Israel’s New $1.2 Billion Laser Will Be Nearly Unstoppable—And America Wants One, Too

Popular Mechanic ^ | 24/7/24 | David Hambling

[flamberge]

“Looking at both Israel and Ukraine, we are seeing defenders burning through missiles faster than industry can replace them,” Black says. So, Israel wants an air-defense system that never runs out of ammunition: Iron Beam.

The current generation laser system has a very low rate of fire and a limited number of shots before it requires maintenance. You need a large number of active systems to defeat a swarm attack.

The systems must be widely disbursed so if an attacker does get through it cannot disable multiple defensive stations. They systems need to be mobile as well. The "Iron Beam" appears to have these features.

There will be rapid improvements in these systems. We will end up buying them from the Israelis.

[Rockingham]

The Israelis are pretty good at innovation and rapid deployment of new battle technology. The US often draws useful lessons from Israeli experience.

[Eleutheria5]

Mean time, doctrine will evolve. It’s amazing how much America’s war college has learned from watching other countries getting attacked, rather than jumping into wars at the drop of a helmet. Between Ukraine and Israel, books are being written and old ones discarded as obsolete.

[bobbo666]

Lasers can penetrate water vapor. And, if “barrel” rotates like gatling gun, no problem. Don’t forget, expendable air vehicles cannot be adequately armored and still move fast enough to do the job.

This is the tech that will forever end air superiority.

[BigEdLB]

Fry-a-Mullah. Extra crispy.

[minnesota_bound]

You can turn off javascript.
I use a Disable JavaScript firefox extension.
All I do is move a slider to off on the toolbar and the article appears in full.

It is not being updated anymore but still works.
For Firefox and Chrome:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-javascript/?utm_source=addons.mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=search

There are many more that are now available. Either do a search in Firefox add-ons or at google: disable javascript extension

[mabarker1]

Kool, Thank You.