Iron Beam 450 image from wikipediacommons
Posted on 11/04/2025 3:56:25 AM PST by marktwain
The Israeli anti-drone and anti-missile laser weapon, the Iron Beam 450, is said to be ready to be deployed in Israel. From the timesofisrael.com:
The Iron Beam is not meant to replace the Iron Dome or Israel’s other air defense systems, but to supplement and complement them, shooting down smaller projectiles and leaving larger ones for the more robust missile-based batteries such as the David’s Sling and Arrow systems.
As long as there is a constant source of energy for the laser, there is no risk of it ever running out of ammunition. Officials have hailed it as a potential “game-changer” in the battle against projectile attacks.
This correspondent’s team supported an early feasibility test in 1975. Much of the Anti-Ballistic Missile laser technology, primarily to do with aiming and concentrating the beam, was supported by my colleagues in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
That technology, or very similar concepts, is used by the Iron Beam. There are a couple of more minor brothers of the 450, about half and one-tenth of its power. The least powerful, the Lite Beam, can be mounted on a land vehicle. The Lite Beam is said to have a beam power of 10 kilowatts and a range of a couple of kilometers. The middle-powered unit is said to be “mobile”, with a power of 50 kilowatts.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
Lasers can be a game changer in drone defense.
Iron Beam 450 image from wikipediacommons
Can I get one for on top of my car?
How fast and how often can they be fire with out major recharging?
Plenty of cool physics/optics going on here. I will not discuss more.
Id Israel had absolutely obliterated her Arab (not PALEOstinian) neighbors in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, Intifada I and Intifada II and the many Gaza operations, they wouldn’t need so many advanced DEFENSIVE systems.
Then again, the world prefers stalemates until it erupts again. The important factor is the misguided Ceasefire” concept so prevalent in the ignorant West.
If the Israelis would be allowed to WIN, we would have moved on to better times ages ago.
Israel has the strangest names for things.
“Iron”?
It’s literally not “Iron”.
How about “Light Beam”?
The counterattack after October 7th, 2023 was known as “Iron Swords”. There must be something in the Hebrew language or some part of the Torah that I don’t recall that makes “Iron” a thing.
Things I don’t understand include … “Iron”!?
Sources claim near continuous firing using a sufficient power source.
Hook one up to a 100 kilowatt power source, and it runs for a “long time”.
The time it runs seems to be limited by the need for maintenance of some kind. Might be a day, might be months or years. It does not appear to be hours or minutes.
Things I don’t understand include … “Iron”!?
[Can I get one for on top of my car?]
Can I get one for on the foreheads of my sharks? 🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈
(asking for a friend...)
Can I get one for the neighborhood squirrels?...............
Israel won the kinetic war, and hamass basically surrendered to dictated terms. I’m good with that. I helped.
But Israel lost the war for minds. More minds were changed in the palestinians’ favor than in Israel’s favor. Mostly by lies repeatedly told. Israel needs to win in the Mind Space too, next time, which has merely been forestalled about 20 years if we’re lucky.
Among the Mind Space Wars we need to fight is in the palestinians’ minds. They need their minds changed for peace to ever occur. I don’t know how to accomplish that, but Israel didn’t seem to fight in that space at all this time.
One way to change their minds is to be a normal military and care less than Jews do about collateral damage. Being historically more careful than any army ever in urban war minimized civilian casualties in the war hamass started and prosecuted with only War Crime tactics. Perhaps (?) with less extreme care for civilian casualties, more local minds would have been changed on their side. In a normal urban war without being as careful of civilian lives as Jews are, about six times as many civilian casualties would have occurred. Would that have changed minds? I don’t know, and leave it to the Israeli government to consider their options.
Certainly, the “hearts and minds” front was lost. It seemed to me that Israel never considered fighting in this space. That was a huge missed opportunity. It’s a lack of vision for how to achieve lasting peace. I understand why. Israel is surrounded by enemies who have been trying to eliminate her from before her founding. The feeling on the street is that they are under siege at all times, and just trying to get enough space to breathe is hard. So, when attacked, they just beat the hell out of the attacker. I’m okay with that part, but still, they need to focus more on changing the brains of palestinians.
“Things I don’t understand include … “Iron”!?”
Well, back then, they didn’t have titanium weapons…
Agreed fully!!!!!!! And !!!!!!!
Does it come with a Mustang roof mount (please?)
GREAT! Thanks for posting.
The main Israeli failure was not repatriating the tens of thousands of Jordanian invaders in Judea, Samaria and “East” Jerusalem in 1967. Most of those Arabs were only there since the 1948 Jordanian occupation. The feckless Israeli left left them there, and now they are around 2 million
“Can I get one for on top of my car?”
You can buy one from the Pet Smart web site. Only thing is you will need a place where to keep the ill-tempered sea bass.
“Iron”?
It’s literally not “Iron”.
How about “Light Beam”?
The counterattack after October 7th, 2023 was known as “Iron Swords”. There must be something in the Hebrew language or some part of the Torah that I don’t recall that makes “Iron” a thing.
Things I don’t understand include … “Iron”!?
Care to comment and enlighten, Ezekiel?
But Israel lost the war for minds. More minds were changed in the palestinians’ favor than in Israel’s favor. Mostly by lies repeatedly told. Israel needs to win in the Mind Space too, next time, which has merely been forestalled about 20 years if we’re lucky.
Israel was founded as a socialist state. A lot of Israelis are secular Jews indoctrinated in Socialist ideology, with a lot of “suicidal empathy”.
Hard to defeat your foes if you see them as essentially the same as you, while they see you as vermin to be exterminated.
People raised in different cultures are different.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.