The U.S. Navy wants the smallest ever high-energy laser weapon, which it describes as ‘portable.’ As we will see, it is not exactly a laser rifle, but it is a step on the way.
Laser weapons are now a battlefield reality; the U.S. Navy deployed the LAWS laser on the U.S.S. Ponce back in 2016. However, so far we have only seen large weapons – laser cannon, so to speak – mounted on ships or other vehicles. Miniaturization is on the way. Stainless Steel Laser Welding Machine
The Air Forces's Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response rifle or PHaSR was a low-power, ... [+] non-lethal laser weapon developed in the 2000s; the new Navy weapon will be far more powerful but also less compact.
According to the contract notice last month, laser specializes MZA Associates of Albuquerque, New Mexico, will “will design, develop, deliver, integrate, test and demonstrate a compact, portable, low-cost and reliable C-UAS HELWS” – this last alphabetic jumble being short for ‘Counter-Unmanned Air Systems High Energy Laser Weapon System.’ In other words, a laser to zap small drones. While other laser systems go up to 150 kilowatts and can take on a range of targets, a 10-Kw laser is just powerful enough to take down small consumer quadcopters, an increasing threat on the battlefield.
So how big will the new weapon be?
MZA were not able to discuss their work, but the contracting agency, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) was more informative.
“Under the contract with the Navy, MZA is developing a transportable laser weapon system to enable defense against adversary unmanned aerial vehicles,” Frank Peterkin, Program Officer at the ONR told Forbes. (My emphasis).
In normal usage, transportable is not quite the same as portable, which is the word used in the contract and which would indicate that it could be carried by one person. Peterkin explained that the weapon is not portable in the usual sense.
“The full system will still require machinery — trucks, cranes, et cetera — for initial emplacement and/or relocation to other sites,” says Peterkin.
So, not quite a laser rifle yet, perhaps more a laser heavy weapon like the .50 Cal M2 machinegun which is luggable rather than portable at 84 pounds plus 44 pounds for the tripod and another 35 pounds per box of ammunition.
The new weapon will be a size down from the smallest current laser, the High-Energy Laser Weapon System developed by Raytheon in 2019.
“Raytheon Intelligence & Space’s high-energy laser weapon system is the most compact laser weapon system of the 10kW-class,” says Evan Hunt, High Energy Laser Business Development lead at Raytheon. ”More importantly, it’s also the most capable in the market.”
The new weapon will be a size down from Raytheon's HELWS, seen here mounted on an MRZR dune-buggy ... [+] style vehicle, he current smallest laser weapon.
The weapon was developed in 24 months after the Air Force challenged Raytheon to build a laser small enough to carry on a JLTV, a sort of military dune buggy, rather than previous weapons which required a large eight-wheeled vehicle. It consists of five key components.
“HELWS is essentially four subsystem boxes, each roughly the size of a large suitcase,” says Hunt “Finally, it has a sensor ball, the Beam Director which is roughly the size of a basketball.”
Each of the four subsystems is vital for the weapon. There is the laser unit itself, generating the beam, the energy magazine, which is the battery, the power system which turns battery power into bursts of intense energy, and the thermal management system to cope with waste heat. The beam director aims the laser at the target, which is not simple when trying to hold a laser dot stationary on a moving drone target.
Hunt says commercial technologies helped get the HELWS to the desired size.
“For example, fiber laser amplifiers are a relatively new technology used for precision cutting and welding around the world,” says Hunt. “We combine multiple kW-class beams from shoe-box sized amplifiers to create a single, more powerful beam.”
Similarly, off-the-shelf battery technology has greatly improved thanks to the advance of electric vehicles.
“Another example is the energy storage capability that we get from advanced lithium-ion batteries out of the hybrid vehicle industry. These allow us to store hundreds of seconds of clean, on-demand, and rechargeable HEL power in a compact package,” says Hunt.
This does give some idea of the challenge for the next step. All five of the elements will need to be shrunk to an appropriate scale. If the laser and power system are match-box sized, but the batteries and thermal management still require suitcases, then the overall weapon is still going to be impractically large.
“There will still need to be further generational breakthroughs at the subsystem level before we can realize the vision of hand-carried laser pistols,” says Hunt.
There is no doubt that laser weapons are – finally – developing fast. They have been on the horizon since the 1960’s, and the U.S. military shot down its first drone with a laser way back in 1973, and there were many false starts after that (remember that Airborne Laser on a 747 that was supposed to shoot down ballistic missiles in the 90s?) . In the last five years they have gone from ship installations to dune buggy mobile and smaller. MZA are expected to complete work on the new weapon in August 2023.
Aluminum Laser Welding Machine Laser rifle are not with us yet, whatever the Chinese may claim. But, like portable railguns, they are getting a lot closer.