Carrying A Laser Down The Road... How Iran's Biggest Naval Advantage Just Became Useless! Remember President Trump Mentioning This?
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We need to strap HELIOS and ODIN to the decks of the LCS ships until we have more destroyers outfitted with them. Add more drones equipped with laser weapons.
The weapon isn't just the pointer-tracker (also called beam director). These are electrically-pumped fiber-optic lasers with a quantum efficiency of about 30%. Power conditioning is perhaps 90% efficient, and power generation maybe 40%. This means a beam of 100 kilowatts (smallest) will require a total power generation of about 926 kilowatts (1240 hp). I left out the heat dissipation for 826 kilowatts. So, there is quite a bit of heavy equipment below decks. It just means that the size of the laser installed will depend on the size of the ship supporting it. Putting these on drones makes about as much sense as mounting 30-mm cannon on drones. Some kind of carrier-supported patrol aircraft, like a revised S-3 Viking (5,000 lb payload), might make sense...but they were all retired over 10 years ago.
Another very interesting application would be to put such a weapon in an extending turret in a nuclear submarine's sail. How to deal with an airborne enemy has long been a problem for submarines. That will be a hard nut to crack, however.
Nice math. I did some work with Global Hawk when it was young. We looked at several versions. One of which required quite a bit of extra power off the engine. It dropped the max altitude by about 10,000 feet. It never went forward that I know of because of the altitude loss. But the payload and power modifications would probably be sufficient for a useful weapon.
We already have something flying with a laser that can take out the drones. One of the videos that is often repeated is just that. And a more powerful laser was used against a refinery.
I had a boss that nonchalantly said we could integrate a laser into a fighter. I had already studied that in a classified analysis a decade or so earlier. It didn't amount to much with the technology at hand. This was an electric laser. I asked him if he was prepared to lose thrust when the laser was operating. He couldn't understand that lasers don't come with their own wall plug. "Oh, there will always be enough power available."
Being at altitude and shooting at the surface was always a losing game on account of intervening clouds. We never bothered with such missions. At least the ship-mounted lasers are shooting upward through what would probably be clear sky (unless it was fog, in which case no dice).
Do you have any reference for what was supposed to attack the refinery?
Word is that they are still trying to stick a laser weapon in a fighter. If I had to speculate, I would have a weapon that I could upload into the bay of a B-2 or B-1 on demand. It would have its own independent power source.
The refinery op had the infamous blue laser. That is all I know for now.
There is a retired general who used to be a squadron mate and sounds like he got to play with some of my toys as a general. One day we will be able to chat.
A laser weapon likes to be a long-range engagement system at high altitude, and large aircraft are the best carriers, preferably ones with range/endurance. (Their best firing direction is broadside, due to atmospheric propagation effects.) Fitting one into a 767 would be suitable. It could probably fit into a B-1 or a B-2, but it would be a headache integrating it and then you would have one less B-1 or B-2 to carry ordnance. Something like the Helios probably weighs tons, and I don't see that as a good match for a fighter platform. It also is the kind of weapon that needs a Guy In Back to operate.
The YAL-1A would have been a dominator of the skies, with a lethal range of maybe 1000 kilometers, but it was never evaluated in that role. I once calculated that at such a range, the airborne laser platform could not even be seen against the sky background. It could reach out and kill, and the victim wouldn't know where the blow came from.
The refinery story is just a story, then. There are no blue lasers.
Good luck with the general. Even with retired pals out of the field, we can't say much face to face. (Or, you have to be a master of the art of allusion.)
The systems are getting lighter per Kilowatt all the time. Straight down is not as bad as one would expect. At least that’s what I was told by the guys doing the math. One of the main trade offs is dwell time. The ship has to be quick. For a significant target set, the airborne platform can have a longer dwell time and be effective.
Reference comms: It is a pain in the butt waiting for one of my toys or strategies to go public before I can say anything concrete. And often the name is changed.
Straight down (nadir direction) is at right angles to the airflow, so that qualifies as a "broadside" shot. But then you have relative target motion to deal with. Dwell time is a function of open-fire intensity. If you are closer, that would theoretically allow shorter dwell times. But these get to be so short, direct human shot control is not really feasible. If there are intervening clouds, forget it.
What people don't take into consideration is that it is not easy to perform target identification on ground targets. Against a sky background, there is no clutter. Just easier to drop a JDAM on set coordinates.
The YAL-1A was my last hurrah, and it did good...until Obama junked it. It would have been suitable against North Korean or Iranian ballistic missiles, which was the whole point of its development. I guess the Air Force didn't realize how much trouble they went to until they paid the bills. (Plus the Air Force has a fickle heart, always pursuing a shorter wavelength.) Once you get to megawatt-class, the fun begins!