Military

General Atomics and Boeing team up on high-energy laser weapon

The laser weapon system is designed to be mounted on a variety of platforms
General Atomics
The laser weapon system is designed to be mounted on a variety of platforms
General Atomics

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) and Boeing have entered into a partnership to develop a scalable 100 kW to 250 kW-class High Energy Laser (HEL) weapon system for air and missile defenses.

Laser weapons have been high on the wish lists of major military powers ever since the first laser was invented by Theodore Maiman at the Hughes Research Lab, Malibu, California in 1960. With enough concentrated power to burn through steel, enough range to cover literally astronomical distances, an operating cost of a dollar a shot, and an unlimited number of shots so long as there's power available, the laser looked like the so-called ultimate weapon – if it could be made practical.

Of the problems that have hampered laser weapon development over the past six decades, one of the biggest is how to properly cool a laser generator. This is important because weapon-grade lasers have an efficiency between 50 and 70 percent, with the leftover percentages being lost as heat that could shut down or damage the device.

For the HEL weapon system, Boeing and GA-EMS plan on pooling their technologies to create a combat-ready system, with GA-EMS to provide its scalable distributed gain laser technology, HELLi-ion battery systems, and integrated thermal management. The last of these is particularly important because it combines the high energy density of a solid-state laser with the cooling system of a liquid laser.

Meanwhile, Boeing will provide its beam director and precision Acquisition, Tracking and Pointing (ATP) software. When combined, the hoped for result will be an HEL laser weapon system with the high-output power, range, adaptability, precision ATP requirements, and reduced logistical footprint that will allow it to be fitted to land, sea, and air-based platforms.

"GA-EMS has made significant advancements in developing and demonstrating highly scalable laser technologies to facilitate high output power in smaller, lighter weight packages," says Scott Forney, president of GA-EMS. "We look forward to working with Boeing to deliver a laser weapon system with capabilities designed to meet current operational requirements, while providing the flexibility and adaptability to suit emerging platform requirements supporting missions across a multi-domain battle space."

Source: General Atomics

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5 comments
bkwanab
It feels like we're back in the 1950's. Whatever next. Atomic powered rockets? Aeroplanes? cars?
paul314
Do those big lasers have such high efficiency? Most other kinds of laser have efficiencies more like a few percent, except maybe some diode lasers.
TonyImagine
How much space junk can this remove, I wonder?
paul314
@TonyImagine: By "remove" do you mean disperse into a bunch of smaller pieces with unknown orbits? (Some of the smaller stuff will deorbit faster, of course. On the other hand, I expect that even with super-high power, range through atmosphere is limited. So we'll have to wait for super space lasers.)
Polaris1983
Can it shoot one laser into an energy sphere and then multiply into many laser killing hypersonic slbms dead with MIRV capabilities or do we even have hypersonic missiles with MIRV like abilities to kill slbms with hypersonic capability that can be used automatically once the coast guard defenses see the nuke hidden on a cargo ship or submarine 1000 milies outside us terriotrial waters?