10-15% of input being the output. Ald all the waste energy has to be managed somehow, whether through radiation/convection to the atmosphere (IR bloom, anyone) or through transfer to the sea with cooling plumbing. Of course, the output energy also starts to drop off the instant it leaves the laser due to atmospheric effects, even on clear days (much less rainy or cloudy days) meaning that either effective range is relatively short or that input energy requirements go up again.
Couple all this together and you quickly start to get quite unwieldy electromechanical systems to provide the pointing accuracy needed to hit a manoeuvering, high-speed target from a moving platform at the desired engagement ranges coupled with truly significant amounts of power generation _and_ thermal management.
Versus adding, say, two more CIWS mounts/SAMs and a bigger bucket of ammo.
I would expect countermeasures like aerosol dispersal to be used by drones if lasers become widespread. TBH, not even sure if weather effects have been mitigated yet - what about heavy cloud layers between the laser and the drones?
The increase in computational and pointing accuracy requirements for this are substantial. Not saying you're wrong, but saying this means the system gets a lot larger and a lot more costly to manufacture. A _lot_.
A good antidote to the hollow promises of the 'tech will save us' crowd. Thanks. Like driverless cars, battlefield lasers have been guaranteed to appear 'within five-ten years' for as long as I can remember.
I have always thought lasers would first be used as a means of communication that's one practice impossible to jam or overhear. Laser from ground to a drone, which forwards the communication also with a laser or lasers to further drones. But perhaps achieving enough accuracy while flying is not feasible with the current technology.
For combat I can't imagine how huge power is needed for this to work.
I find a quite glaring omission on the news article: it discuss lasers Vs missiles, ignoring guns.
Lasers need lots of energy (usually counted in megawatts sustained for multiple seconds). Large ships have the required energy and mass budget, but a mobile land vehicle doesn't have it. For example, a C175-16 diesel generator from Caterpillar weights approximately 30 tonnes and can supply 2.5-3 megawatts sustained. Even a small 950 kW generator like the Caterpillar C32 weight 15+ tonnes.
I am also quite skeptical about the possible rate of fire of these systems. Pushing megawatt-plus power through optical systems requires some really good cooling if you want to sustain operation against a saturation attack.
I doubt it. Power plants could supply plenty of energy for a laser weapon, but these are usually targeted by ballistic missiles, which are a very hard target to destroy by directed energy weapons.
The re-entry vehicle enter the atmosphere at multiple Mach, and these are heavily built compared to plastic and fiberglass drones. You have mere seconds to destroy the missile during terminal phase.
The simplest solution to all these issues is making large orders of them regardless of their faults such that there's continuous iteration. A lot of these issues are because we dont have them in large numbers to work out the kinks and technical hurdles. I like the MSHORAD program which is going to mount these on Strykers in large numbers. Eventually practical solutions will be realized.
The money required for this approach would be pretty staggering. It's not an incorrect approach, but, man, it would chew through defence budgets to do things like this.
Thats why you need to make large orders. High upfront cost is offset over the long term. Already we're doing this with the laser M-SHORAD program(Increment 2). You're right its going to be expensive though but eventually these Directed Energy systems will have to be part of how we defend ourselves.
Well, first off I'm not sure that directed energy weapons _have_ to be part of things. I'm not sure the physics actually work for effective weapons systems. Currently, I do not see a rational path to get sufficient energy to targets to make lasers a viable weapon system, especially as regards to larger targets and doubly especially if fielded to an active, fluid, and very dangerous battlefield.
Secondly, procuring large numbers of many varied systems in an effort to achieve system evolution on the battlefield is where this starts to cost a huge amount even before you can start "at scale" production of the actually viable systems, You are procuring a large number of low volume solutions that are inherently more expensive because of the low rate production implicit in the idea of multiple systems iterating on the design. Tooling up for higher rate production is where the upfront money lies and spending that toolng money over and over as your system upgrades iteratively is a recipe for those huge costs I was talking about.
It is not a viable approach in a world of constrained budgets unless one is willing to sacrifice a LOT of other capability to afford it.
I am totally on board with fielding small numbers of a lot of different systems in order to create that design iteration, but you then run into the issues of training on all the different systems and the fact that these different systems will be proprietary to the individual suppliers meaning that the free transfer of ideas to generate the iteration will be problematic. at best.
I'm surprised that we keep talking about lasers. I've never worked with lasers first hand, but as an engineer, it never ever seemed to be even remotely feasible to use later over any distance larger then a few meters: there are too many technical challenges already described by other readers.
drone-one-drone or same sort of 155 mm AD is way more practical.
Yep. Against small craft you need something small, cheap, easy to transfer. Something you can fix on top of a buggy or a robodog.
A rapid fire shotgun turret, maybe.
And high flying observers are just a different beast, for different predators.
A nice article but it does not even scratch the surface of why we may never see such laser systems on land. Even at sea, I doubt they will go beyond experiments. In addition to the things mentioned:
1. Servicing those is impossible in the field. You need an optics lab, not a filthy mechanical workshop. Btw, where do you want to get all the high power laser, technicians from? It's an incredibly niche specialisation.
2. Just keeping the outer lens clean enough would be an achievement. It has to be extremely clean or the high laser power will hit the debris causing micro fractures, further degrading it and eventually leading to its complete fracture.
3. High power laser optics degrades fast. This degradation depends on many factors but the cost vs effectiveness is not at all that obvious, certainly not pennies per shot as is often quoted. It may still be cheap, but if you want to compare different solutions then you have to compare system to system life cycle costs, not the cost of a laser pulse vs a 35mm programmable shell.
4. I personally do not understand the point of this at all. If you can already track an object with a laser, just use a cheap missile or a shell. The laser power required to actually down a UAV is so large that the range will always be limited anyway, while tracking with a laser can be done from much longer distances.
5. Currently, UAVs are not designed to survive laser beams, but if it was a real threat, they could be. Also, the smaller the object, the harder it is to down it. Such a laser will likely never be effective and reliable against fpv drones.
6. I would expect a 40 year old Gepard to be incomparably more effective CUAV in the field, than any existing or future laser system.
Very good points!
Germany still has over 100 Gepards in storage. You are quite right, getting those into action in Ukraine is a far more urgent and practical solution.
The point? Its cool and futuristic with lasers, who cares about pesky details? (But thanks for informing us uninformed before we run out and buy Sticis in laser producing companies.)
Alas, physics is what it is. I don't think I can convey in writing, just how much the child in me would want lasers to be a battlefield weapon. Unfortunately, it's only a tad more realistic than a railgun (which I would also love to see).
Indeed. And ever since Star Wars laser swords have been the coolest of the cool. We need some new physics!
It is always possible to combine existing air defense systems with laser ones. They will complement each other.
For tracking, maybe. However, the current CUAV systems use radars at specific frequencies. I don't know enough whether there is any point moving from a radar to a laser.
Good points. I tend to think microwave devices will endup being more effective in the short run vs drones. That said I think lasers will probably find a home on ships and fixed locations - even given the limitations you note. US/NATO ships are woefully (in my opinion) under equipped with point defense weapons anyway. A laser or two if compact even if only good in some situations and requiring a full work over in port would be a good addition to a general increase in finding room for more systems with the same job even if they are a mix of more gun and cheap small rocket/missile systems and redundant jamming and or microwave systems.
The problem with using lasers as point defence on ships is that the potential threats for ships are virtually all pretty large (we're not talking FPV quad-drones here, they don't have the range for naval engagements), and moving very fast, with the laser also being a moving source. The tracking and, more importantly, the pointing requirements for any shipboard laser are really significant and this infers a need to do your laser damage in one, ideally, one shot on the same spot. This then implies imparting a significant amount of energy to that one spot driving up the amount of energy to be generated and delivered to the laser.
Another thing to consider is that lasers are also quite inefficient at converting input energy to output energy at the exit optic of the laser. That number can be as low as 10-15% of input being the output. Ald all the waste energy has to be managed somehow, whether through radiation/convection to the atmosphere (IR bloom, anyone) or through transfer to the sea with cooling plumbing. Of course, the output energy also starts to drop off the instant it leaves the laser due to atmospheric effects, even on clear days (much less rainy or cloudy days) meaning that either effective range is relatively short or that input energy requirements go up again.
Couple all this together and you quickly start to get quite unwieldy electromechanical systems to provide the pointing accuracy needed to hit a manoeuvering, high-speed target from a moving platform at the desired engagement ranges coupled with truly significant amounts of power generation _and_ thermal management.
Versus adding, say, two more CIWS mounts/SAMs and a bigger bucket of ammo.
The choice is not clear at all.
I would expect countermeasures like aerosol dispersal to be used by drones if lasers become widespread. TBH, not even sure if weather effects have been mitigated yet - what about heavy cloud layers between the laser and the drones?
Even a mirror finish will significantly reduce efficiency of a laser on top of other countermeasures.
The laser platform needs to be able to shoot accurately on the move, not shoot and scoot
The increase in computational and pointing accuracy requirements for this are substantial. Not saying you're wrong, but saying this means the system gets a lot larger and a lot more costly to manufacture. A _lot_.
A good antidote to the hollow promises of the 'tech will save us' crowd. Thanks. Like driverless cars, battlefield lasers have been guaranteed to appear 'within five-ten years' for as long as I can remember.
I have always thought lasers would first be used as a means of communication that's one practice impossible to jam or overhear. Laser from ground to a drone, which forwards the communication also with a laser or lasers to further drones. But perhaps achieving enough accuracy while flying is not feasible with the current technology.
For combat I can't imagine how huge power is needed for this to work.
I find a quite glaring omission on the news article: it discuss lasers Vs missiles, ignoring guns.
Lasers need lots of energy (usually counted in megawatts sustained for multiple seconds). Large ships have the required energy and mass budget, but a mobile land vehicle doesn't have it. For example, a C175-16 diesel generator from Caterpillar weights approximately 30 tonnes and can supply 2.5-3 megawatts sustained. Even a small 950 kW generator like the Caterpillar C32 weight 15+ tonnes.
I am also quite skeptical about the possible rate of fire of these systems. Pushing megawatt-plus power through optical systems requires some really good cooling if you want to sustain operation against a saturation attack.
Can this weapon be used to protect large power plants?
I doubt it. Power plants could supply plenty of energy for a laser weapon, but these are usually targeted by ballistic missiles, which are a very hard target to destroy by directed energy weapons.
The re-entry vehicle enter the atmosphere at multiple Mach, and these are heavily built compared to plastic and fiberglass drones. You have mere seconds to destroy the missile during terminal phase.
https://youtu.be/j7X89a531CY
The simplest solution to all these issues is making large orders of them regardless of their faults such that there's continuous iteration. A lot of these issues are because we dont have them in large numbers to work out the kinks and technical hurdles. I like the MSHORAD program which is going to mount these on Strykers in large numbers. Eventually practical solutions will be realized.
The money required for this approach would be pretty staggering. It's not an incorrect approach, but, man, it would chew through defence budgets to do things like this.
Thats why you need to make large orders. High upfront cost is offset over the long term. Already we're doing this with the laser M-SHORAD program(Increment 2). You're right its going to be expensive though but eventually these Directed Energy systems will have to be part of how we defend ourselves.
Well, first off I'm not sure that directed energy weapons _have_ to be part of things. I'm not sure the physics actually work for effective weapons systems. Currently, I do not see a rational path to get sufficient energy to targets to make lasers a viable weapon system, especially as regards to larger targets and doubly especially if fielded to an active, fluid, and very dangerous battlefield.
Secondly, procuring large numbers of many varied systems in an effort to achieve system evolution on the battlefield is where this starts to cost a huge amount even before you can start "at scale" production of the actually viable systems, You are procuring a large number of low volume solutions that are inherently more expensive because of the low rate production implicit in the idea of multiple systems iterating on the design. Tooling up for higher rate production is where the upfront money lies and spending that toolng money over and over as your system upgrades iteratively is a recipe for those huge costs I was talking about.
It is not a viable approach in a world of constrained budgets unless one is willing to sacrifice a LOT of other capability to afford it.
I am totally on board with fielding small numbers of a lot of different systems in order to create that design iteration, but you then run into the issues of training on all the different systems and the fact that these different systems will be proprietary to the individual suppliers meaning that the free transfer of ideas to generate the iteration will be problematic. at best.
I see your argument. Thank you
I'm surprised that we keep talking about lasers. I've never worked with lasers first hand, but as an engineer, it never ever seemed to be even remotely feasible to use later over any distance larger then a few meters: there are too many technical challenges already described by other readers.
drone-one-drone or same sort of 155 mm AD is way more practical.
A very detailed article, excellent work 👍
Some of the other aspects to keep in mind are effective range, reliance on visibility, etc.
Thanks for this report