Carrying A Laser Down The Road... How Iran's Biggest Naval Advantage Just Became Useless! Remember President Trump Mentioning This?
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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.)