Posted on 09/23/2015 12:17:28 PM PDT by Brad from Tennessee
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., or GA-ASI, the San Diego-based company that makes the Predator and Reaper drones, is undertaking a privately funded study to integrate a 150-kilowatt solid-state laser onto its Avenger (née Predator-C) drone. If the company succeeds, a drone with a high-energy laser will be a reality at some point in 2017, company executives told Defense One.
“We’re funded right now to develop a laser module compatible with the aircraft and study putting it on the Avenger,” Michael Perry, Vice President for Mission Systems at GA-ASI, told Defense One. “We hope to be funded to do that,” he said.
The company is far better known for its MQ-1s and MQ-9s — the backbones of the Pentagon’s drone strike force — than for its work with lasers. But in June, the company delivered a 150-kilowatt liquid laser to the Pentagon for extensive testing at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. For comparison, the 30 kw laser (output) currently on the Ponce in the Persian Gulf has more than enough output to destroy an enemy drone or blow a hole in a boat. The GA-ASI laser has 20 times the lethality of the one on the Ponce, with five times the power and four times the focus, according to Perry.
Bringing these two technologies together involves a lot more than strapping a laser cannon under the drone’s wings. Hitting a target with a laser mounted on a vibrating platform moving quickly through air laden with dust and water vapor is tougher than launching a Hellfire at a moving vehicle. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at defenseone.com ...
And it can probably recharge with a generator attached to its turbine engine. Anything powered by a jet engine potentially has a lot of electricity available.
“We ARE putting them on our ships.”
One laser, on one ship, if I’m not mistaken.
That’s a test case, buddy.
Well duh. Not going to do anything wide scale until it is proved out. Projects take a long time. If something is deployed as a proof of concept then you can bet there are smaller better versions on the drawing boards or going into prototypes. That is how the development cycle works. There is always a gap between what some company is starting to mess with and what is in production and what is in regular service. Each of those intervals is months or years depending on the complexity of the system. So no, if a company is starting to play with them on drones it does not follow that it should already be installed everywhere else.
This has nothing to do with lasers, but I couldn't resist. For my last birthday my son gave me something called a "bug-a-salt-weapon." It's a spring-operated gun that fires a pinch of table salt. Nailing a fly while it's in the air is pretty tough, but when one lands on a surface, the gun is deadly. One shot will not only shred the insect's wings but kill it. I've even killed wasps with it, once they settled on something long enough for me to make the shot.
“So no, if a company is starting to play with them on drones it does not follow that it should already be installed everywhere else.”
That wasn’t my point. My point was that this tech is much more suited, by its nature, to deployment on ships and other platforms than it is on drones. Since we aren’t even “there” yet on those platforms, putting them on drones isn’t a serious development, it’s just a ploy for publicity.
Got to find me one of those...
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